THE Yorkshire-born actor Stan Richards was best known to television viewers for his portrayal of Seth Armstrong, the poacher turned gamekeeper in ITV’s longrunning soap opera Emmerdale. With his waxed-cotton jacket, woolly hat and trademark handlebar moustache, the beer-swilling Seth Armstrong was one of the soap’s most colourful characters, a rogue-like figure who might have stepped from the pages of Dickens.
The popular saga of Yorkshire farming folk had begun life in 1972 as Emmerdale Farm (the title was abbreviated to Emmerdale in 1989), set in the fictious village of Beckindale. Richards joined the cast in 1978 and quickly made the wily character of Seth his own.
In one episode Seth wins first prize at the village horticultural show with his giant pumpkin. It then splits and is found to be filled with nails. In another he triumphantly opens a social club in opposition to the Woolpack, the village pub. Unfortunately his beer makes everyone ill and he made a profit of 10p before closing down. He decorated his horse, Samson, with £15,000 worth of lights and terrified the village children who thought they were seeing the mythical Beast of Beckindale. When he started to wear a new pair of dentures, he horrified the villagers with his wide grin. He ended up leaving them in a scarecrow.
“Seth is a very good character to be,” said Richards. “Everybody likes him, he’s quite harmless and he’s funny. When he comes on, people begin to giggle in expectation.”
Born Stanley Richardson in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, he began playing the piano at the age of 10. His first job was as a Ministry of Labour clerk, and later he worked in the accounts department of a firm that sold disinfectants.
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He began singing and telling jokes with dance bands in local clubs and pubs in the evenings and at 21 formed a group, the Melody Maniacs. In 1965 he turned professional with a vocal comedy quartet, The Four Renowns, and three years later he branched out as a solo comedy entertainer touring the northern clubs.
Spotted by a BBC producer, he was offered a leading role as a coalminer in Barry Hines’s acclaimed 1977 Play for Today, The Price of Coal, opposite his fellow northern comedian Bobby Knutt. The production, directed by Ken Loach, led to several other television appearances including Crown Court, All Creatures Great and Small and, most notably, as Councillor Arthur Stokes in Coronation Street. He also played in the films Yanks and Agatha. But it was the role of Seth Armstrong that made Richards a national name overnight and he received gifts of woolly hats and huge amounts of fan mail from viewers.
In the mid-1980s the programme was given a makeover and grittier plots were introduced. Meaner characters and extramarital liasons became the norm, although the character of Seth remained unchanged.
“There is a lot more sex now,” Richards once observed. “Well, not in my case, of course. And there is more crime and tragedy in the village than in Los Angeles and San Francisco put together.”
In 2002 he was presented to the Queen when she visited the Emmerdale set, and the following year he toasted 25 years in the series. Outside Coronation Street, he was the longest-serving soap actor in Britain. Richards, unlike Seth, disliked beer and was strictly a whisky man, but he shared his character’s sense of fun. He was involved in several showbusiness charities and was a popular member of the British Music Hall Society.
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Richards was hard hit in 2001 when his son, Irvin, the youngest of six children, died in a road accident. Richards had suffered from emphysema and was written out of Emmerdale in September 2003 after suffering a collapsed lung. His character went to Australia to recuperate, and was last seen on Christmas Eve 2004, when his on-screen partner Betty (played by Paula Tilbrook) and the other villagers watched Seth’s video message from the Antipodes.
His wife, Susan, whom he married in 1952, died in 1994. He is survived by two sons and three daughters.
Stan Richards, actor, was born on December 8, 1930. He died on February 10, 2005, aged 74.