He is one of the greats of British comedy, but for nearly 20 years he has stayed away from the limelight. Now Ronnie Barker is making a comeback, and his biographer is claiming some of the credit. Nick Morrison reports.

RONNIE Barker is good at playing hard to get. Doggedly protective of his private life even when he was at the height of his fame, his retirement nearly 20 years ago became an opportunity to disappear from public view completely.

No interviews, no guest appearances, no chat shows - he turned his back on the limelight and concentrated instead on running his antiques shop in the Cotswolds.

From early days on The Frost Report, through to Open All Hours and beyond, via Porridge and, perhaps best-loved of all, The Two Ronnies, which ran for 98 shows over 15 years, he had been a television fixture, until he abruptly decided to give it all up in 1987.

So it was with little expectation of success that writer Bob McCabe sought his co-operation on a biography of one of the few men alive who could lay claim to the title of comic genius. Indeed, McCabe's original intention was to write a book about Barker, rather than with him.

"We went through a very circuitous route to do it. It was initially very difficult to get hold of him and I wrote to the shop and asked if he would at least look at the text and do some fact checking," McCabe says.

Much to his surprise, he received a call back, although it did not come at the most convenient time.

"My wife took the call and told him I was occupied at the moment, to which Ronnie quickly replied, 'Oh, he's in the toilet, I see. I'll call him back in ten minutes'."

The result was a collection of Barker's writings, which brought renewed public exposure, and now an authorised biography. But gaining his trust wasn't easy.

"He hadn't done any interviews for about ten years. He was very nervous and the first meeting was gauging each other out and working out if he could trust me.

'But eventually he relaxed and was very open, a very genial person to talk to. He is a very serious man on one level and he certainly took his work seriously. He is also quite a humble man and he is much more concerned about the work than the fame it would bring.

"He is very good company and a very charming man and very generous. He is a great person to sit around and talk to, and he has got a lifetime of anecdotes," McCabe says.

As their meetings became more frequent, they also provided an opportunity to observe Barker with his neighbours in his Cotswolds village.

"It was interesting watching him with the locals in restaurants and pubs. They knew him as the man off the telly, and on a certain level he would be that for them.

"He would have a quip with the guys at the bar, say something funny, and then we would sit down and we would talk very seriously," McCabe recalls.

But he says Barker does not think of himself as a comedian. Instead, he is an actor playing a part.

"He will make a joke the same as anybody else, but as a rule he doesn't want people to have that expectation of him. He was never an off-the-cuff comedian; everything he did was well-written and rehearsed. He is an actor who relies on a script and delivers," says McCabe.

It soon became clear that Barker's desire for privacy extended to his performing career. Even though he would be watched by millions, he rarely appeared as himself. For Barker, performing is a way of escaping, of hiding behind a character. While Ronnie Corbett would appear in their shows as himself, with his monologues, Barker was always disguised - as a spokesman for a political party, in drag or as a Viking.

"He is a very shy person on one level, and a very private person, so he is very happy to hide in the characters. He disguised himself very well in the characters, to the point where the Ronnie Barker you see on television is almost a character.

"He is also one of the very few comedians who acts, he really inhabits characters. He is one of those people who others see as a comic and he sees himself as an actor," McCabe says.

During his partnership with Ronnie Corbett, Barker played the Stan Laurel role: he was the one working on the scripts and editing the film, although he often used a pseudonym on the writing credits. But they were always careful to balance their contributions: for each solo slot one did, the other would do a similar length piece.

But while Barker and a team of writers came up with most of the material, one of the pair's most famous sketches was suggested by the owner of a hardware store in Middlesex, who produced four candles for a customer, only to discover what they really wanted was fork handles.

His decision to retire at 58 came as a surprise to his comedy partner, but after some of the show's writers moved on, Barker felt the material would not be as strong, and wanted to retire while it was still at its peak. There were also problems with his heart, although he did not have to have surgery until 1996.

He turned 75 in September, but the last few years have seen him partially come out of retirement. Two years ago he appeared as butler to Albert Finney as Churchill in The Gathering Storm, and last year starred in My House in Umbria alongside Dame Maggie Smith.

He is also recording new links to Two Ronnies' sketches, which will be shown early next year.

To some extent, this is a search for that one film part which would round off his career, but his biographer believes he is owed some credit for the comeback.

"When I first met him, I would have said he never wanted to come back, but ever since we first started talking he was quietly to come out of retirement, so I'm crediting myself for having done that. He keeps saying he is in retirement, but he's going to be on prime time television for two or three months every year," McCabe says.

"The one regret about his career is that he never really got into movies. He always said he would have loved to have done that one great movie role and he is still quietly holding out for it.

"He is looking for a great character part, maybe a heavy in a gangster movie. There isn't a need to go back, it's just that a couple of jobs came in and he thought 'why not?'. He would still view himself as retired, even though he keeps coming back."

* The Authorised Biography of Ronnie Barker by Bob McCabe (BBC Books) £18.99.