Keith Barron (8 August 1934 – 15 November 2017) was an English actor who appeared in multiple roles in films and on television from 1961 until 2015. His television roles included the police drama The Odd Man, the sitcom Duty Freeand Gregory Wilmot in Upstairs, Downstairs.

Career

Born in Mexborough, South 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 (both 1965) in BBC1's The Wednesday Play anthology series (he later played a very similar character in Potter's Play For Today episode Only Make Believe (1973)).

Barron made many one-off television appearances, from Redcap and Z-Cars in the mid-1960s, to Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Strange Report, The New Avengers, The Professionals 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.

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.

On the big screen he appeared in Baby Love (1968) and David Puttnam's film Melody (1971) 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, and his actor son, Jamie.

Selected filmography

• Baby Love (1968)
• The Man Who Had Power Over Women (1970)
• The Firechasers (1971)
• She'll Follow You Anywhere (1971)
• Melody (1971)
• Freelance (1971)
• Nothing But The Night (1973)
• The Land That Time Forgot (1975)
• At the Earth's Core (1976)
• Voyage of the Damned (1976)
• God's Outlaw (1987)
• Lapland (2011)
• Being Eileen (2013)

• A Chance of Thunder (TV Series) (1961)
• The Night of the Match (TV Movie) (1961)
• The Avengers (TV Series) (1961)
• The Odd Man (1962-1963)
• It's Dark Outside (1964)
• Crane (TV series) (1965)
• Mogul (TV Series) (1965)
• Stand Up, Nigel Barton The Wednesday Play (1965)
• Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton The Wednesday Play (1965)
• Spywatch (1967)
• The Further Adventures of Lucky Jim as Jim Dixon BBC (1967)[7]
• Upstairs,_Downstairs_(1971_TV_series) (1974)
• The Foundation (1977)
• Telford's Change (1979)
• Prince Regent (1979)
• Minder (1984)
• Duty Free (1984-86)
• Room at the Bottom (1986-1988)
• Take Me Home (1989)
• The Good Guys (1992)
• Sherlock Holmes, The Last Vampyre as Rob Ferguson (1994)
• Ruth Rendell Mysteries A Case of Coincidence as Inspector Masters (1996)
• Police 2020 (1997)
• Clocking Off (2003)
• Pickles: The Dog Who Won the World Cup (2006)
• Benidorm as Deputy Mayor (2009)
• Doctors (2011-2015)
• Stella (2014)
• DCI Banks as Arthur Banks (2015-2016)

• Not as Far as Velma, as Commissaire Henri Castang (1990)
• To The Manor Born, as Richard Devere (1997)
• My Turn to Make the Tea as Mr Pellet (2006)