Cries of “Mine’s a pint” or “How’s Bet?” would echo behind the actor Roy Barraclough whenever he walked down a British street.
To many, he was best known as Alec Gilroy, the pompous and shifty landlord of the Rovers Return in Coronation Street. “The millionth time you hear the shouts it’s hard to smile,” said Barraclough. Naturally shy, he never fully adapted to fame.
As the balding, chubby Gilroy he was an unlikely husband for the tall, glamorously buxom blonde Bet Lynch (played by Julie Goodyear). Yet millions of viewers were intrigued by their tempestuous marriage, initially one of convenience. Later Lynch miscarried their child.
It was testament to Barraclough’s skill that he injected the spiky, nitpicking Gilroy with warmth and shots of pathos. The deviousness of agents in part inspired the role, he said. “Alec is a monster,” he declared. “He’s a seedy little sod.”
A foil for Lynch’s killer punchlines, Barraclough enjoyed the understatement of playing the straight man in comedy duos. His most famous comic pairing, without doubt, was as one half of a northern drag act with Les Dawson. Ada Shufflebotham, rarely seen without hair rollers, was played by Dawson. Barraclough was Ada’s uppity friend, Cissie Braithwaite. “You’re so pig-ignorant, Ada,” Barraclough would often proclaim, as he patted a wig of bouffant curls.
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A regular part of The Les Dawson Show, the sketch grew out of the two actors messing around in rehearsals. “The producer spotted us and said we should include the act on the show. We didn’t think that people were ready for us two overweights but the act caught on. Cissie was a sort of antidote to Les’s vulgar woman,” said Barraclough.
One infamous skit involved a discussion of Ada’s recent holiday.
Cissie: You’ve been to Turkey for your holidays? Did you have the shish kebabs?
Ada: From the moment we arrived.
Cissie: What about the Acropolis?
Ada: I was never off it.
Acutely observant, Barraclough based the role on a social climbing aunt who insisted on sipping dry sherry while his parents drank Bristol Cream. A versatile actor, he excelled and surprised on stage. When cast as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Barraclough entered the stage to audible whispers of “It’s Alec.” “I thought, ‘I’ll bloody show ’em’, and within ten minutes that had gone,” he said. Critics were astonished by his nuanced performance.
Roy Barraclough was born in Preston, Lancashire, the only child of Phil, a stonemason and goalkeeper for Fleetwood FC, and Florence (née Woodhead), a former cotton mill worker who became a baker. Fascinated by puppets, Barraclough often fused the lights at home while trying to rig up theatre productions. He made model theatres from cereal packets and splurged pocket money on variety bills at the Blackpool Grand. He developed his comic gifts to survive school. “I was the fat boy in the class,” he explained.
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From childhood he wanted to become an actor, but trained instead as a draughtsman. In holidays he enjoyed a sideline as an entertainer at camps on the Isle of Wight. In 1962 he sacrificed a £26-a-week wage to become assistant stage manager at a repertory company based in Huddersfield. Within a fortnight he was acting.
He would play the piano in the pit to accompany the comedian Hylda Baker. Joining a theatre company in Stoke, he befriended Ben Kingsley, who encouraged Barraclough to continue acting after he received poor reviews for a performance as Falstaff in Henry IV.
At Granada studios he slowly built a portfolio in television dramas such as Castle Haven (1969), but became a household name through his double act with Dawson. Their routine, first seen in 1972, carried on until Dawson’s death 21 years later. Barraclough struggled to accept Dawson’s death, saying: “I expect the door to open and hear him call out, ‘Now, Barraclough — what are you doing?’ I learnt a lot from Les on how to handle fame. He was always himself. If anyone stopped him in the street he always had time to speak.”
Barraclough’s role as Gilroy, whom he first played in 1972, brought further fame. However, the 60-hour weeks took a toll, and he left the show in 1992 after being diagnosed with high blood pressure and to care for his ailing parents.
Mother and son were close. Florence, his strongest critic, had little patience with his television comedy. “She’d say, ‘What are you doing that rubbish for? I’ve seen you do better stuff than that.’” His parents travelled to Nottingham to see Barraclough star in Death of a Salesman. “At the end of the show my father was crying and just said, ‘I’m proud of you lad. I’m really proud of you.’ ” His performance was a revelation, not least to the board of the Nottingham Playhouse. Barraclough’s casting had raised eyebrows. “When the artistic director put my name forward to the board of the theatre saying that he wanted me to play Willy they went apeshit,” he later said. “They said, ‘Oh God, we can’t have a soap actor.’ ”
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Barraclough often requested time out from Coronation Street to work on stage. To cope with the character’s frequent disappearances, the series’ writers assigned him a second job as an entertainment promoter on cruise ships. He finally left the series in 1998.
“He refused to reprise his role as Gilroy and would not even watch the show
A man of simple tastes, Barraclough said that he had no regrets over giving up his £75,000-a-year salary. By then he had bought a four-bedroom house. “It’s ridiculous really,” he said, because his only housemate was Whisky, a West Highland terrier. Interviewers were often surprised by Barraclough’s down-to-earth gentleness and consideration.
The recipient of a Royal Society of Television award, he later starred in the Cadfael Mysteries, as a dodgy mayor of Blackpool in Funland (2005) and as a vicar in All the Small Things (2009) and briefly appeared in Last Tango in Halifax (2012-13). His last role was in the BBC’s revival of Are You Being Served? last year. His charity work and service to drama led to an MBE in 2006.
Although he was frequently asked to reprise the role of Gilroy in Coronation Street, Barraclough refused. He would not even watch the show, saying that it lacked comedy and was oversensational. But he spoke to Goodyear on the telephone every week. After his death she said: “We were just like a married couple, crazy, I know, but true.”
According to Barraclough, a quiet man: “An actor is really an observer of life and people. To be an observer, you must be in the background, and I don’t subscribe to the business of the public knowing all about you. All the actor owes the public is a bloody good performance.” On days off from Coronation Street, he could be spotted at his local supermarket, alert to verbal gems in the conversation of fellow shoppers.
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Roy Barraclough MBE, actor, was born on July 12, 1935 and died on June 1, 2017 aged 81 after a short illness
The following correction was published on 6 June 2017:
We wrongly said that Roy Barraclough (Obituary, Jun 2) came out as gay in 1989 “after the breakdown of his relationship with BBC news presenter, John Mundy”. The newspaper report on which we relied for this statement was subsequently retracted as false. We are happy to put on record that Mr Mundy and Mr Barraclough were never in a relationship. We apologise for the error and for any distress caused