Richard O’Sullivan – A Little Piece of Our Past Goes With Him

At the 1st 3 offices, Man About the House has been known to find its way onto the television rather frequently. Sometimes properly watched, sometimes playing in the background while photographs are being edited and words are being wrestled into shape. Those familiar rooms, those familiar voices — and there, invariably, is Richard O’Sullivan as Robin Tripp, with that unmistakable grin and wonderfully easy comic timing.

For some of us, though, it goes much further back than an office television.

We grew up with him.

We watched Man About the House the first time around. Later came Robin’s Nest, Dick Turpin, Me and My Girl and a succession of appearances that made O’Sullivan one of those rare performers who seemed less like a visiting celebrity and more like someone who had simply always been there.

Perhaps that is why news of his death, at the age of 82, has landed with rather more weight than we expected.

There are performers who become attached to particular moments in our lives without ever knowing it. They sit quietly in the scenery of childhood and adolescence: Saturday evenings, family living rooms, old television sets, parents laughing at something we didn’t quite understand yet. Years pass, fashions change, houses change and people disappear, but one glimpse of a familiar face can suddenly open the door to all of it again.

Richard O’Sullivan was one of those faces.

There was something enormously likeable about him on screen. His comedy didn’t need to shout. He could do an extraordinary amount with an expression, a pause or that slightly mischievous smile. Robin Tripp could be cocky, bewildered, romantic and ridiculous, often within the same scene, but O’Sullivan gave him a warmth that made you want to spend time in his company.

And there is, appropriately enough for these pages, a little music hidden in his story too.

O’Sullivan wrote the theme tune to Robin’s Nest, with the music arranged and performed by Brian Bennett of The Shadows. He also appeared alongside Cliff Richard in The Young Ones and Wonderful Life. So perhaps he wasn’t quite as far removed from the musical world of 1st 3 as we initially thought.

But that isn’t really why we’re writing this.

We’re writing it because sometimes somebody dies and you realise that they have occupied a tiny corner of your life for decades.

You may never have met them. They certainly never knew you. Yet their voice can transport you to another room, another house, another version of yourself.