A History Of Liverpool Thespians - Clive Swift

Clive Walter Swift was born in Liverpool on the 9th of February 1936, the second of four children born to Abram Sampson Swift, who owned a furniture shop in Bootle, and Lily Rebecca, (née Greenman). His elder brother was David Swift, who also became an actor and played the grumpy newsreader Henry Davenport in the ­sitcom 'Drop the Dead Donkey'. Both were educated at Clifton College and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where Clive read English Literature and was a contemporary of Derek Jacobi, Ian McKellen and ­Margaret Drabble in the Cambridge ­University's dramatic society. He married Margaret in 1960 and lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, where they spent a decade both acting with the ­newly formed Royal Shakespeare Company. In the middle of his RSC years he did make a slightly unlikely film debut with the pop group 'The Dave Clark Five', in a light-hearted John Boorman movie 'Catch Us If You Can' (1965). Clive was a regular visitor to Scottish theatres, appearing in an RSC production of 'The Physicists' at the King’s in ­Edinburgh in 1963 and six years later played the title role in 'The Young Churchill' in the London's West End and then at Edinburgh's Lyceum.

From 1970 he taught and directed at the RADA and LAMDA acting schools in London. At LAMDA in 1970 he directed 'The Wild Goose Chase' and his own adaptation of 'The Lower Depths'. He also appeared in many rather more weighty Shakespeare and historical roles on television, including that of Snug in 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' (1968), as part of a cast that included Diana Rigg and Helen Mirren. He had a small part in Alfred Hitchcock’s second last film 'Frenzy' (1972), which was shot in London. His TV work initially paid the bills rather than making him famous, though it did include plays by Shakespeare including 'All’s Well That Ends Well' and the mini-series of Dickens’s 'Dombey and Son' (1969). In 1970 his face became more familiar in the 'Inspector Waugh' crime series, though he was still in demand for TV Shakespeare, playing Friar Lawrence in the 1976 production of 'Romeo and Juliet' and also appearing in 'Pericles' (1984) and 'Othello' (1990). He was reunited with Derek Jacobi in 'Richard III' at the MacRobert Centre in Stirling in 1972 in a production by the Prospect Theatre Company, which became the Old Vic Theatre Company. In the late 1970s he helped found the Actors Centre, a meeting place for out-of-work actors, and in his spare time he wrote music and played piano, played tennis and enjoyed watching Arsenal and Lancashire cricket club. He also took roles in 'Winston Churchill: the Wilderness Years' (1981), 'Tales of the Unexpected' (1982), 'The Barchester Chronicles' (1982), 'The Pickwick Papers' (1985) and 'First Among Equals' (1986). In 1988 he played a money-grubbing pharmacist in the series 'A Very Peculiar Practice' and in 1989 starred alongside Helen Mirren and David Suchet in 'Cause Celebre' before being cast in the BBC series 'Keeping Up Appearances'.

Clive had built a very solid resume on stage and screen by the time his role as Richard Bucket, the long suffering husband of Hyacinth, in 'Keeping Up Appearances' came along and there were five series of 42 episodes, including two shorts, between 1990 and 1995. Although he had misgivings about the fame it brought him, he did appreciate the cheques. He said, "I was reluctant to accept the part of Richard until it hit me that Roy Clarke also wrote 'Last Of The Summer Wine'. Patricia and I got on very well; she’s from Birkenhead – not too far from my birthplace.That show is the only ­proper money I've earned, because it was a global success and it’s given me a good pension that I might never have had." Remaining on television Clive was memorable as Bishop Proudie, another character with an overbearing wife, in a delightful 1982 BBC adaptation of Trollope’s 'The ­Barchester Chronicles', with Donald Pleasence and Nigel ­Hawthorne. Meanwhile on the big screen he was King Arthur’s adoptive father Sir Ector in John Boorman’s 'Excalibur' (1981) and the ­doctor who attends the ­distraught protagonist, who may or may not have been sexually assaulted, in David Lean’s 'A Passage to India' (1984). He also appeared in two 'Doctor Who' stories. In 1985 he appeared with the sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, in the story 'Revelation of the Daleks', playing Jobel, the chief embalmer of Tranquil Repose on Necros before returning to the series in 2007 appearing with David Tennant in the Christmas special 'Voyage of the Damned', as Bayldon Copper an employee aboard the Titanic. Around the time of his second appearance, he gave a 'grumpy' interview to Doctor Who Magazine in which he bemoaned "not getting paid" to promote his episode, and belittled the show. He also played the part of the Reverend Eustacius Brewer in 'Born and Bred' which aired on BBC One from 2002 to 2005.

As well as acting, he was a songwriter. Many of his songs are included in his show, 'Richard Bucket Overflows: An Audience with Clive Swift', which toured the UK in 2007 and 'Clive Swift Entertains', performing his own music and lyrics, which toured the UK in 2009. His last performance was in an episode of 'Midsomer Murders' (2017), after which he retired. Clive died at home on the 1st of February 2019, just eight days prior to his 83rd birthday, following a short illness. Married to novelist Margaret Drabble from 1960 until their divorce in 1975, they had remained friends. She survived him along with their sons Adam, professor of political theory at University College London, and Joe, who presented BBC’s Gardener’s World. He was also the father of one daughter, Rebecca,, (who died in April 2017 from cancer), known for running The Literacy Consultancy in London. Paying tribute to him, fellow actor James Dreyfus said he "loved this extremely talented, subtle actor". Patricia Routledge said: "Clive was a skillful and inventive actor with wide experience, as his successful career proved," and that she was very sad to hear of her former co-star's death.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/10/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-tony.html