Roger Lloyd-Pack RIP

Playwright and campaigner David Wilson pays tribute to the life of Roger Lloyd-Pack who died yesterday. Roger was a committed socialist, a supporter of Left Unity and was also a founding signatory of the People’s Assembly movement set up last year.

Best known for his role as ‘Trigger’ in ‘Only Fools and Horses’, Roger Lloyd-Pack was such a distinguished actor he was never out of work. His roles covered stage and film as well as TV; from Kafka in Alan Bennett’s ‘Kafka’s Dick’ to Osip in Chekhov’s ‘Wild Honey’ to Barty Crouch in ‘Harry Potter’.

I first met Roger twenty years ago when he supported the work of a charity I was involved with at the time of the Bosnian war. In more recent years he was an active supporter of the anti-war movement and when I helped organise fundraising events at the Stop the War Coalition Roger said yes to all requests for help that came his way. When I called him up his only question was ‘what would you like me to do?’ For such a busy actor this always amazed me.

The last time I met him was when he used his acting talent to perform in ‘The Trainer’, a play which raised money for the Gaza music school, destroyed in the Israeli attacks in 2009.

He had been a supporter of the Labour Party, but last year was one of the signatories to a letter in The Guardian supporting Ken Loach and the formation of Left Unity. He died on 15 January aged 69, from pancreatic cancer.

Our condolences to his family