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English actor

Brian Norman Roger Rix, Baron Rix, (27 January 1924 – 20 August 2016) was an English actor manager, who produced a record breaking sequence of long running farces on the London stage, including Dry Rot, Simple Spymen and One for the Pot. His one night TV shows made him the joint highest paid star on the BBC. He often worked with his wife Elspet Gray and sister Sheila Mercier, who became the matriarch in Emmerdale Farm. After his first child was born with Down syndrome, Rix became a campaigner for disability causes, among others. He entered the House of Lords as a crossbencher in 1992 and was president of Mencap from 1998 until his death.

Rix was born in Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire, the youngest of four children. His father, Herbert Rix, and Herbert's two brothers, ran the shipping company Robert Rix in Hull, founded by his grandfather. Rix had an interest in cricket and only wished to play for Yorkshire in his childhood. He did play for Hull Cricket Club when he was 16 (and after the war for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the Stage and the Lord's Taverners). When he was being educated at the Quaker Bootham School, York, his ambitions changed. His elder sister Sheila became an actress during his school days, and Rix himself developed the same ambition to go on the stage. All four Rix children had become interested in the theatre because of their mother, Fanny, who ran an amateur dramatic society and was the lead soprano in the local operatic society. All her children performed in the plays and two of them, Brian and Sheila, became professional actors. Sheila Mercier, as she became known, played Annie Sugden for more than 20 years in the Yorkshire TV soap opera Emmerdale Farm having worked regularly with her brother in the Whitehall farces in the 1950s and 1960s.

Rix became a professional actor when he was 18, on deferment from service with the Royal Air Force, with Donald Wolfit's Shakespeare Company. After only four months as a professional actor, he played Sebastian in Twelfth Night at the St James's Theatre in London. His deferment was extended and he gained his first weekly repertory experience with the White Rose Players at the opera house in Harrogate. From there he went into the Royal Air Force, eventually ending up as a volunteer Bevin Boy working down the coal mines near Doncaster. with viewing figures often reaching 15 million. In the early 1960s, Rix was the highest paid actor (along with Robert Morley) to appear on BBC Television. Alongside the regulars from his theatre company, Rix appeared in these TV productions with such names as Dora Bryan, Joan Sims, Ian Carmichael, John Le Mesurier, Patrick Cargill, Fabia Drake, Sheila Hancock, Warren Mitchell, Thora Hird and Francis Matthews. Only a handful of the televised farces remain in the BBC archive, however. Rix also appeared in 11 films and though he felt these were less suited to his talents as a farceur, these also met with some box office success.

In 1967, Rix moved on to the Garrick Theatre after the Whitehall Theatre lease expired. The larger stage gave him the opportunity to try his repertoire scheme. This was a similar idea to the way plays were presented at the National Theatre – that is several productions, each one being played on different days or weeks, thus giving the actors the chance to play a variety of roles – or even to have a night or two off. Rix tried with three farces – Stand By Your Bedouin, Uproar in the House and Let Sleeping Wives Lie – but as this was a commercial venture, without any state subsidy, it proved too expensive to run and Rix was forced to keep Let Sleeping Wives Lie on at the Garrick and transfer Uproar in the House, with Nicholas Parsons playing Rix's role, to the Whitehall. Stand By Your Bedouin went into storage. Let Sleeping Wives Lie enjoyed a further two year run with Leslie Crowther, Elspet Gray, Derek Farr, Andrew Sachs and Rix playing the lead roles. After the first year, Rona Anderson took over from Gray. After Let Sleeping Wives Lie finished at the Garrick it went on a short tour before opening for a summer season at the newly restored Playhouse in Weston super Mare. Rix played the first four weeks and then Leslie Crowther returned and played the last six. Meantime the cast of Rix's next West End production commuted by train every day to rehearse in London, returning in the late afternoon for their evening performance. She's Done It Again, opened at the Garrick to the best reviews Rix had ever enjoyed, but it had the shortest run of any of his productions to that date. Rix could never find an obvious reason for the production's short run, for the play enjoyed a sell out tour after the Garrick. His favoured explanation was that the play, funny as it was, might have seemed somewhat old fashioned, as it was adapted by Michael Pertwee from a pre war farce Nap Hand by Vernon Sylvaine and based upon the birth of Dionne quintuplets. Rix's next play, also by Pertwee, was Don't Just Lie There, Say Something! with Alfred Marks (followed by Moray Watson) playing the libidinous government minister. Reviews were not as good as the previous play, but audiences kept coming and it ran for two years at the Garrick and then enjoyed another successful tour. Rix who had never enjoyed touring now hated the endless nights away from home and was delighted when the play was turned first into a television series for HTV, Men of Affairs (with Warren Mitchell as the minister) and then into a film (starring himself, Leslie Phillips and Joanna Lumley). After that, during the Three Day Week in 1973–74, came a relatively unsuccessful pantomime season in Robinson Crusoe at the New Theatre, Cardiff. Rix was by now becoming tired of going on stage night after night and sensing he had reached the peak of his success began to consider retiring from the stage. However, he performed in two more farces, A Bit Between the Teeth (with Jimmy Logan and Terence Alexander) at the Cambridge Theatre and then, back at the Whitehall, Fringe Benefits (with Terence Alexander and Jane Downs). After 26 years of almost continuous performance in the West End, on 8 January 1977, Rix gave his final performance to a packed house at the Whitehall Theatre.

Having retired from performing, Rix joined Cooney Marsh Ltd – a theatre owning and production company – run by Ray Cooney, Laurie Marsh and Rix himself. Ably assisted by his former stage manager and now PA, Joanne Benjamin, Rix was responsible for obtaining productions for various West End theatres including the Shaftesbury, the Duke of York's, the Ambassadors and the re built Astoria which opened with the award winning Elvis, starring P. J. Proby, Shakin' Stevens and Tim Whitnall. Rix and his partners were also responsible for re opening the Billy Rose Theatre in New York, renaming it the Trafalgar and opening with a big hit – Whose Life Is It Anyway?, starring Tom Conti. Whilst in this post, he also presented (with his daughter, Louisa) the BBC Television series, Let's Go. This was the first British programme to be created specifically for people with a learning disability and ran from 1978 until 1982. Rix found being on the other side of the footlights increasingly frustrating and in 1980 he became the Secretary General of the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults (shortly to become the Royal Society, later Mencap). He returned to performing and the stage intermittently in later years, playing Shakespeare on BBC Radio, doing a 6 month run in a revival of Dry Rot, directing a play with Cannon and Ball, playing his favourite big band jazz on Radio 2, and touring three one night only shows, one with his wife, which explored theatrical history and his own remarkable experiences of life.

From 1986 to 1993, Rix served as chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain's Drama Panel. He was also an active chair of the Arts Council Disability Committee raising the profile and perceived importance of arts and disability issues within Arts Council decision making. In these roles he proved dynamic and progressive. When Rix took office the Drama Panel was male dominated, but by 1993 there was gender parity on the panel – paradoxically his female successor unbalanced it once more, again in favour of men. He achieved a significant shift in funding priorities; while maintaining support for national and regional building based theatre companies, he actively supported the work of small scale experimental touring companies – including theatre for young people and for the black and minority ethnic communities – and new writing projects. His approach meant he was able to cut through bureaucratic constraints. Before Rix's first budget setting exercise for the Drama Panel (when what was available for all companies was a less than inflation uplift) panel members and other members of the Arts Council had intended to fund the British Asian theatre company Tara Arts, but no one had been able to source the sum required. Rix however boldly proposed that the biggest national companies were stood still, so releasing money not only to fund Tara, but also allow fresh small scale developments, and then saw that this was delivered through Panel and Council. Such willingness to take on the establishment marked his term of office. A constant champion of the interests of drama companies and theatre workers, Rix's seven year term of office meant that, even in a period of Thatcherite public funding stringency, no theatre building for which he had responsibility was closed while the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds was able to open (succeeding the Leeds Playhouse) with vastly increased capacity. Meanwhile, the number of touring companies, which had been falling before his arrival, increased from 22 to 33. In 1993 at a retreat at Woodstock, the Council agreed that the Drama budget should be disproportionately reduced in the face of across the board cuts to the Council's budget and the money allocated to other less popular art forms. In the absence of specialist arts officers at the meeting, Rix was left isolated and he resigned as a matter of principle. This created a negative public reaction and shocked senior Council figures into realising their decision was unacceptable. After a campaign, led behind scenes by his Drama Director Ian Brown and publicly by Drama Panel members, the disproportionate cut was rescinded.

Rix and his wife, Elspet became involved in the world of learning disability, when in December 1951 the first of their four children was born. Their daughter, Shelley, was diagnosed with Down syndrome. There was no welfare support for the children affected and little education. The only offering the state made was a place in a Victorian era, run down hospital where patients were left to their own devices for hours at a time. The Rixes were determined to improve the situation and became involved with charities campaigning on the issue. Among these roles, in the early 1960s, Rix became the first Chairman of the Special Functions Fundraising committee at the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults, later known as Mencap. Both his personal experience and his leading position as a fundraiser in the field finally led to Rix applying for the job at Mencap and then when he retired in 1987 to him becoming chairman in 1988. In 1998, he became president, an office he held until he died.

Entering the House of Lords as a crossbencher in 1992, Rix campaigned ceaselessly on any legislation affecting people with a learning disability. He was one of the most regular attenders in the House and every year introduced numerous amendments to legislation, mainly that associated with health, social welfare and education. He found the length of time required to change legislation very frustrating. One example in 1994 was when Rix introduced a private member's bill ensuring that local authorities would provide short term breaks for carers and cared for alike, on a reasonably timed basis. The bill easily passed through the Lords, but could not even achieve a first reading in the House of Commons. Rix tried again when New Labour became the government in 1997, but again to no avail. Eventually, 12 years after Rix's private member's bill, short term breaks sneaked through in an Education Bill, introduced by the then Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls. The extent of his involvement can be seen by looking at the some of other legislation altered in the same year as the Education Bill (2006). His amendments to the Childcare Bill extended statutory childcare provision for children with a disability from 16 to 18 years old, whilst changes to the Electoral Administration Bill lead to people with a learning disability being able to vote freely. Rix discovered in the mid 1990s that the legislation regarding State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) had been altered under Margaret Thatcher. The original act had ensured that widows and widowers would receive the full SERPS addition to their state pension if their spouse died first. The change in legislation halved the amount received. Rix campaigned to restore the original payment and after a number of years arguing the point with the New Labour Government, he succeeded.

Amongst his many activities, he was the co chairman (with Tom Clarke ) of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Learning Disability; chairman of the Rix Thompson Rothenberg (RTR) Foundation which provides small grants for projects serving people with a learning disability;), actress Louisa Rix and Shelley Rix. Elspet Gray died on 18 February 2013. Rix became a radio ham at the age of 13 and became a life vice president of the Radio Society of Great Britain in 1979. His call sign was G2DQU. He was also president of the Friends of Richmond Park. In 1970 he was President of the Lord's Taverners and he continued his love of cricket as a member of the MCC and Yorkshire CCC. Rix was the subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions, in October 1961 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at a friend's house in Surrey, and again in April 1977, when Andrews surprised him at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. He was also a castaway on Desert Island Discs on two occasions. The first was with Roy Plomley on 16 May 1960, which was also the first time a castaway was caught on film and broadcast the following evening. His second appearance was with Kirsty Young on 1 March 2009. In August 2016, Rix announced that he was terminally ill, and called for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia for those dying in severe pain. This was a significant departure from his previous position, as Rix voted against the Assisted Dying Bill in 2006. He died on 20 August 2016 at Denville Hall in Northwood, London.

Rix was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1977 Birthday Honours, and knighted in June 1986 for his services to charity. On his 68th birthday, 27 January 1992, he was created a life peer, becoming Baron Rix of Whitehall in the City of Westminster and of Hornsea in Yorkshire. He was Vice Lord Lieutenant of Greater London from 1987 to 1997 and was the first chancellor of the University of East London from 1997 to 2012. He was subsequently the chancellor emeritus. by the following universities: Hull (MA 1981), Open (MA 1983), Essex (MA 1984), Nottingham (DSc 1987), Exeter (LL. D. 1997), Bradford (DU 2000), Kingston (DLitt 2012), East London (D. A. 2013) and five fellowships, as well as receiving an Honorary College Fellowship of Myerscough College

He has also received numerous awards including: The Evian Health Award (1988), Royal National Institute for Deaf People Campaigner of the Year Award (1990), The Spectator Campaigner of the Year Award (1999), Yorkshire Society – Yorkshire Lifetime Achievement Award (1999), UK Charity Awards (2001), Lifetime Achievement Award for Public Service – British Neuroscience Association (2001) and the ePolitix Charity Champions Lifetime Achievement Award (2004).