Actor Warren Mitchell, who played Alf Garnett in TV series Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and in Health, has died aged 89.<\/p>\n
A statement from his family said the star died in the early hours of Saturday “surrounded by his family”.<\/p>\n
“He has been in poor health for some time, but was cracking jokes to the last,” the family added.<\/p>\n
Mitchell’s great nephew paid tribute to him on Twitter, saying he was “the last of his generation”.<\/p>\n
The full tweet read: “Just got the news my great uncle Warren Mitchell (aka Alf Garnett) died last night. The last of his generation, wonderful and funny man RIP.”<\/p>\n
Mitchell began playing the character Alf Garnett at the age of 40 in 1966 and appeared in more than 50 episodes until the programme ended in 1975.<\/p>\n
He returned as Alf Garnett in the BBC series In Sickness and in Health, which ran from 1985 to 1992.<\/p>\n
He also received critical acclaim for other roles. He won Olivier Awards for his stage performances in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 1979 and The Price in 2004.<\/p>\n
Born in north London’s Stoke Newington, he served in the Royal Air Force and then went on to read physics at University College, Oxford.<\/p>\n
He never completed the course and took up acting in 1951 at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.<\/p>\n
In 2004 he suffered from a stroke, but was back performing in Miller’s The Price a week later.<\/p>\n
He also appeared in TV shows including Gormenghast, Wall of Silence, Lovejoy, Waking The Dead and Kavanagh QC.
\nThere have been many tributes to the actor.<\/p>\n
Comedian Ricky Gervais tweeted: “Alf Garnett was one of the most influential and important characters and performances in comedy history. RIP Warren Mitchell.”<\/p>\n
Theatre director Rupert Goold wrote: “RIP Warren Mitchell. A deeply soulful and erudite man who genuinely loved the theatre.”<\/p>\n
And Author Neil Gaiman wrote: “Sad to hear Warren Mitchell has died. I acted with him when he played the Director on the @BBCRadio3 version of Signal to Noise. Good man.”<\/p>\n
“The great and fearless Warren Mitchell is no more,” wrote Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, adding he had had “a brilliant innings”.<\/p>\n
Tributes were also paid by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who remembered him as a “great actor & wit”, and by his beloved Tottenham Hotspur football club.<\/p>\n
Mitchell is survived by his wife Constance Wake, a fellow actress, and three children.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Actor Warren Mitchell, who played Alf Garnett in TV series Till Death Us Do Part and In Sickness and in Health, has died aged 89. A statement from his family said the star died in the early hours of Saturday “surrounded by his family”. “He has been in poor health for some time, but was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":167063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-167062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-togbe-afede"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/167063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}