By Tony Noble • Published: 22 Dec 2019 • 11:59
Fern Britton’s dad Tony Britton has died.
The former This Morning presenter took to Twitter to announce the sad news. She wrote: “Our father, Tony Britton, died early this morning. Great actor, director and charmer. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
The legendary actor and director was 95 years old. Fern’s mother Ruth brought up Fern and her older sister Cherry alone after splitting from father Tony when Fern was still a baby. Britton remariied Danish sculptor and member of the wartime resistance Eva Castle Britton and has one son, actor Jasper Britton.
Tony starred in Operation Amsterdam, Sunday Bloody Sunday and The Day of the Jackal. Known for starring in BBC sitcom, Don’t Wait Up with Nigel Havers and Dinah Sheridan, Tony became a household name. Other sitcoms appearances include …And Mother Makes Five and Robin’s Nest.
After army service in World War Two, Tony was spotted, aged 20, by a local critic in an amateur dramatic production in his then-home town of Weston-super-Mare. Speaking to the Lanchashire Post in 2008 he recalled: “He introduced me to one or two people and one of them gave me a job and I walked on in Worthing in two plays one after the other.
“I did have one line in the second one, it was As You Like It. I had the part of a woodsman or a huntsman or something like that. And somebody, like the King or somebody, said: ‘Which is he that killed the deer?’ And I had to say: ‘Sir, t’was I.’ And that was it.
“And I got a job after that – and it rolled!”
Anthony Edward Lowry “Tony” Britton (born 9 June 1924) was an English actor, the father of presenter Fern Britton, scriptwriter Cherry Britton and actor Jasper Britton.
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Tony Noble is a licensed Lay Minister in the Anglican chaplaincy of Costa Almeria and Costa Calida. Telephone - 711 043 859 - nobletony92@gmail.com
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