An absolute original. RIP
Gervais leads tributes to The Office’s deadpan scene-stealer
BY
EWEN Macintosh’s Big Keith never had much screen time in The Office, but he stole every scene he was in with perfectly timed deadpan delivery.
The comedian and actor, who has died aged 50, helped elevate Ricky Gervais’s first sitcom to cult classic status by providing some of the show’s best-loved and most quotable moments.
He drove Gervais’s David Brent to distraction by failing to get the point of an appraisal (“under ‘strengths’, you’ve put ‘accounts’… that’s your job, though”) ; he dressed as a mirthless Ali G for Comic Relief; he ate a lot of Scotch eggs.
And he did it all with a studied, slack-jawed vacancy – borrowed, he said, from Christopher Guest’s performance in Spinal Tap.
Gervais, for whom The Office was a springboard to stardom, was one of the first to pay tribute. He said: “Extremely sad news. The very funny and very lovely Ewen Macintosh, known to many as ‘Big Keith’ from The Office, has passed away. An absolute original. RIP.”
Macintosh was born in Merionethshire, North Wales, on Christmas Day 1973. He went to the private Repton School in Derbyshire then Edinburgh University, where his life on stage began.
The Office was his big break in TV, but when its two-season run ended in 2003, he went on to appear in Miranda and Little Britain.
He also appeared on reality TV show Come Dine With Me and in
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films The Confusion of Tongues and Finding Fatima, but by 2016 he was forced to declare bankruptcy. He later told how he found success again by selling custom videos for fans on websites like Cameo and Celebvm.
He said: “I would say all my requests are for me to do Keith lines and Keith quotes for people’s birthday messages, stag dos and weddings.”
In 2022, there was an Office reunion when Macintosh made appeared on Gervais’s Netflix series After Life.
Earlier this month, he shared a snap of himself in a hospital bed, saying: “Bad times for me I’m afraid chums. Stay strong out there.”
Little Britain and Great British Bake-off star Matt Lucas said: “He was sweet, smart and humble and, of course, brilliantly funny.”
Macintosh’s agency, Justright Management, said: “His family thank all who supported him, especially Willow Green Care Home.
“There will be a private cremation soon and a celebratory memorial later in the year.”