Personal Life
Barker met Joy Tubb in Cambridge while she was a stage manager for two plays he was in. They married nine months later in July 1957 and they had three children: two sons, Larry (born 1959) and Adam (born 1968), who became an actor, and one daughter, Charlotte (born 1962), who became an actress. Larry was named after Barker's idol Laurence Olivier. The family lived on Church Lane in Pinner for many years; they later sold the property and moved to a converted mill in Dean, Oxfordshire. According to Corbett, Barker was "first and foremost a family man." Joy died in January 2011, aged 78.
Barker received an OBE in 1978. He was an avid collector of antiques, books and posters and amassed a collection of over 53,000 postcards; he produced several compilation books of them including Ronnie Barker's Book of Bathing Beauties, A Pennyworth of Art and Sauce. Barker rarely appeared in public, and when he did it was almost always in character. He once said "I've always known I haven't a personality of my own, I have to be someone else to be happy. That's why I became an actor, I suppose."
Barker was a heavy smoker until 1972 when he gave up the habit after having a pre-cancerous growth removed from his throat; he took to drinking wine and using placebo cigarettes to maintain his concentration and help him sleep. He underwent a heart bypass in 1996 and survived a pulmonary embolism the following year.
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