Where is leonard rossiter buried

His big break came when he played an escaped convict in an episode of Steptoe and Son in The show proved such a hit that it transferred to television as Rising Damp. With characteristic intensity, Rossiter put everything into making his role and the show a success.

Rossiter was a man who needed to succeed in everything he did, even when playing sport with members of his own family. If I did a bad shot he was equally not best pleased. The success of Rising Damp meant that Rossiter was an actor in great demand. Yet despite his success, Rossiter remained a restless spirit. His fi rst marriage, to actress Josephine Tewson,. In , after ten years together, he married Gillian Raine, with whom he had Camilla. The success of Rising Damp meant that Rossiter was in great demand.

In television interviews he appeared ill at ease. His tetchy manner often alienated people but those who knewhim best saw a different side to the actor.

Rossiter was a man who liked to keep his personal life private. His first marriage, to actress Josephine Tewson, ended in just two years. His family was everything. The family ethic was certainly important to Liverpool-born Rossiter, who began his working life as an insurance clerk. Ever a perfectionist, he took elocution lessons which resulted in the clear and concise voice that made his characters so real. Outside acting, his passions were his family, good wine, sport as a boy he was a spin bowler for Lancashire Colts , Everton FC and playing chess against an electronic machine.

The reason was he could never avoid people identifying him with his roles and calling out to him in the street. He had created two of the finest TV characters of the times, and the public recognised him as Rigsby, the lecherous, snivelling landlord of Rising Damp, and as Reggie Perrin, the disillusioned executive who fakes his own death and returns in disguise to take up his old job. People also loved the smugly self-satisfied bore he played in those memorable Cinzano advertisements, soaking Joan Collins on a passenger jet.

Collins wept bitterly at his death. The incidents of alleged abuse in predated his fame by several years, although he was already a character actor, having not been born with conventional, leading-man good looks.

But women found his energy and humour very attractive — in his early acting years one of his conquests was a young Judi Dench. If Leonard Rossiter was indulging in extra-marital activities, they were carried on with remarkable care and discretion on both sides.

Certainly, the acting world was never buzzing with any gossip. Nothing very sexy there. The writer of the letter was Sue MacGregor, the Radio 4 presenter whose measured voice and unflappable professionalism have been familiar to listeners particularly during her years on the Today programme across middle-England for getting on for half a century.

Her reason for writing was that she had written her autobiography, and she felt she had to warn Gillian that she intended to describe in some detail, as it turned out her secret affair with Leonard that had gone on for five years until his death.

The next day he phoned and suggested they meet for a drink. Or was he interested in something more? Being instantly recognisable, whenever he climbed the steps to her front door, Rossiter covered his face with a white handkerchief as though he was blowing his nose. As for MacGregor, she said she wondered what her neighbours were making of this gentleman caller who always seemed to have a cold. It was a regular, farcical scene that might have come straight out of a Rossiter sitcom, but this was serious.

From the start, however, he had made it plain he would never leave Gillian. For MacGregor, the secret visits were not enough, but, despite her tears, he could give no more.

So she accepted the limitations. Rossiter continued to visit her once a week, right up to his death. I had hoped that [our affair] had, by now — if I may use the expression — gone to bed.

Camilla remembers him as a devoted father who enjoyed playing games and taking her to the park, a man so worried by reports of crashes involving school buses that he refused to let her join a school coach trip to Hastings but drove her there himself — and waited all day until it was time to bring her home.

So what does she think about these abuse claims against her father? The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Witches, The Doctor Knock Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, The Fanatics, The Life and Death of King John, The Rising Damp Steptoe and Son Year of the Sex Olympics, The Z Cars Liverpool: Made in Liverpool.