RONNIE Barker was one of the few people who could lay claim to the title of comic genius. From The Two Ronnies to Open All Hours, via a sitcom hailed as one of the greatest of all time, he was one of our most-loved entertainers and an inspiration to a generation of comedians. The irony was, he didn't think of himself as a comic at all.

Instead, he saw himself as an actor. Whether it was Norman Stanley Fletcher in Porridge, the shopkeeper Arkwright in Open All Hours, or his many guises in The Two Ronnies, he was playing a part. It was telling that when he returned to performing after a 15-year absence, it was in a straight role in the BBC drama, The Gathering Storm.

While his comedy partner Ronnie Corbett appeared in their shows as himself, Barker preferred to inhabit the characters he was playing. Not for him the anecdote or the off-the-cuff quip: he was happiest when working from a well-rehearsed script.

And it was an approach which bore abundant fruit for Barker, who died on Monday at the age of 76. At its height, The Two Ronnies attracted more than 17 million viewers; two of his sitcoms, Porridge and Open All Hours, were named in the top ten in the search for Britain's Best Sitcom last year, and he was awarded three Baftas and an OBE.

Although he has only rarely and only recently come out of the retirement he surprisingly announced in 1987, his death has robbed Britain of one of its most successful comic actors of the last 50 years.

Ronald William George Barker was born in Bedford on September 25, 1929. He went to school in Oxford and studied architecture, and briefly flirted with becoming a bank manager, one of the professions he was later to lampoon so effectively.

Instead, he joined Aylesbury Repertory Company in 1948 and later found work in the West End, appearing in productions including Mourning Becomes Electra, Summertime and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was also in 300 editions of the hit radio show, The Navy Lark.

In 1966 he started work as a writer and performer on The Frost Report, and it was there that he met Ronnie Corbett. Legend has it that when the two Ronnies were co-hosting the Baftas, they covered so successfully that a producer offered them their own show.

The result was one of the longest-running sketch shows in British television history. Between 1971 and 1986 and over 98 episodes, The Two Ronnies became a national institution. With Corbett's monologues, Barker's character routines, drama serials including The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town and The Worm That Turned, comic songs and spoof news items, the shows were a viewing staple for millions of households.

While screen time between Ronnies Corbett and Barker was divided equally, it was Barker who was the creative driving force, writing and editing the shows. He also often submitted material to the producers under a false name to ensure it was considered on its merits and not on his status. Once, the producers arranged to meet one of their most prolific contributors, a Gerald Wiley, but when they turned up they found Barker waiting for them.

His humour combined a taste for the absurd with an affectionate poke at social and class attitudes, and while Barker hated to see sex and obscenity on television, he liberally sprinkled his material with double entendres and risqu one- liners.

In 1973, he created the character of Norman Stanley Fletcher, inmate at HMP Slade, in one of the most enduringly popular sitcoms. While Porridge was to run for just four years, smart-aleck Fletcher, nave Godber, played by Richard Beckinsale, and prison officer Mr MacKay, played by Fulton Mackay, have become fixtures in the list of classic comedy characters.

It was followed in 1978 by Going Straight, which caught up with Fletcher on his release from prison, but if Barker considered Porridge to be his best work, the programme he enjoyed making most was probably Open All Hours.

As the stuttering and slightly lascivious shopkeeper Arkwright, alongside David Jason as his frustrated and resentful nephew Granville, Barker created another memorable character in a long-running and popular sitcom.

Open All Hours was followed by the less successful The Magnificent Evans, where he played a Welsh photographer, and Clarence, about a short-sighted removal man, and he also wrote three dialogue-free films, A Home of Your Own, Futtock's End and The Picnic.

His work saw him awarded the OBE in 1978, he won a Bafta for best light entertainment performer three times in the 1970s, and in 1975 was given the Royal Television Society award for outstanding creative achievement. Last year he was honoured with a Bafta tribute award and celebration evening.

In 1987 Barker stunned his colleagues by announcing his retirement. He was 57 and suffering from heart trouble, but explained his decision by saying that, with the departure of a number of long-serving writers on The Two Ronnies, he felt the material would not be as strong, and it was better to leave while the show was at its peak.

Always a private person during the height of his fame, a stranger to chat shows and steering well clear of showbiz parties, he swapped performing for the obscurity of running an antiques' shop in Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.

There, he resisted attempts to lure him back into the limelight, turned down interview requests and gave a polite but stonewalling response to visitors more interested in his career than his antiques. He had married Joy in 1957, and although two of their three children followed him into acting, he was determined to avoid the celebrity lifestyle.

The prospects of a return to television seemed to recede with a heart operation in 1996, but in 1999 he came back briefly for a Two Ronnies Reunion Night.

This proved to be something of a tentative dip back into the water, for in 2002 he emerged from retirement a little more, to play Churchill's butler in the TV drama, The Gathering Storm. This gradual process continued a little further last year, with both a part in the Maggie Smith film, My House in Umbria, and a reunion with Ronnie Corbett to record links for The Two Ronnies Sketchbook, with viewing figures proof of his enduring appeal.

Although he still considered himself to be retired, despite these mini-comebacks, he continued to hold out for that one great movie role. Having achieved so much in his career, his one regret was that he had never really got into films. In a life so full of success, it was the one major prize to elude him, but with so much else to his name, it was a forgivable omission.