television comedy", and "much loved and admired". The Independent called him "a master of television sitcom". The Guardian said he was "much loved ... both as an actor and a writer he was recognised as a master of pyrotechnic puns, surreal behaviour in public and private places, and crackling cross-chat". It concluded that "it says much about the decline of the British television industry that Ronnie Barker, one of its most creative comic talents, should have turned his back on it long before he died at the age of 76." In a eulogy for Barker, the Reverend Robert Wright stated that he was "undoubtedly one of the very greatest television comedy actors" and that "as a performer he made comedy look effortlessly funny". In 2006 Barker's stage play Mum was adapted and directed by Neil Cargill for BBC Radio 4, and broadcast as an Afternoon Play, starring Maxine Peake and Sam Kelly. In Barker's home town of Oxford, a Wetherspoons pub beside his former school on George Street is named after his Four Candles sketch. A bronze statue of Barker, sculpted by Martin Jennings and showing him in character as Norman Stanley Fletcher, was unveiled at the entrance of the Aylesbury Waterside Theatre in September 2010 by his widow Joy, David Jason and Ronnie Corbett. In 2015, the Ronnie Barker Comedy Lecture (also referred to as The Ronnie Barker Talk) was commissioned by the BBC at the instigation of the head of comedy commissioning, Shane Allen. The first lecture was given in August 2017 by Ben Elton. Elton's lecture focused on the future of the British sitcom. Filmography Films Television Radio Self Adverts References Bibliography External links The Ronnie Barker Collection held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Theatre and Performance. Blue Plaque to Ronnie Barker at his childhood home in Church Cowley Road, Oxford. 1929 births 2005 deaths 20th-century English businesspeople 20th-century English comedians 20th-century English male actors Antiques dealers Best Entertainment Performance BAFTA Award (television) winners British male comedy actors British sketch comedians Deltiologists English comedy writers English humanists English male comedians English male film actors English male radio actors English male television actors English television personalities English television presenters Male actors from Bedfordshire Officers of the Order of the British Empire People educated at the City of Oxford High School for Boys People from Bedford People from Littlehampton People from Oxford