You won't believe the career of Richard Wilson - One Foot in the Grave to playing head of ITV

The height of showing you're a good sport in acting is to appear on a different show sending up your TV persona. And therefore Richard Wilson has to be up there as someone with a strong sense of the ridiculous.

He famously won't say his immortal line "I don't believe it!" unless he is getting a small fee for a charity event, however, he was probably getting a larger fee when he appeared on Father Ted in 1998 under the episode The Mainland.

Richard Wilson was the ultimate grumpy man in the BBC darkly-comic show One Foot in the Grave. This spawned various rip-offs and was made into the crux of one of the Irish comedy's themes. "Do you know what he'd love?" asks Father Ted Crilly to Father Dougal McGuire. "He'd love it if somebody came up to him and said his catchphrase.""Oh, yeah, Ted! He'd love that! You should definitely do that."

In real life, we can imagine Richard Wilson, a Scottish actor from Greenock, would happily never hear this catchphrase ever again, although it did make him a much-loved household name during the early to mid-1990s.

Set in an unnamed town in southern England Victor takes involuntary early retirement. His various efforts to keep himself busy while encountering various misfortunes and misunderstandings are the themes of the sitcom. His on-screen long-suffering but devoted wife, Margaret, played by Annette Crosbie, was another loveable character that made the BBC show such a favourite for viewers.

And now, the screen star, 86, will play the Head of ITV in a brand new murder mystery mini-series called Murder At Bigwig Manor.

Richard is set to make his TV return for Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway this weekend (4 March 2023). He was seen in the teaser clip being pushed in a wheelchair as he got into character.

The actor has taken on a huge range of TV, film and stage roles in his career, most recently lending his voice to Mr. Capulet in the film Sherlock Gnomes (2018), a drama series called Around the World in 80 Days (2021) and playing the headmaster in Forty Years On, a play by Alan Bennett (2017).

He was set to reprise his role as Victor Meldrew in 2016 in a one-man show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe but had a heart attack beforehand.

Wilson has long been a campaigner for gay rights and has appeared at many events for groups such as Stonewall UK.

You can watch Richard at his grumpy best on BBC iPlayer or Amazon Prime. And he will be on ITV’s Saturday Night Takeaway at 7pm on Saturday 4 March 2023.