They don’t make them like that any more, certainly not like
Ronnie Barker, the British
TV comedian and writer who died October 3, 2005, aged 76.
American public TV viewers will remember Barker as the fat half of The Two Ronnies,
a show characterized by wordplay, stock British caricatures, and the “honest vulgarity” of
double-entendres. He
also exceled as the crafty imprisoned career criminal Fletcher in Porridge, and the corner
shopkeeper in Open All Hours:
Arkwright, the waddling, stammering
Yorkshire shopkeeper who divided his time between satisfying his roaring avarice and
attempting to control his lust for the district nurse, Gladys.
Barker was a modest man who began as a bank clerk and looked like one, but who slowly created a
career for himself in the theater the hard way by climbing up through regional repertory until he
caught the eye of rising stars like Peter Hall and David Frost.
Then, in 1988, in his late fifties, he gave it all up.
On New Year’s Day 1988 Barker retired to his converted
watermill in Oxfordshire, devoting his energies to ordering his collection of 70,000
Edwardian and Victorian picture postcards (some of the saucier ones were published in
anthologies such as his Book of Bathing Beauties), and to running his antique shop,
The Emporium, in Chipping Norton High Street.
After all, somebody has to do it.
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