Brian Wilde, the quiet co-star of the television comedy classics Porridge and Last of the Summer Wine, has died aged 80. The actor’s son Andrew said that his father had died in his sleep of natural causes at a nursing home on Wednesday night. He had suffered a fall about seven weeks ago and had not recovered. Wilde’s agent, Nick Young, said: “He will be sadly missed by family and colleagues alike. He brought a great deal of laughter into everyone’s lives over the course of his career.”
After a long and busy though largely anonymous career as a supporting actor, Brian Wilde emerged in the 1970s to create two of the most enduring characters of situation comedy: the prison officer Barrowclough in Porridge and the former army corporal Foggy Dewhurst in Last of the Summer Wine.
In Porridge's Slade Prison, which gave him a happy refuge of sorts from an overbearing wife, Barrowclough was a beacon of decency, preferring to see the best in everyone but far too gullible to detect the scams of the inmates led by Ronnie Barker's Fletcher. He was the ideal comic foil to his fellow warder, the draconian Mr Mackay.
The rudiments of the Barrowclough character were in the brilliant scripts of Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais but the writers were the first to acknowledge Wilde's skill in giving him flesh. Much the same could be said of Foggy, devised by Roy Clarke to replace Michael Bates's Blamire in the trio of elderly adolescents whose inconsequential wanderings lay at the heart of Last of the Summer Wine.
With his trademark deerstalker and flourishing a cane, Foggy tried to bring a touch of military discipline to his old school chums, the quietly philosophical Clegg (Peter Sallis) and the grubby, disreputable Compo (Bill Owen). Not only did his carefully laid schemes come to nothing but despite his army training he was no more successful than the others in withstanding the verbal (and sometimes physical) assaults of the show's ferocious women.
Although sharply delineated by Wilde's playing of them, the characters were both distinguished by failure. The difference, as Wilde himself put it, was that while Barrowclough was a failure and admitted it, Foggy was a failure and didn't know it. Wilde put some of his success as a comedy actor down to his lanky physique. He was tall (6ft 3in) but weighed only 13 stone. Another asset was a fastidious delivery, in which every syllable was carefully enunciated.
Born in Lancashire, only 15 miles from Holmfirth, the West Yorkshire location for Last of the Summer Wine, Wilde made his first film and television appearances in the early 1950s, though some were too small to be credited. For the next 20 years or so, until Porridge brought him national recognition, he was seldom out of work but far from being a household name.
On television he was in a couple of Francis Durbridge thrillers and the ITV sitcom, The Love of Mike (1960), in which he played the flatmate of Mike the hero, a philandering dance band trumpeter (Michael Medwin). During the 1960s he appeared with Tony Hancock and in episodes of popular dramas such as The Man in Room 17, The Avengers and the science fiction series Out of the Unknown.
Gradually the parts became more substantial. In 1966 he played the personnel manager trying to sort out a group of maintenance men on the fiddle in Room at the Bottom, the first sitcom from the team of John Esmonde and Bob Larbey. In 1970 he took over from John Woodvine as Bloody Delilah, the depot boss, in The Dustbinmen, an earthy comedy about refuse collectors created by Jack Rosenthal.
Although Wilde had most success with comedy, he could also show a sinister side, as when, dressed in black, he played Topcliffe, the royal torturer, in Elizabeth R. Wilde was first seen as Barrowclough in a pilot called Prisoner and Escort, which was shown in 1973 and became Porridge in the following year. He joined Last of the Summer Wine in 1976 after Michael Bates had left through ill-health and stayed until 1985.
These were probably the best years of the series, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2003. Wilde was the last to take any personal credit but the chemistry between the three main characters often reached perfection and the audience, which had grown slowly, soared to 18 million.
At the same time Wilde's prickly relationship with his co-star, Bill Owen, became well known. Wilde admitted that they had disagreements over the interpretation of scenes or the cutting of dialogue, and added that “we've never walked off the set in anger - we're too professional for that - though we have a few days when we're not talking”. They also disagreed politically, with Owen, the staunch socialist, having little time for the views of the Tory-leaning Wilde.
In 1983 Wilde declined to appear in a stage version of Last of the Summer Wine, though he insisted that this was because of reservations about the play rather than friction between himself and Owen. Two years later he left the television series, saying that he wanted to do other things. One of these, Wyatt's Watchdogs (1988), gave Wilde the first leading role of his career as a retired soldier (not unlike Foggy) trying to run a neighbourhood watch group. But it was poorly received and lasted for only six episodes.
By 1990 Wilde was back in Last of the Summer Wine and he played Foggy until 1997 when he was forced to drop out because of an attack of shingles. He recovered, but another character, played by Frank Thornton, was created in his place and this time the break from the series was permanent.
Wilde was a private and diffident man, who gave little away in his rare interviews and made no attempt to exploit the fame and accolades which his two high-profile comedy characters had brought him.
He is survived by his wife, Eva Stuart, an actress, and their son and daughter.
Brian Wilde, actor, was born on June 13, 1927. He died on March 19, 2008, aged 80
The rudiments of the Barrowclough character were in the brilliant scripts of Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais but the writers were the first to acknowledge Wilde's skill in giving him flesh. Much the same could be said of Foggy, devised by Roy Clarke to replace Michael Bates's Blamire in the trio of elderly adolescents whose inconsequential wanderings lay at the heart of Last of the Summer Wine.
With his trademark deerstalker and flourishing a cane, Foggy tried to bring a touch of military discipline to his old school chums, the quietly philosophical Clegg (Peter Sallis) and the grubby, disreputable Compo (Bill Owen). Not only did his carefully laid schemes come to nothing but despite his army training he was no more successful than the others in withstanding the verbal (and sometimes physical) assaults of the show's ferocious women.
Although sharply delineated by Wilde's playing of them, the characters were both distinguished by failure. The difference, as Wilde himself put it, was that while Barrowclough was a failure and admitted it, Foggy was a failure and didn't know it. Wilde put some of his success as a comedy actor down to his lanky physique. He was tall (6ft 3in) but weighed only 13 stone. Another asset was a fastidious delivery, in which every syllable was carefully enunciated.
Born in Lancashire, only 15 miles from Holmfirth, the West Yorkshire location for Last of the Summer Wine, Wilde made his first film and television appearances in the early 1950s, though some were too small to be credited. For the next 20 years or so, until Porridge brought him national recognition, he was seldom out of work but far from being a household name.
On television he was in a couple of Francis Durbridge thrillers and the ITV sitcom, The Love of Mike (1960), in which he played the flatmate of Mike the hero, a philandering dance band trumpeter (Michael Medwin). During the 1960s he appeared with Tony Hancock and in episodes of popular dramas such as The Man in Room 17, The Avengers and the science fiction series Out of the Unknown.
Gradually the parts became more substantial. In 1966 he played the personnel manager trying to sort out a group of maintenance men on the fiddle in Room at the Bottom, the first sitcom from the team of John Esmonde and Bob Larbey. In 1970 he took over from John Woodvine as Bloody Delilah, the depot boss, in The Dustbinmen, an earthy comedy about refuse collectors created by Jack Rosenthal.
Although Wilde had most success with comedy, he could also show a sinister side, as when, dressed in black, he played Topcliffe, the royal torturer, in Elizabeth R. Wilde was first seen as Barrowclough in a pilot called Prisoner and Escort, which was shown in 1973 and became Porridge in the following year. He joined Last of the Summer Wine in 1976 after Michael Bates had left through ill-health and stayed until 1985.
These were probably the best years of the series, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2003. Wilde was the last to take any personal credit but the chemistry between the three main characters often reached perfection and the audience, which had grown slowly, soared to 18 million.
At the same time Wilde's prickly relationship with his co-star, Bill Owen, became well known. Wilde admitted that they had disagreements over the interpretation of scenes or the cutting of dialogue, and added that “we've never walked off the set in anger - we're too professional for that - though we have a few days when we're not talking”. They also disagreed politically, with Owen, the staunch socialist, having little time for the views of the Tory-leaning Wilde.
In 1983 Wilde declined to appear in a stage version of Last of the Summer Wine, though he insisted that this was because of reservations about the play rather than friction between himself and Owen. Two years later he left the television series, saying that he wanted to do other things. One of these, Wyatt's Watchdogs (1988), gave Wilde the first leading role of his career as a retired soldier (not unlike Foggy) trying to run a neighbourhood watch group. But it was poorly received and lasted for only six episodes.
By 1990 Wilde was back in Last of the Summer Wine and he played Foggy until 1997 when he was forced to drop out because of an attack of shingles. He recovered, but another character, played by Frank Thornton, was created in his place and this time the break from the series was permanent.
Wilde was a private and diffident man, who gave little away in his rare interviews and made no attempt to exploit the fame and accolades which his two high-profile comedy characters had brought him.
He is survived by his wife, Eva Stuart, an actress, and their son and daughter.
Brian Wilde, actor, was born on June 13, 1927. He died on March 19, 2008, aged 80
