76 Facts About Ronnie Barker

Ronald William George Barker was an English actor, comedian and writer.

Ronnie Barker was known for roles in British comedy television series such as Porridge, The Two Ronnies, and Open All Hours.

Ronnie Barker began acting in Oxford amateur dramatics whilst working as a bank clerk, having dropped out of higher education.

Ronnie Barker moved into repertory theatre with the Manchester Repertory Company at Aylesbury and decided he was best suited to comic roles.

Ronnie Barker had his first success at the Oxford Playhouse and in roles in the West End including Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound.

Ronnie Barker got his television break with the satirical sketch series The Frost Report in 1966, where he met future collaborator, Ronnie Corbett.

Ronnie Barker joined David Frost's production company and starred in ITV shows.

The duo maintained their careers as solo performers; Ronnie Barker notably starred as inmate Norman Stanley Fletcher in the sitcom Porridge and its sequel Going Straight and as shopkeeper Arkwright in Open All Hours.

Ronnie Barker wrote comedy under his own name, though for much of his written material after 1968 he adopted pseudonyms to avoid pre-judgments of his writing talent.

Ronnie Barker won a BAFTA for best light entertainment performance four times, among other awards, and received an OBE in 1978.

Ronnie Barker died of heart failure on 3 October 2005, aged 76.

Ronnie Barker was born on 25 September 1929 at 70 Garfield Street, Bedford, Bedfordshire, the only son of Leonard William Ronnie Barker and Edith Eleanor.

Ronnie Barker's elder sister Vera was born in 1926 and his younger sister Eileen was born in 1933.

Ronnie Barker's father was a clerk for Shell-Mex, and this job saw the family move to Church Cowley Road in Cowley, Oxfordshire when Barker was four.

Ronnie Barker developed a love of the theatre, often attending plays with his family.

Ronnie Barker grew up in the Florence Park area of Oxford, and went to Donnington Junior School, and then the City of Oxford High School for Boys.

Ronnie Barker found his talent for humour at school and developed his musical ability by singing in the choir at St James's, his local church.

Ronnie Barker got into the sixth form a year early after gaining the School Certificate but he felt what he was learning would be of no use to him in later life and so left as soon as he could.

Ronnie Barker took his sister Vera's job as a bank clerk at the Westminster Bank after she had left to become a nurse.

Ronnie Barker harboured dreams of becoming an actor, and took up amateur dramatics, although initially he just saw the pastime as a chance to meet girls.

Ronnie Barker failed to get into the Young Vic School, but joined the Manchester Repertory Company, which was based in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, often taking comic roles in their weekly shows.

Ronnie Barker went on to play the organist in When We Are Married and by his third role, the chauffeur Charles in Miranda, Barker realised he wanted to be a comic actor.

Ronnie Barker found work at the Mime Theatre Company, performing mimed folk music and dance, which soon folded in Penzance.

Ronnie Barker made his way back to Oxford and then worked in Bramhall for the Famous Players.

Ronnie Barker joined the Oxford Playhouse in 1951 and worked there for three years, appearing in plays such as Ronnie Barker Who Gets Slapped as Polly.

Ronnie Barker remained a West End actor for several years, appearing in numerous plays between 1955 and 1968.

Ronnie Barker appeared in several Royal Court Theatre productions, including A Midsummer Night's Dream as Quince.

Ronnie Barker went on to play multiple characters, but primarily the put-upon Able Seaman 'Fatso' Johnson and Lieutenant-Commander Stanton in The Navy Lark, a navy based sitcom on the BBC Light Programme, which ran from 1959 to 1977, with Barker featuring in some 300 episodes.

Ronnie Barker featured in the show's radio spin-off The TV Lark, in which his character, Fatso, was now a camera operator after the main characters were drummed out of the service, and as a trainee chef in Crowther's Crowd in 1963, and had roles on Variety Playhouse.

Ronnie Barker's first acting job on television was in Melvyn's show I'm Not Bothered.

Ronnie Barker appeared in various roles in the comedy series The Seven Faces of Jim from 1962, alongside Jimmy Edwards and June Whitfield, as well as parts in Bold as Brass and Foreign Affairs.

Ronnie Barker did his first bit of on-screen 'porridge' as fellow convict to Charlie Drake in The Cracksman.

In 1966, Ronnie Barker got his break with the satirical sketch series The Frost Report, having been recommended for the show by producer James Gilbert.

Ronnie Barker starred alongside Cleese and Corbett in The Frost Report's best known sketch, which satirised the British class system, with Ronnie Barker representing the middle class.

Ronnie Barker began writing sketches for the programme under the pseudonym Gerald Wiley.

Ronnie Barker began using the pseudonym Gerald Wiley when writing sketches because he wished the pieces to be accepted on merit and not just because he, as a star of the programme, had written them; he continued this tradition with the material he wrote later in his career.

Ronnie Barker brought his sketches in, claiming they had come from Wiley through Ronnie Barker's agent Peter Eade, and they were very well received.

Ronnie Barker, who had told Corbett earlier in the day, stood up and announced he was Wiley, although initially nobody believed him.

In 1969, Ronnie Barker was able to write, produce and star as Sir Giles Futtock in the film Futtock's End which featured little dialogue and only "grumble[s] and grunt[s]".

The Ronnie Barker Playhouse had been designed to find a successful idea for a sitcom, and the episode "Ah, There You Are" by Alun Owen, which introduced the bumbling aristocratic character Lord Rustless, was chosen.

Ronnie Barker reprised his character Lord Rustless in the sitcom His Lordship Entertains in 1972.

Ronnie Barker wrote all seven episodes, again with the pseudonym Jonathan Cobbald.

Ronnie Barker found it almost impossible to talk directly, as himself, to an audience.

Ronnie Barker wrote much of the show's material, roughly three-quarters, again under the name Gerald Wiley.

Ronnie Barker was heavily involved with the show's production, especially the serial.

Ronnie Barker's material included the sketch which came to be known as "Four Candles", airing in 1976, although in the original script it was titled "Annie Finkhouse".

Ronnie Barker won the BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Performance in 1971 and 1977 for the show.

Ronnie Barker was reportedly offended by a sketch called 'The Two Ninnies' on the BBC's Not the Nine O'Clock News, which mocked their act as being based on dated innuendo-based humour.

Ronnie Barker made no other appearances that year and spent his time writing and engaging in recreational activities.

Ronnie Barker opted to produce some sitcom pilots shown as part of 1973's Seven of One.

Prisoner and Escort became Porridge, airing from 1974 to 1977, with Ronnie Barker starring as the cynical and cunning prisoner Norman Stanley Fletcher.

Ronnie Barker privately regarded the series as the finest work of his career.

Ronnie Barker won the BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Performance in 1975 for his performance.

In 1976, Ronnie Barker played Friar Tuck in the film Robin and Marian, directed by Richard Lester.

Arkwright's stutter was not in the script; Ronnie Barker was inspired to use it by Melvyn's performance and use of a stutter in a 1955 play the two performed at the Palace Theatre called Hot Water.

Ronnie Barker was the first actor originally considered for the role of Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.

Ronnie Barker wrote the show himself, again using a pseudonym, this time as "Bob Ferris".

Ronnie Barker had decided to retire in 1985 but his decision was kept secret for two years, Corbett being the only one knowing about it.

Ronnie Barker made his decision public on an appearance on the chat show Wogan.

Retired, Ronnie Barker opened and ran an antiques shop called The Emporium in Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire and resisted all calls to come out of retirement from then onwards.

Ronnie Barker wrote his autobiography, Dancing in the Moonlight: My Early Years on Stage in 1993 and released All I Ever Wrote, his complete scripts, in 1999.

Just over a decade after retiring, Ronnie Barker was persuaded to make occasional appearances on television again.

In 2002, director Richard Loncraine persuaded Ronnie Barker to appear as Winston Churchill's butler David Inches in the BBC-HBO drama The Gathering Storm and then cast him in the larger role of the General in the TV film My House in Umbria in 2003, alongside Maggie Smith.

Ronnie Barker won the Royal Television Society's award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in 1975.

Ronnie Barker, though, preferred comedy, and felt it was "as good and as important as serious work" and he was not "dumbing down" by doing it.

Ronnie Barker met Joy Tubb in Cambridge while she was a stage manager for two plays he was in.

Adam Ronnie Barker became an actor, but was jailed for twelve months in 2012 on twenty counts of making indecent images of children, having evaded police for eight years; he was not present at his father's funeral.

Ronnie Barker was an avid collector of antiques, books and posters and amassed a collection of over 53,000 postcards.

Ronnie Barker produced several compilation books of them, including Ronnie Barker's Book of Bathing Beauties, A Pennyworth of Art, and Sauce.

Ronnie Barker rarely appeared in public, and when he did, it was almost always in character.

Ronnie Barker was a heavy smoker until 1972, when he gave up the habit after having a pre-cancerous growth removed from his throat; he took to drinking wine and using placebo cigarettes to maintain his concentration and help him sleep.

Ronnie Barker underwent a heart bypass in 1996 and survived a pulmonary embolism the following year.

Ronnie Barker died of heart failure at the Katherine House hospice in Adderbury, Oxfordshire, on 3 October 2005, aged 76, with his wife by his side.

Ronnie Barker's body was cremated at a private humanist funeral at Banbury Crematorium, which was attended only by family and close friends.

Ronnie Barker was the third comedy professional to be given a memorial at Westminster Abbey, after Joyce Grenfell and Les Dawson.

Ronnie Barker spoke as himself, truthfully, simply and from the heart.