Ballard Blascheck (6 August 1904 – 16 January 1988),[1] known professionally as Ballard Berkeley,[a] was an English actor of stage and screen. He is best remembered for playing Major Gowen in the British television sitcomFawlty Towers.
Life and career
The son of Joseph and Beatrice Blascheck, he was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent.[1] He married Dorothy Long in Liverpool in January 1929.[2] During the 1930s, he performed regularly in the so-called "quota quickies". One of his earliest roles was as the heroic lead in the 1937 film The Last Adventurers.[3]
Berkeley is best known for the role of bumbling Major Gowen in the BBC TV comedy Fawlty Towers,[7][8] and a similar role in the legal drama The Main Chance (1969). He portrayed another retired military man (Colonel Freddie Danby) in BBC Radio 4's The Archers, taking over the role from Norman Shelley.
He made a brief appearance in the 1985 film National Lampoon's European Vacation which starred American actor Chevy Chase. In this film, Berkeley played a British man who is involved in a minor road accident with the Griswalds.
Berkeley later performed the role of Winston—a similar character to "The Major"—in the radio comedy Wrinkles by Doug Naylor and Rob Grant. He played Badedas the Blue, a wizard in the radio comedy series Hordes of the Things. His last role was as the Head of the Army in the animated film version of Roald Dahl's The BFG. Berkeley died in London on 16 January 1988, aged 83, and the film was released on 25 December 1989.
He rose to prominence posthumously in the 2020s as an icon of Hampshire Cricket Club, thanks to a scene in Fawlty Towers in which he joyfully announces, 'Hampshire won!' which the club would tweet to celebrate every victory.