Brian George Wilde (13 June 1927 – 20 March 2008) was an English actor, best known for his roles in television comedy, most notably Mr Barrowclough in Porridge and Walter "Foggy" Dewhurst in Last of the Summer Wine. His lugubrious world-weary face was a staple of British television for forty years. Career Though born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, Wilde was brought up in Devon and Hertfordshire and attended Hertford Grammar School. He trained as an actor at RADA. He had an early uncredited role as a small-time crook in the film Forbidden Cargo (1954), starring Jack Warner and Nigel Patrick, and a small but significant dramatic part in the horror film Night of the Demon (1957). His early television work included the series The Love of Mike (1960) and supporting Tony Hancock in episodes of his ATV series in 1963. Wilde also played Detective Superintendent Halcro in a series of two-part thrillers about undercover Scotland Yard officers, The Men from Room Thirteen (BBC, 1959–61). He had minor roles in films such as Life for Ruth (1962), The Bargee (1964), The Jokers (1967) and Carry On Doctor (1967), and on television in Room at the Bottom (1966–67) as Mr Salisbury. His first major television success was in 1970 as refuse depot manager "Bloody Delilah" in the ITV sitcom The Dustbinmen. He showed his sinister side as the mischievous magician Mr Peacock in the children's drama series Ace of Wands between 1970 and 1972. That year he starred as a murderer in The Uninvited, an episode of the BBC's supernatural thriller series Out of the Unknown. Also in 1971, in the television drama Elizabeth R, Wilde played the efficient, merciless 'rackmaster' Richard Topcliffe, who was charged with the torture of prisoners in the Tower of London. He played a character in the 1970s British children's series The Ghosts of Motley Hall, by Richard Carpenter. Porridge In 1973, he starred as a different kind of gaoler in the second episode of Seven of One, a series of seven individual stories, all of which starred Ronnie Barker. In the episode, entitled "Prisoner and Escort", Wilde played Mr Barrowclough, one of two prison officers whose job it is to escort Barker's character Fletcher across the moors to his prison (the other was Mr Mackay, played by Fulton Mackay). The episode proved successful and a series was commissioned by the BBC, titled Porridge. Wilde reprised his role