Portal:England/Selected biography/03 2008

Robert Lindsay (born 13 December 1949 in Ilkeston) is an award-winning English actor, best known for his role as Ben Harper in the British television series My Family. Born in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, the son of Norman and Joyce Stevenson, after leaving school, Lindsay enrolled in the drama department of a technical college in Nottingham, and intended to become a drama teacher. However, friends at Nottingham Playhouse encouraged him to apply to RADA, and in 1968 he was accepted there with the aid of a government grant. After he graduated, he took a job as a dialect coach for a repertory company in Essex, and then joined a regional theatre group

Lindsay first came to prominence as the cockney layabout Jakey Smith in ITV comedy series Get Some In!, and was then given the starring role as incompetent revolutionary Wolfie Smith in the BBC sitcom Citizen Smith. He followed this with roles in a number of the BBC Television Shakespeare productions, including Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, and as Edmund in King Lear opposite Lord Laurence Olivier in 1984. However it is notable he did take part in an obscure Radio 4 show, What Are You Talking About?, in the early 1980s between Television Shakespeare productions, in an attempt to establish a comedy career.