How Richard O’Sullivan became unlikely 70s crush with iconic sideburns before battling heartbreak & booze in final years

HE was an unlikely sex symbol with his lop-sided grin that could convey both leer and sneer.

Combined with long hair, huge sideburns and flares, Richard O’Sullivan was what, in the 70s, would have been called a “heartthrob.” That decade saw him become one of the biggest stars on TV.

He first appeared as the slimy Bingham in Doctor at Large, co-starring Barry Evans, George Layton and Geoffrey Davies and Doctor in Charge with Evans having left the show and been replaced with Robin Nedwell as the new lead character, Dr. Duncan Waring.

The shows catapulted Richard to lead roles himself in the hit sit-coms Man About the House and its spin-off Robin’s Nest in which he played chef, Robin Tripp. Both ran for six series.

Earlier in his career, he had become a child star, working in films with great names such as Trevor Howard, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and John Mills.

But a dip in his fortunes and two failed marriages later brought on depression and he took to the bottle as his health continued to suffer.

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He appeared in his first film at the age of eight, as an extra playing one of the children singing in a Sunday School sequence in the crime drama The Yellow Balloon (1953).

He established himself as something of a child star after playing the main character in The Stranger‘s Hand, about a young boy searching for his kidnapped MI5 dad in Venice, played by Trevor Howard.

A succession of films followed starring other big names such as John Mills in It’s Great to Be Young (1956) in which Richard played one of the pupils of a music-loving school teacher.

He was the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in Dangerous Exile, starring Louis Jordan and Belinda Lee and in 1957 he played the lead in a BBC Television five part Sunday serial adaptation of Little Lord Fauntleroy.

And then his voice broke and the roles started to slow and then dry up.

But there were two notable exceptions – as one of Cliff Richard’s gang of pals in The Young Ones (1961) and in the lavish, big budget Hollywood movie Cleopatra (1963), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, in which he played Cleopatra’s younger brother Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII.

He was 19, it was shot in Rome, and he became starry-eyed, admitting, “That’s when I was flash. But you couldn’t help it. I did eight days work in eight months on location, with £150 for pocket money.

“When I got tired of watching the Roma football team, I’d catch a plane back to London to watch Chelsea.”

But the rest of the Sixties saw him appearing only in the occasional small role in such staple TV dramas as Emergency Ward 10, Redcap and Dixon of Dock Green.

The money that such work brought in, combined with that his parents had put away for him when his childhood career was booming, managed to see him through a very lean period.

“I was out of work at 24 and realised I had to make some money to pay the bills. I drove a mini cab, worked in a petrol station. I even thought of joining a Kibbutz in Israel.”

During this time he was living with model Diana Terry.

“My modelling career was going well but Richard wasn’t doing much,” she recalled. “We never actually went anywhere. We couldn’t afford to go out to dinner.

“We would go round to Richard’s mum and she would give us packets of jelly to take home.”

In 1971, came his big break, as Lawrence Bingham in the ITV sitcom Doctor at Large, based on the books by Richard Gordon, followed by Doctor in Charge. Both were huge hits.

That same year he married Diana but the change in his fortunes did nothing for their relationship.

“As Richard became more and more successful, the worse our relationship became,” said Diana. “It wasn’t that he changed, it was just that his success made us both realise we were totally wrong for each other.

“I met him when I was 19 through my flatmate, who went to drama school with him. I fell total and completely in love and we started to live together almost immediately.

“Richard is a very talented person. Apart from his acting he is a marvellous musician and charming and attractive too. I was so totally infatuated that all I wanted to do was spend 24 hours a day with him.

“I didn’t care about anything else. It was a completely emotional thing. I don’t even know if I liked him. I can’t remember a single conversation we ever had. We had absolutely nothing in common.

“Our backgrounds and interests were miles apart. We lived together for three years and were married for seven months.”

But professionally, his acting career was to soar to new heights as it became evident to Richard, as well as everyone else, that his true calling was comedy acting.

“He didn’t always learn his lines the right way around but he would make you laugh and that’s quite a gift to be able to do that,” remembers George Layton of the Doctors series.

Of the lop-sided grin, he Richard would say, “I only got this leer when I grew older. After the dentist did a mucky job on a tooth I tired smiling sideways to hide it.

“Then I caught a cricket ball full in the mouth and that seems to have fixed it for good.”

It was used to full, Lothario charm in Man About the House (1973–1976), in which he played trainee chef Robin Tripp, who shared a house with Chrissy and Jo, played by Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett.

“He was a master at ad-libbing,” remembers Paula.

An accomplished pianist, he had taken lessons as a child and had once been part of a jazz band that he and his fellow school pals had formed and he took great pride in having composed the theme tune to Robin’s Nest.

“I get more of a kick when I see the words, ‘Theme music by Richard O’Sullivan’ than when I see my own star billing,” he said.

The series made stars not only of all three of them but also Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce who played their arguing neighbours George and Mildred Roper.

They went on to have a successful spin-off show of their own called George and Mildred while Richard himself starred in another spin-off in 1977 called Robin’s Nest in which Robin sets up a bistro with funding from his girlfriend Vicky’s (Tessa Wyatt) father, James (Tony Britton).

During the course of the run, Richard started a relationship with his co-star Tessa Wyatt, although they refused to confirm it for years.

“I don’t mind being alone for days on end,” he said in 1979. “I sit about, play the piano, do a bit of writing for musical themes.

“I’m not a showbiz type at all. The only thing that gets my goat is when people invade my privacy and then I become like the Incredible Hulk.”

Later in life, Sally Thomsett revealed that she had also had a relationship with him when they were working on Man About the House.

Tessa had separated from BBC DJ Tony Blackburn, with whom she had a son, Simon, and Blackburn was heartbroken.

“It took him years to get over with it and he admitted to having a “breakdown”, memorably sharing his grief with millions of listeners on his radio show by playing a love song called We’ve Thrown It All Away and dedicating it to the “person who will always be very special to me.”

It was followed by a 1964 hit by Peter and Gordon called World Without Love.

Now, one of the biggest bankable names on television, Richard played the lead role in Dick Turpin over four series from 1979 but was still publicly playing the single man in interviews, despite his involvement with Tessa.

“Dick love ‘em and leaves ‘em. He’s got an eye for pretty things, but he doesn’t want to get tied down. Bit like me, really,” he said.

But when Tessa became pregnant that July, it was written into the storyline for the new series of Robin’s Nest that they began filming the following January.

Richard, Tessa and their son Jamie, lived in a house near Ascot, Berkshire.

Another sitcom came in 1984, Me and My Girl, in which he played widower Simon Harrup bringing up a 13-year-old daughter played by Joanne Ridley, which ran for six series.

By now, his relationship with Tessa was on the rocks. She moved out of their home in 1984 and it was later sold.

Richard met Christine Smart, former trapeze artist and granddaughter of the circus founded by her grandfather Billy, in a shop in the local Berkshire village where they lived.

They chatted and gradually got to know each other and eventually married at a quiet ceremony in Bracknell, Berkshire, in 1988.

It lasted five years before they divorced and the failed marriage sent him into depression. He began drinking heavily before booking into Cardinal Clinic in Berkshire on Boxing Day, 1994.

“I’ve had a really hard time,” he admitted. “I am a hard-drinking depressive.”

A keen golfer throughout his life, his final acting role was in a 1996 one-off satire titled Holed, with Tony Robinson, about a suburban golf club.

After that he largely retired from public life and lived in a modest flat in Kew Green, Surrey, with his son, Jamie.

He moved to Brinsworth House, a retirement home for entertainers in Twickenham, after suffering a stroke in 2003, where he lived for the remainder of his life.

His Man About the House co-stars, Brian Murphy, Sally Thomsett and Paula Wilcox visited him there.

So did his good friend George Layton, who he had first got to know when they appeared in an episode of Emergency Ward 10.

George remained a close friend throughout his life, going to see him at the home every year on his birthday.

“He is one of the funniest actors one could ever work with. I love him,” he said of his old pal.