Memorial Service: Benjamin Whitrow

Director Sir Richard Eyre described the qualities an actor needs while giving a eulogy for Benjamin Whitrow at the Actors’ Church, St Paul’s Covent Garden:

‘Actors have to be conscious of themselves, but not be self-conscious; they must know themselves, but they must also forget themselves when they’re acting; they must be self-less, but will undeniably be selfish; and they must find the balance, while acting, between the heart and the head, between instinct and reason. It’s an impossible prescription – to seek attention for oneself but not be narcissistic, to perform but not to show off, to communicate, but in someone else’s voice. Ben embraced all these paradoxes brilliantly.’

He said Whitrow had an inherent authority which was derived from his own personality, but he also understood that austerity and stillness could count as much as bravura and mercurial energy. Such qualities made him a definitive Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and so brilliantly funny in Noises Off.

Sir Richard quoted Laurence Olivier’s remark that Whitrow never gave a bad performance. ‘It’s an enviable thing to have said about you, but it’s the sort of remark that an England cricket manager might make about an entirely reliable batsman in the lower order, and Ben was so much more than that. He was in the first rank of the aristocracy of British character acting – and incidentally a very fine spin bowler.

‘His virtues as an actor were his virtues as a person – wit, intelligence, modesty (even diffidence), an undeviating honesty that could sometimes be uncomfortable, particularly for a director, but at the same time he always showed undeviating loyalty.’

Daughter Hannah gave a reading from Charlotte Brontë’s poem Life. Alan Price, a member of the Animals in the 1960s, played Changes, a medley of his own music on keyboard. Robert Bathurst, who acted with Whitrow in Noises Off and played golf with him at St Enodoc, read Betjeman’s sporting utopia poem Seaside Golf followed by Whitrow’s more dystopian version about golfing disasters.

Most moving was ‘Memories of our Father’ by Tom Whitrow and Angus Imrie. Tom was Ben’s son by his wife, Catherine, while Angus, 23 and a star of The Archers, was the son he sired by special arrangement with Celia Imrie.

Tom spoke of his father’s sheer amount of close friendships. ‘He met my mother at a house party,’ said Tom, ‘his girlfriend’s house party.’

‘Dad was never false,’ said Angus. ‘He was always real, his love was always felt, and his opinion mattered most of all.’ JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW