Norman Painting

Norman Painting OBE
Star on Walk of Stars, Broad Street, Birmingham
Born	23 April 1924(1924-04-23) Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England
Died	29 October 2009(2009-10-29) (aged 85) Warmington, Warwickshire, England

Norman Painting, OBE (23 April 1924 – 29 October 2009) was an actor who played Phil Archer in the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers since the pilot episodes were aired on the BBC Midlands Home Service in summer 1950. The series went national on 1 January 1951. At the time of his death he was the longest-serving member of the cast, his last episode being recorded two days before he died. His last recording session was first broadcast on 22 November 2009. According to Guinness World Records he held the world record for an actor playing a continuous role.

Painting, a graduate of The University of Birmingham and Christ Church, Oxford was already an interviewer, writer and broadcaster before he first appeared as Philip in The Archers. He first became a script writer for the series in 1967, following in the footsteps of Edward J. Mason, Geoffrey Webb, David Turner and John Keir Cross. He wrote in his memoir of the programme, Forever Ambridge (Ambridge is the name of the fictional West Midlands village in which the programme is set) that he believed that Geoffrey Webb, who had died some time before, was guiding his hand as he wrote. He penned about 1,200 episodes under the pseudonym Bruno Milna. Artistic disagreements with a then editor, plus a general disillusionment with the BBC management, meant that he decided to retire from writing scripts in 1982 and to stick to just performing them.

The character of Phil Archer developed from the lusty young romantic lead of the early episodes into a father and grandfather. Perhaps his most famous moment occurred on 22 September 1955, when his wife, Grace Archer, was killed while trying to rescue a horse, Midnight, from a burning barn.

Phil, like his father, Dan Archer, before him, became a senior figure in the series, almost a village patriarch. He survived Painting by four months, dying peacefully in February 2010.

In 2000, Painting stated he was suffering from bladder cancer. He was a bachelor who lived alone. He died from heart failure in his cottage in Warmington, Warwickshire on October 29, 2009.

He was the subject of a programme in the TV series This Is Your Life in 1991.

External links

• BBC Biography
• Norman Painting at the Internet Movie Database
• Norman Painting - The Daily Telegraph obituary