1. Brian George Wilde was an English actor best known for his roles in television comedy, most notably Mr Barrowclough in Porridge and Walter "Foggy" Dewhurst in Last of the Summer Wine.
20 Facts About Brian Wilde
1. 2.
Brian Wilde's lugubrious world-weary face was a staple of British television for forty years.
3.
Brian Wilde had an early uncredited role as a small-time crook in the film Forbidden Cargo, starring Jack Warner and Nigel Patrick, and a small but significant dramatic part in the horror film Night of the Demon.
4.
Brian Wilde played Detective Superintendent Halcro in a series of two-part thrillers about undercover Scotland Yard officers, The Men from Room Thirteen.
5.
Brian Wilde had minor roles in films such as Life for Ruth, The Bargee, The Jokers and Carry On Doctor, and on television in Room at the Bottom as Mr Salisbury.
6.
Brian Wilde showed his sinister side as the mischievous magician Mr Peacock in the children's drama series Ace of Wands between 1970 and 1972.
7.
Also in 1971, in the television drama Elizabeth R, Brian Wilde played the efficient, merciless 'rackmaster' Richard Topcliffe, who was charged with the torture of prisoners in the Tower of London.
8.
Brian Wilde played a character in the 1970s British children's series The Ghosts of Motley Hall, by Richard Carpenter.
9.
In 1973, Brian Wilde starred as a different kind of gaoler in the second episode of Seven of One, a series of seven individual stories, all of which starred Ronnie Barker.
10.
Brian Wilde reprised his role as the timid and eager-to-please Barrowclough.
11.
Brian Wilde gained and established another role in 1976, when he took over from Michael Bates as the third member of a trio of old men in the BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine.
12.
Brian Wilde saw the long-running series gather momentum and continue its success; he stayed with the series for nine years, before leaving in 1985 to work on projects.
13.
Brian Wilde stayed until 1997, when he contracted shingles during the preparations for series 19 and decided to leave.
14.
Brian Wilde never returned to the programme, despite several invitations to do so.
15.
Brian Wilde featured in "The Fear Merchants", an episode of ABC's The Avengers, in January 1967.
16.
In 1978, Brian Wilde voiced the public information film series Play Safe, highlighting the dangers of overhead power lines to children.
17.
Brian Wilde supplied the voice of the magician Meredith in the children's animated series Alias the Jester, Shortie the Giraffe in adverts for Coco Pops and narrated an animated series, Microscopic Milton, about a tiny man who lives in a clock on the mantelpiece in the parlour of the house that belongs to a lady called Mrs Witherspoon.
18.
Brian Wilde starred in his own BBC series in 1988, Wyatt's Watchdogs, as retired soldier Major Wyatt who forms his own neighbourhood watch group.
19.
Brian Wilde suffered a fall in January 2008 from which he never recovered.
20.
Brian Wilde died in his sleep, aged 80, on the morning of 20 March 2008, at his home in Ware, Hertfordshire.