Tributes from across the county have been paid to comedian Ronnie Barker who died at his Oxfordshire home on Monday.

Ronnie Barker is picture filming an episode of 'The Two Ronnies' in Woodstock in 1973

As reported in the final edition of yesterday's Oxford Mail, the 76-year-old, of Dean, near Chipping Norton, died at home with his wife Joy by his side.

The comedian, who was watched by 17 million viewers in The Two Ronnies, and starred in Open All Hours and Porridge, spent his childhood in Cowley Road.

It was at Donnington Junior School that he first discovered a talent for entertaining friends with jokes. He was later taught at the City of Oxford High School.

The father-of-three began his career at the Oxford Playhouse in repertory theatre in the early 1950s.

His television career spanned four decades, and earned him an OBE and three Bafta awards, but he retired to the Oxfordshire countryside in 1987 to run an antiques shop, The Emporium, in Chipping Norton.

Tish Francis, director of Oxford Playhouse, said: "I was glad to have had the chance to meet him when he returned to the Playhouse stage -- one he held with such great affection -- to film for Channel 4 a couple of years ago."

The actor appeared in a host of plays at the Playhouse, including To The Island, A Cuckoo in the Nest, Listen to the Wind and Cinderella."

The mayor of Chipping Norton, Don Davidson, said Mr Barker's death was a 'sad loss', both to the town, to the nation and the world of comedy.

"I am obviously very shocked and saddened to hear the news," he said.

"He was a very, very nice man and whenever I met him, which I did on several occasions, I found the geniality that came across on television was very much part of him in real life."

Don Chapman, the Oxford's Mail's drama critic between 1959 and 1994, said: "I first saw Ronnie Barker when he was Ronald Barker, an actor with the Oxford Playhouse in the early 1950s.

"Nobody in those days expected he would become a top comedian. They saw his future as a character actor.

"It was very significant that when the young Peter Hall took over the Playhouse, Ronnie Barker was one of the two actors he retained from Frank Shelley's existing company."

"He was astonishingly good. I particularly remember his performance as the central character in Jean Anouilh's Point of Departure, in which he played an accordion.

"I also remember a Christmas pantomime in which he sang The Tapioca Song, which was the first of those tongue-twisting ditties with which he later delighted TV audiences in The Two Ronnies."

A recorded welcome message from Fletcher, Ronnie Barker's character in the classic television comedy Porridge, welcomes new inmates to Bullingdon Prison.

Last year, Ronnie Barker was also one of several celebrities who donated money towards a new swimming pool at Charlbury Primary School.