Ronald William George Barker (25 September 1929 – 3 October 2005) was an English actor, comedian and writer. He was known for roles in British comedy television series such as The Frost Report, The Two Ronnies, Porridge, and Open All Hours.
Barker began acting in Oxford amateur dramatics while working as a bank clerk, having dropped out of higher education. He moved into repertory theatre with the Aylesbury Repertory Company and decided he was best suited to comic roles. He had his first success at the Oxford Playhouse and in roles in the West End including Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. During this period, he was in the cast of several BBC radio and television comedies, most notably the radio sitcom The Navy Lark. He got his television break with David Frost's satirical sketch series The Frost Report (1966–67), where he worked with John Cleese and Ronnie Corbett, the latter becoming Barker's long-time comedy partner. He joined Frost's production company and starred in several ITV shows during the late 1960s.
After rejoining the BBC in the early 1970s, Barker and Corbett achieved significant success with the sketch show The Two Ronnies (1971–87). The duo maintained their careers as solo performers; Barker notably starred as inmate Norman Stanley Fletcher in the sitcom Porridge (1974–77) and its sequel Going Straight (1978) and as shopkeeper Arkwright in the sitcom Open All Hours (1976–85). He wrote comedy under his own name, though for much of his written material after 1968 he adopted pseudonyms (including "Gerald Wiley") to avoid pre-judgment of his writing talent. He won a BAFTA for best light entertainment performance four times, among other awards, and was appointed an OBE in 1978.
Barker's later sitcoms such as The Magnificent Evans (1984) and Clarence (1988) were less successful and he retired in December 1987. The following year, he opened an antiques shop with his wife, Joy. After 1999, he appeared in smaller, non-comic roles in films. He died of heart failure on 3 October 2005, aged 76.
Early life
Barker was born on 25 September 1929 at 70 Garfield Street, Bedford, the only son of Leonard William Barker (always known as "Tim")Remembering Ronnie Barker, Richard Webber, Arrow Books, 2010, p. 10Ronnie Barker: The Authorized Biography, Bob McCabe, BBC Books, 2004, p. 11 and Edith Eleanor (née Carter; known as "Sis", by virtue of being the youngest sister amongst her siblings).Ronnie Barker: The Authorized Biography, Bob McCabe, BBC Books, 2004, p. 12Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry URL= http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-95460 Date accessed= 22 October 2018
Barker's elder sister Vera was born in 1926 and his younger sister Eileen was born in 1933. His 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.
Barker's biographer Bob McCabe described Barker's childhood as "a happy time, marred by no ructions or family tensions, apart from the occasional wet sock." As a child, Barker enjoyed dressing up, particularly in his father's pierrot outfit, as well as films, comics and animals. He developed a love of the theatre, often attending plays with his family. The first play he saw was Cottage to Let and he once skipped school to see Laurence Olivier in Henry V. He frequently stood outside stage doors to collect autographs, his first being the actress Celia Johnson.
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: Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Scheme His chemistry textbook at Oxford had previously been used by T. E. Lawrence. He found his talent for humour at school and developed his musical ability by singing in the choir at St James's, his local church. He 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.
After leaving school, he trained as an architect; however, feeling he was not skilled enough, he quit after six months. Barker took his sister Vera's job as a bank clerk at the Westminster Bank after she had left to become a nurse. He harboured dreams of becoming an actor, and took up amateur dramatics, although initially he just saw the pastime as a chance to meet girls.
For 18 months, while at the bank, he worked as an actor and stage manager, making his first appearance in A Murder Has Been Arranged as the musical director of the play-within-a-play. Eventually he gave up his job to become a professional actor. His father did not support his acting ambition.
Career
Theatrical career Barker failed to get into the Young Vic School, but joined the Aylesbury Repertory Company, which was based in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, often taking comic roles in their weekly shows. Initially he was employed as the assistant to the assistant stage manager, earning £2.10s. 0d (£2.50) a week. He made his debut as a professional actor on 15 November 1948 as Lieutenant Spicer in a performance of J. M. Barrie's Quality Street. He 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. He was described as "ha[ving] the talent to be a great straight actor", but noted: "I want to make people laugh. Never mind about Hamlet. Forget Richard the Second. Give me Charley's Aunt. My mission in life was now crystal clear." He appeared in stage adaptations of Treasure Island and Red Riding Hood before getting his first leading role in The Guinea Pig as a working-class boy at a public school. When the production moved to Rhyl, Barker followed. The Aylesbury Repertory Company closed, as did the Rhyl company shortly after.
Barker, aged 20, then spent some time as a porter at Wingfield Hospital; he became distressed through his contact with polio patients and so opted to take on the persona of "Charlie" so as not to be himself. He and a male nurse often entertained the patients with comedy routines. He found work at the Mime Theatre Company, performing mimed folk music and dance, which soon folded in Penzance. He made his way back to Oxford and then worked in Bramhall for the Famous Players. There he met actor Glenn Melvyn; the two became firm friends and Barker stated Melvyn taught him everything he "ever learned about comedy".
Barker joined the Oxford Playhouse in 1951 and worked there for three years, appearing in plays such as He Who Gets Slapped as Polly. Peter Hall worked with Barker at Oxford and gave him his break, casting him as the Chantyman and Joe Silva in his production of Mourning Becomes Electra at the Arts Theatre in London's West End in 1955. By the time he had made it to the West End, Barker had appeared in an estimated 350 plays.
Barker remained a West End actor for several years, appearing in numerous plays between 1955 and 1968. These included, in 1955, two performances each night as he played a gypsy in Listen to the Wind at the Arts Theatre and then a peasant in Summertime later in the evening. His other roles included Mr. Thwaites in Double Image in 1956 (with Olivier), Camino Real (directed by Hall) in 1957, French gangster Robertoles-Diams in Irma La Douce for two years from 1958, Lord Slingsby-Craddock in Mr. Whatnot in 1964 and Birdboot in The Real Inspector Hound in 1968. He also appeared in several Royal Court Theatre productions, including A Midsummer Night's Dream as Quince.
Early media career Barker's theatrical success enabled him to move into radio work. Barker, who had previously been known by his full name "Ronald", was now referred to as the less formal form "Ronnie", after a director changed it in the credits, although he did not tell Barker. His first radio appearance was in 1956, playing Lord Russett in Floggit's. He 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.
Barker also 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. Barker soon began working in film and television. His first acting job on television was in Melvyn's show I'm Not Bothered. He 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 (as Russian embassy worker Grischa Petrovitch). This was followed with dramatic parts in A Tale of Two Cities as Jerry Cruncher in 1965 as well as a single episode role in The Avengers, in which he played Cheshire, a cat lover.
Barker had an uncredited role in the 1958 film Wonderful Things!. In 1964 he appeared in Galton & Simpson's gentle comedy The Bargee, as 'Ronnie', the illiterate cousin of Harry H. Corbett's rascally 'Hemmel Pike'.The Bargee (1964) – Plot Summary, imdb.com; accessed 24 January 2018. He did his first bit of on-screen 'porridge' as fellow convict to Charlie Drake in The Cracksman (1963). Other film work at that time included: Doctor in Distress (1963), Father Came Too! (1963) and A Home of Your Own (1965).
In 1966, Barker appeared in The Saint (S5, E9 "The Better Mousetrap") as the detective Alphonse. In 1966, Barker got his break with the satirical sketch series The Frost Report, having been recommended for the show by producer James Gilbert. The show starred David Frost, John Cleese and Barker's future comedy partner Ronnie Corbett, whom he had met in 1963 when Corbett was the barman at the Buckstone Club near the Haymarket Theatre. Corbett stated in his autobiography that the two had gravitated towards each other because of their similar backgrounds; neither had attended university, while many of the other cast and writers on The Frost Report had. Each episode of the show, which was performed and broadcast live, focused on a single topic and principally revolved around a continuous monologue from Frost, with sketches from Barker, Corbett and Cleese as the show went on. Barker starred alongside Cleese and Corbett in The Frost Reports best-known sketch, which satirised the British class system, with Barker representing the middle class.
After the first series, the special Frost Over England was produced, winning the Golden Rose at the Montreux Television Festival. With a second series of the show announced, Frost, recognising their potential, signed both Barker and Corbett up to his production company David Paradine Productions. As part of the deal Barker was given his own show in 1968, The Ronnie Barker Playhouse, which comprised six separate, thirty-minute plays. Barker starred in each piece as a different character. After two series of The Frost Report on the BBC, totalling 26 half-hour episodes, Frost moved to ITV after helping to set up London Weekend Television. There, Frost hosted Frost on Sunday, with Barker and Corbett following and again performing sketches on the programme. Barker began writing sketches for the programme under the pseudonym Gerald Wiley. Barker and Corbett had a greater role on the show than on The Frost Report and Corbett felt "more aware of what [they] were doing."