Ronald Forfar was born on the 6th of January 1939 in Liverpool, the third of four sons of Albert, a merchant mariner, and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Richardson). Blessed with perfect diction he was educated at Liverpool Collegiate school and spent seven years in the Royal Navy before training at RADA from 1965 to 1967. He played a tragedian in the premier of Tom Stoppard’s 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' in Edinburgh in 1966 and for 20 years worked extensively in theatres around the country, including the Bristol Old Vic, the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Birmingham Rep and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The plays in which he appeared were mainly of a classical nature or 'serious' modern drama, such as Yuri Lyubimov's famous and painful production of 'Crime and Punishment' at the Lyric in Hammersmith. His Shakespearian roles include 'The Soothsayer' in Herbert Wise's BBC Television adaption of 'Julius Ceasar', Bates in 'Henry V' and as the First Officer in Laurence Olivier's version of 'King Lear'. A year with the BBC Radio Theatre was followed by a successful television career, including parts in 'The New Avengers' (1976), 'The Sweeney' (1978), 'Tutti Frutti' (1987), as Professor Frimley in 'ChuckleVision' (1998-2002), and as tax inspector, Costello The Second, in Alan Bleasdale’s 'The Muscle Market' (1981), a prequel to 'Boys From The Blackstuff'.
Having also been in Graham Chapman's film 'Yellowbeard' (1983), his television work came to a pinnacle in Carla Lane's hit sitcom 'Bread' where he played Nellie Boswell''s adulterous husband Freddie Boswell, recognisable from his shock of untrained white hair and a cheeky comeback. It was 9.30pm. on Thursday the 1st of May 1986, that we first met the close-knit, extended working class, catholic Boswell family, led by its matriarch Nellie through a number of ups and downs as they tried to make their way through life in Thatcher’s Britain. With no visible means of support, here was a family who knew how to milk the system, they even lived in each other’s houses so one could charge the other rent. Nellie’s feckless and estranged husband, Freddie, has left her for another woman known as "that tart 'Lilo Lill' as Nellie called her, with their affair a constant through the series. Her children Joey, Jack, Adrian, Aveline and Billy continue to live in the family home in Kelsall Street and contribute money to the central family fund, largely through benefit fraud and the sale of stolen goods. At its peak the programme attracted audiences of 21 million and ran for 7 series until November 1991, and featured cameo appearances from Paul and Linda McCartney.
Ron also wrote many unperformed plays and film scripts. One piece, 'One is One', was produced at the Riverside Studios in London when Peter Gill was director there.
From 1996 to 2009 he lived in Normandy, where he renovated a dilapidated country cottage near Alençon. He then moved to Paris where he made a period drama, 'Vatel' (2000), with Gérard Depardieu and worked with a theatre company. He returned to England in 2004 and bought a place in Rochester, Kent where he was a member of Rochester and Strood Labour Party and played an active role in the 2014 by-election. On his return to England, he had found he couldn't afford house prices in London so moved to the town he'd lived in as a navy clerk. In his latter years he wrote a series of novels about life in the theatre from his Victorian terraced house in Roebuck Road, which he described as "somewhere I felt at home". About the first of these, 'A Wilderness of Monkeys', self-published in 2014, the actor Richard Griffiths commented: “There are passages that are pure Hazlitt.” Anton Gill wrote that it contained “one of the best sex scenes I’ve ever read”.
He would discuss politics, books, plays,
opera and many other musical genres with his friends. In 2018 he worked on what would be his last project, a short film called 'The
All-Nighter', written and directed by Lee Phillips, and co-starring
Erkan Mustafa and Martin Hancock.
Ronald died on the 28th of September 2020,
aged 81, in Rochester, Kent and was pre-deceased by two of his brothers
and survived by his brother Gordon. His friend Michael Parkinson wrote
in The Guardian: "To the end Ron was a charismatic and commanding
presence, amusing, sharp and cultured company, a warm friend kindly
neighbour. Always looking to the future, his final years were thinking
about where else he might live, in writing and in engaging with local
people."
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/09/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-ian.html
No comments:
Post a Comment