Having started as a child actor – first appearing on screen aged seven – Richard O’Sullivan, who has died aged 82, went on to a major TV career playing still relatively youthful characters, representative of the social and sexual freedoms that grew from the liberations of the 1960s.
Between 1972 and 81, he appeared in more than 100 episodes of peak-time ITV comedies as funny, frisky men in their 20s and 30s. The first of these was Dr Lawrence Bingham in the hospital sitcom Doctor in Charge, radiating a cheeky charm that led to his career-defining casting as Robin Tripp in Man About the House, in the mid-70s and its spin-off, Robin’s Nest, a few years later.
Man About the House spawned a formidable franchise, from Robin’s Nest to George and Mildred
In the first, Robin shared a flat with two young single women: Chrissy (Paula Wilcox) and Jo (Sally Thomsett). The living arrangements were platonic, partly to appease the TV regulator – from whom formal approval had been sought to show a “mixed” house – but also to establish a sexual tension unusual in mid-evening shows. In the sequel, Robin had qualified as a chef and, again daringly for the TV times, was living with a woman to whom he was not married.
The attractiveness of screen actors has become a contentious question amid valid concerns about performers being objectified for looks rather than talent. But O’Sullivan had both – with a role in the Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor movie Cleopatra, a Hollywood career at one point seemed possible. But, as remained the case from Poldark in the last millennium to the Poldark remake in this one, casting has often been calculated to make viewers fantasise. In Man About the House, O’Sullivan, Wilcox and Thomsett offered something for every viewer, as long as they were heterosexual.
Indeed, a running gag in Man About the House was that Robin was gay, a ruse designed to neutralise the living arrangements in the eyes of their landlords (Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce as George and Mildred), although the humour depended on Robin projecting randy straightness.
The sexiness of O’Sullivan’s onscreen persona – that even the period male fashion for knitted tank tops did little to dampen – was helped by reports of relationships with female co-stars and front page red-top newspaper coverage when Tessa Wyatt, O’Sullivan’s onscreen girlfriend in Robin’s Nest, left her then husband, DJ Tony Blackburn, to replicate the role off-screen.
Man About the House spawned probably the most formidable franchise in British TV, with Robin’s Nest running alongside Murphy’s and Joyce’s own spin-off, George and Mildred. Core audiences of tens of millions for O’Sullivan’s two instalments gave him an audience-drawing power on which ITV was keen to continue to capitalise, casting him as another telegenic rebel, a legendary highwayman, in Dick Turpin, which ran from 1979 to 82.
Approaching his 40s as that series ended, O’Sullivan faced the challenge of moving on from representing the fun of the young. Although the title of Me and My Girl in the 1980s flirted with offering more of the sitcom same, his character in this was a grey-haired widower and the female lead his teenage daughter, played by Joanne Ridley. The impact of this programme was helped by unusually short gaps between series due to fears that Ridley would age faster than the teenager she was playing.
When Me and My Girl ended, O’Sullivan had starred in five successive hit series, with the recognition and wealth that such exposure brings. Sadly, there was to be little more of either. Due to declining health, O’Sullivan’s final screen credit was in 1996 and, after a stroke in 2002, he was cared for at the admirable Brinsworth House entertainers’ retirement home in London.
A career ended by ill-health would be a misfortune for any performer but a small consolation in O’Sullivan’s case is that an actor who specialised in projecting youthful vitality and energy remains forever so on rerun channels.
Between 1972 and 81, he appeared in more than 100 episodes of peak-time ITV comedies as funny, frisky men in their 20s and 30s. The first of these was Dr Lawrence Bingham in the hospital sitcom Doctor in Charge, radiating a cheeky charm that led to his career-defining casting as Robin Tripp in Man About the House, in the mid-70s and its spin-off, Robin’s Nest, a few years later.
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Source: theguardian.com · Mark Lawson. Published 4 Sept 2026, 04:21 pm.
