SHERNA NOAH LAST of the Summer Wine and Porridge actor Brian Wilde has died at the age of 80, it was announced yesterday.

Wilde played Foggy in the BBC comedy series Last of the Summer Wine and the ineffectual prison officer Mr Barrowclough in Porridge.

The actor's son, Andrew Wilde, said his father died in his sleep of natural causes last night. He added that Wilde had suffered a fall around seven weeks ago and had not recovered.

Wilde's agent Nick Young said: "He will be sadly missed by family and colleagues alike.

"He brought a great deal of laughter into everyone's lives over the course of his career."

Wilde's son said he died in a nursing home, where he had been staying for a short while.

The Lancashire-born actor had roles in the television series Room At The Bottom (1966) and the film The Jokers (1967) before being cast in Porridge alongside Ronnie Barker.

In 1967 he also appeared in Carry On Doctor.

Wilde's Last of the Summer Wine co-star Peter Sallis said: "I first met him when he was about 16 at Rada.

"If you saw him in Porridge or Last of the Summer Wine then you knew as much about him as I did.

"He was a private person, not in a stuffy way, but he didn't mix socially. It may be unfair of me to say that.

"If you saw him in character as Foggy you get a pretty good idea of what Brian was like. His work was exemplary."

Last of the Summer Wine creator Roy Clarke told the BBC: "He was one of my favourite actors. He was absolutely impeccable with every line.

"You could give him all sorts of convoluted speech and he never made a fluff. A wonderful actor and a very nice man."

Last of the Summer Wine producer Alan J W Bell added: "He was perhaps the best of the Summer Wine third men' - he was the most loved of all the characters.

"He was a fine actor to work with, very professional. He was an old school actor - you turned up, knew your lines and played them the very best you could.

"He had an enormous warmth to the public when he was off the set."

Wilde's TV credits also included the children's series The Ghosts of Motley Hall in the 1970s and comedy Kit Curran a decade later.

Wilde, who lived in Ware, Hertfordshire, joined Last of the Summer Wine as the pompous ex-army corporal Walter "Foggy" Dewhurst for its third series in 1976.

Foggy, seen returning home after being retired from the Army, went on to inject military precision into the madcap adventures he shares with Compo and Clegg.

He left in 1985 but rejoined in 1990 and remained until 1997.

Wilde once described his Summer Wine character as pompous but "basically very silly".

In 1973, Wilde starred in an episode of Seven of One, a series of individual stories starring Barker.

Wilde played Mr Barrowclough, a prison warder tasked with escorting Norman Stanley Fletcher, played by Ronnie Barker, across the moors to his prison.

The episode proved popular and a series, called Porridge, was commissioned by the BBC.

Wilde reprised his role as the kindly but gullible Mr Barrowclough and Porridge ran from 1974 until 1977.