...and it's goodnight from him: Ronnie Barker dies at 76

RONNIE Barker, who with diminutive Ronnie Corbett starred in the hit television comedy The Two Ronnies, was one of the most versatile and successful comic actors of his generation.
The Two Ronnies brought both men worldwide fame. But Barker was already making a name as smart-alec prisoner Fletcher in the prison series Porridge, and as the lugubrious, stuttering shopkeeper Arkwright in Open All Hours.

And then, at the peak of his career, he surprised everyone in show business, except the handful of people in the know, by announcing his retirement at the age of 57 in 1987.
After that, he concentrated on his beloved antique shop in the Cotswolds, vowing never to return to the spotlight. However, he was persuaded to make one or two exceptions to his self-imposed rule.
Announcing his retirement, Barker implied he had achieved what he wanted to and did not have the stomach to continue.

Ronald William George Barker was born on September 25, 1929, in Bedford. He was educated at Oxford High School and began his acting career with the Aylesbury Repertory Company in 1948.
By 1955, he was appearing in roles in West End productions, including Mourning Becomes Electra, Summertime, Listen to the Wind, Double Image, Casino Road, Lysistrata, Irma La Douce, Platanov, On the Brighter Side and Midsummer Night's Dream.
He also appeared in the successful radio comedy series The Navy Lark, in which he played several characters.

Barker first worked with Ronnie Corbett as writers on The Frost Report in 1966. They teamed up for their first BBC series in 1971, and The Two Ronnies began a 16-year run that yielded 12 series, plus Christmas specials, adding up to a total of 98 shows.
They came to represent a distinctly old-fashioned, but nonetheless hilarious, style of British humour. Though styles of humour have changed, The Two Ronnies remains an evergreen source of laughter whenever repeats are shown.

Barker once said, however, that Porridge was the best thing he had done.
"I knew with Porridge from the first episode. It was in front of an audience, which is a wonderful sounding board as to how well it's going. My wife was in the audience for that and she said afterwards, 'This is going to be a big success.' And she was right."

But although he agreed that the prisoner Fletcher was his most successful character, his favourite one was Arkwright, the slightly lascivious shopkeeper in Open All Hours.
It was in this show that David Jason, later Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses, and Detective Inspector Frost in A Touch of Frost, made his name.
"We had a whale of a time," Barker recalled. "We did thoroughly enjoy that."
His successes earned him accolades, including three BAFTA awards and an OBE in 1978.
After his retirement, he was lured back in 1999 to appear in a Two Ronnies retrospective.
Barker joined Corbett to introduce the best of their sketches, and the hardware shop "Four candles — Fork handles!" set-piece was judged the most popular by a television audience of millions.

Soon after he was persuaded to return from his exile to play Churchill's long-suffering manservant Inches in the BBC drama The Gathering Storm.
Later, he confessed: "The feeling of being on the set was very new and strange to me at first. I was a bit nervous about doing it again, but the first day, I fitted in fine once I got there."
The worst part was having to learn lines again. "They are not difficult, but I am out of practice. You have to remember that I haven't learnt lines for 14 years."
But even that did not give him the taste for more. "I'm straight back into retirement after this," he said. However, after that he was in Italy shooting the film My House in Umbria with Dame Maggie Smith and Timothy Spall.

Barker wrote several books, including Book of Bathing Beauties (1974), Book of Boudoir Beauties (1975), A Pennyworth of Art (1986) and his autobiography Dancing in the Moonlight (1993). Six years later, there appeared All I Ever Wrote.
Barker married Joy Tubb in 1957. They had two sons and a daughter.

AND FINALLY …Some of Ronnie Barker's most memorable lines:
■ "The man who invented the zip fastener was today honoured with a lifetime peerage. He will now be known as the Lord of the Flies."
■ "The toilets at a local police station have been stolen. Police say they have nothing to go on."
■ "In a packed program tonight we will be talking to an out-of-work contortionist who says he can no longer make ends meet."