UNITED KINGDOM: British comedian Ronnie Barker dies at the age of 76

British comedian Ronnie Barker died on Monday (October 3) in a hospice near his Oxfordshire home. It's thought the 76 year-old had been ill for several days and suffered heart failure. Barker became a household name as one half of the legendary duo The Two Ronnies. A spokeswoman for The British Broadcasting Corporation said on Tuesday that Barker died peacefully in the presence of his wife. Ronald William George Barker was born in Bedford in 1929. At one stage he considered becoming a bank manager, the kind of middle class, respectable profession he would later parody mercilessly in his sketches. But he chose the theatre instead, appearing in plays and on the radio before breaking into television. In 1971, he teamed up with Corbett for the first Two Ronnies series, a show based on deft wordplay and comic timing that attracted up to 17 million viewers at its peak. It ended with a gag that has become a national institution. In a spoof of a news broadcast, Corbett would bid the audience "goodnight from me", to which Barker, who towered above him, would add "and it's goodnight from him". Broadcasters sifted through his gags to find Barker's most memorable lines. Among the contenders was the joke: "The toilets at a local police station have been stolen. Police say they have nothing to go on." Barker received an OBE, awarded by the state for distinguished work, and won many accolades including most and Television Arts in 2004. He once said in an interview: "I would like to be remembered as one of the funniest men that people have seen on television. 'He made us laugh, he did make us laugh, God bless him'." Despite his success in Porridge and Open All Hours, in which he played the stuttering, lascivious shopkeeper Arkwright, Barker was never comfortable in the limelight and spent his retirement since 1988 running an antique shop in rural England. Barker was survived by his wife, Joy Tubb, a daughter and two sons.

ITN Source | October 6, 2005

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