including A Midsummer Night's Dream as Quince. Early media career Barker's theatrical success enabled him to move into radio work. Barker, who had previously been known by his birth name "Ronald", was now referred to as the less formal form "Ronnie", after a director changed it in the credits, although he did not tell Barker. His first radio appearance was in 1956, playing Lord Russett in Floggit's. He went on to play multiple characters, but primarily the put-upon Able Seaman 'Fatso' Johnson and Lieutenant-Commander Stanton in The Navy Lark, a navy based sitcom on the BBC Light Programme, which ran from 1959 to 1977, with Barker featuring in some 300 episodes. He also featured in the show's radio spin-off The TV Lark, in which his character, Fatso, was now a camera operator after the main characters were drummed out of the service, and as a trainee chef in Crowther's Crowd in 1963, and had roles on Variety Playhouse. Barker soon began working in film and television. His first acting job on television was in Melvyn's show I'm Not Bothered. He appeared in various roles in the comedy series The Seven Faces of Jim from 1962, alongside Jimmy Edwards and June Whitfield, as well as parts in Bold as Brass and Foreign Affairs (as Russian embassy worker Grischa Petrovitch). This was followed with dramatic parts in A Tale of Two Cities as Jerry Cruncher in 1965 as well as single episode roles in The Saint and The Avengers, in which he played Cheshire, a cat lover. He had an uncredited role in the 1958 film Wonderful Things!. In 1964 he appeared in Galton & Simpson's gentle comedy, The Bargee, as 'Ronnie', the illiterate cousin of Harry H Corbett's rascally 'Hemmel Pike'. He did his first bit of on-screen 'porridge' as fellow convict to Charlie Drake in The Cracksman (1963). Other film work at that time included: Doctor in Distress (1963), Father Came Too! (1963) and A Home of Your Own (1965). In 1966, Barker got his break with the satirical sketch series The Frost Report, having been recommended for the show by producer James Gilbert. The show starred David Frost, John Cleese and Barker's future comedy partner Ronnie Corbett, whom he had met in 1963 when Corbett was the barman at the Buckstone Club near the Haymarket Theatre, and the two became friends. Corbett stated in his autobiography that the two