Ten years on: Ronnie Barker, Pismonouncers Unanimous founder, remembered

Keeping shop

Barker had, funnily enough, worked with Arkwright’s sidekick before – briefly, when Jason had played a doddery old codger called Blanco in three episodes of Porridge. Blink and you'll miss him at around 1m 49s here:

Porridge with Ronnie Barker

And it was the interplay been the two men and, of course, Barker’s extraordinary precision as a performer, that made Open All Hours such a success.

Open All Hours – Ronnie Barker

Like Porridge before it, Open All Hours was to win awards and later make it into the top ten of Britain’s Best Sitcom (a wide-ranging 2004 poll) and Barker was tempted for a time to keep both shows running in tandem, a series of one to be followed by a series of another. But Richard Beckinsale’s tragic death took Porridge off the menu while Barker’s Open All Hours foil, David Jason, was soon lured away by his own TV success as the star of Only Fools and Horses.

This left Barker without an experienced comic partner and his next sitcoms – The Magnificent Evans and Clarence – were not quite up to his usual standards, as gleeful critics were swift to point out. In 1987 – after rejecting Peter Hall’s offer to play Falstaff, in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, at the National Theatre – Ronnie Barker amazed friends and critics alike by announcing his retirement. He wasn’t yet 60 years old but he was adamant he wouldn’t return to theatre, film or television work again. He did, of course, but only briefly.

His first act of retirement was to open an antiques shop in Chipping Norton – it had become a dream of his to own a small town antique Emporium. The latter word was actually its name, and he ran it happily for ten years. It lost money, he once admitted, but was “cheaper and safer than skiing.” He eventually sold up in 1999, his business yet another a victim of draconian small town parking planning.

Then he made a few one-off appearances on TV. Barker and Corbett rode motorcycles onstage at the 1997 Royal Command Performance in a parody of The Two Fat Ladies show for instance, and then there were a couple of The Two Ronnies tributes, to which he contributed.

In 2005 The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, which was basically a compilation series with fresh introductions from the men themselves, went on Britain’s TV screens – despite being shown in a much more fragmented media age, and despite hostile previews, the Sketchbook shows still pulled in almost nine million viewers.

All I Ever Wrote: The Complete Works shows the comic mind of Barker at work and play, but you can't beat seeing his performances

But things were coming unstuck in other, more domestic, ways – although Barker’s marriage to his wife Joy had always been happy, there were tensions about his wayward son Adam and Ronnie’s own health was beginning to fail. After refusing to go through some traumatic heart valve replacement surgery, he died of heart failure on October 3rd 2005.

His death brought a welter of newspaper front pages – The Sun couldn’t resist the headline “And It’s Goodnight From Him!”– as well as TV tributes and a memorial service at Westminster Abbey, which over 2,000 people attended. There were readings at the service from Richard Briers, Josephine Tewson, Michael Grade, Peter Kay and, of course, Ronnie Corbett.

Ronnie Barker was only the third professional comic to be given a Westminster Abbey memorial. He remains in death, as he was in life, one of Britain’s brightest and most-loved comedians.

A book of his writings first published in 2001, titled All I Ever Wrote: The Complete Works, has very recently been revised and republished. A treasure trove of his sketches, monologues, poems and songs, it’s a tribute to his talent – laugh out loud funny and a must for scholars of the finest family-friendly comedy writing. ®