Actors - Ronnie Barker

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	Actors - Ronnie Barker

Ronald William George Barker OBE (September 25, 1929 – October 3, 2005), popularly known as Ronnie Barker and (as a writer) Gerald Wiley , was an English comic actor and writer. His best-known appearances were alongside his long-time comedy partner, Ronnie Corbett, in the very popular TV variety show The Two Ronnies; as Norman Stanley "Fletch" Fletcher in the sitcom Porridge and its BAFTA award winning sequel Going Straight; and working with David Jason in Open All Hours. His skills as a character actor, his love for and facility with the English language, and his gift for comedy made him a well-loved performer.

Beginnings

Barker was born in Bedford in Bedfordshire. He had two sisters and the family moved to Oxford when his father, a clerk for Shell Oil, was relocated, when Barker was four years old. He took to writing plays for his family and neighbours, and often sat in the audience of the Oxford Playhouse, his local repertory company, dreaming of fame. Barker attended Oxford High School and at 16, he left and took a job as a bank clerk - but the theatre called. He wrote to the Aylesbury Repertory Company in 1948 and his show business career began. Barker then went on to join the Playhouse Theatre, at the time under the actor-management of Frank Shelley, as an actor and stagehand, at £2 10s (£2.50) per week. The two appeared together there, in Ben Travers's A Cuckoo in the Nest and, subsequently, in a number of other venues and roles. In 1993, Barker dedicated his autobiography to Shelley, whom he called one of the "three wise men who directed my career; without men like these, there would be no theatre."

Success

He then worked as an actor and assistant stage manager with the Manchester Repertory Company, but was soon spotted by Sir Peter Hall who gave him a West End role. His first radio appearance was in 1956; he went on to play a variety of minor characters in The Navy Lark, a navy based sit-com on the BBC Light Programme (still available on tape and frequently rerun on BBC 7). He later returned to radio in the BBC Radio 4 sketch show Lines From My Grandfather's Forehead. On television, he wrote and performed many satirical skits in The Frost Report, notably a series of trios which he performed with Ronnie Corbett and John Cleese. He starred with David Jason as a bumbling aristocrat in the sit-com Hark at Barker. Both he and Jason are widely recognised as having excellent comic timing and delivery, which accounts for their enduring popularity. Jason appeared in several episodes of Porridge, and co-starred as the assistant to Barker's stuttering shopkeeper in the sitcom Open All Hours, written by Roy Clarke (who also wrote Last of the Summer Wine). Both Porridge and Open All Hours originated as part of the Seven of One series.

Porridge ran for three series, two Christmas specials and a film, produced in 1979. Barker privately regarded the series as the finest work of his career. It was followed by the sitcom Going Straight which, while not as popular as Porridge, did win BAFTA awards. The first came at a time when Barker was grieving the early death of his co-star Richard Beckinsale, and Barker tearfully paid tribute to Beckinsale in his brief acceptance speech. Open All Hours ended up running for four series with Barker playing the tight-fisted Arkwright. David Jason was nephew and errand-boy Granville.

Barker was also an accomplished comedy writer. He provided a good deal of the sketches and songs for The Two Ronnies, and contributed material to many other radio and TV shows—often under a variety of assumed names (most famously "Gerald Wiley"), so that his work would be considered on merit. His other credits include the (almost) silent films Futtock's End, The Picnic and By The Sea, the sit-coms His Lordship Entertains and Clarence, the plays Rub A Dub Dub and Mum, and the LP A Pint of Old and Filthy. Straight roles were few and far between, though he did put in a dramatic-comic turn as Cheshire in The Hidden Tiger episode of the 1960s classic series The Avengers
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