Keith Barron was an English actor and television presenter who appeared in films and on television from 1961 until 2017. His television roles included the police drama The Odd Man, the sitcomDuty Free, and Gregory Wilmot in Upstairs, Downstairs.
Career
Born in Mexborough in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Barron's career started at the Sheffield Repertory Theatre, where he also met his wife, Mary, a stage designer. He became well known to British television viewers in the early 1960s as the easygoing Detective Sergeant Swift in the Granada TV series The Odd Man and its spin-off It's Dark Outside. His major breakthrough, however, was as Nigel Barton in the writer Dennis Potter's semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton in BBC1's The Wednesday Play anthology series. Barron made many one-off television appearances, from Redcap and Z-Cars in the mid-1960s, to Randall and Hopkirk , Strange Report, The New Avengers, The Professionals, Foyle's War, and A Touch of Frost. He made two appearances in Upstairs, Downstairs as Australian Gregory Wilmot. In March 1983 he was a guest in the Doctor Who story Enlightenment. He was a frequent voiceover artist for British TV commercials and public information films. Barron also played a starring role as Bob Ferguson in the 1993 Granada series, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, entitled The Last Vampyre In 1989 he starred on television in a story of relationships in a new town in the Midlands entitled Take Me Home, with Annette Crosbie as his wife and Maggie O'Neill as his girlfriend. One of his best-loved and best-remembered roles was in the 1980s Yorkshire Television sitcom Duty Free. In the 1990s he co-starred in the sitcoms Haggard and All Night Long. In the 2000s he was a regular character on the ITV Sunday-night drama Where the Heart Is. In 2014 he reprised his role of David Pearce in the touring stage show of the TV series 'Duty Free'. He also starred in the first series of the BBC drama The Chase. On the big screen he appeared in Baby Love and David Puttnam's film Melody as Mr Latimer. Barron also appeared as the guest celebrity in dictionary corner on several episodes of the Channel 4 words and numbers game Countdown. He was the star on Bunn and Co., a radio show that was broadcast from March 2003 to April 2004 on BBC Radio 4. Barron's performance in the BBC's Test the Nation IQ test show on 2 September 2006 gave him an IQ of 146. In 2007 Barron joined ITV1's Coronation Street as George Trench. In 2011, Barron starred in the BBC show, Lapland, a role which he returned to for a series, Being Eileen, from February 2013.
Personal life
Barron died on 15 November 2017 after a short illness. He was survived by his wife of 58 years, Mary Pickard, and his actor son, Jamie. He lived in the Surrey town of East Molesey for some years.
