Richard O’Sullivan, one of the great stars of 1970s television comedy, has died at the age of 82. The actor gained great popularity thanks to his role as Robin Tripp in the series Man About the House and its sequel, Robin’s Nest, two British sitcoms that later inspired some of the most popular American television comedies.
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O’Sullivan died this Friday at Brinsworth House, a retirement home for theatre and entertainment professionals, located in west London, where he had lived for the last 23 years. His son, James O’Sullivan, remembered him in a statement as a man “as funny and charming in real life as he appeared on our television screens.”
The role that defined his career came in 1973 with Man About the House, created by writers Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke. O’Sullivan played Robin Tripp, a culinary student who shared a flat in London with two single women, Chrissy and Jo, played by Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett. The flat owners, George and Mildred Roper, believe Robin is gay, a lie to justify the young Tripp living with the two women. A premise that was daring for British television at the time.
O’Sullivan reprised Robin Tripp in 1977 in Robin’s Nest, the sequel to the original series in which his character starts a new life with Vicky Nicholls, played by Tessa Wyatt, who was also his partner off-screen between 1978 and 1985.
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Although Robin Tripp was the character he became associated with, O’Sullivan had built an extensive career since childhood. Born in Middlesex in 1944, he debuted in film and television as a child, where he even shared the screen with Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story (1959) before establishing himself during the 1960s as a familiar face on British television.
Off-screen, O’Sullivan, a confessed Chelsea fan, frequently played in charity football matches until he had to stop after breaking a leg. In 1991 he appeared in his last television comedy alongside Susan Penhaligon, Trouble in Mind, in which he played a psychiatrist.
In 1994 he described himself as a “hopeless depressive and drinker” and his career was cut short by health problems until he finally decided to move to Brinsworth House, after suffering a stroke in 2003.
