FANS of the English film and television actor, Barry Evans, (right) will be saddened by the news of his death last week, in his home in Leicester. Evans, who was 52, was brought up in a Dr Barnardo's home in Twickenham and while still in his teens won a John Gielgud Scholarship to train at the Central School of Speech and Drama. When he was 21, he enjoyed his first big break when he appeared in Spring Awakening at the Royal Court, followed a year later by Chips With Everything on Broadway.

In the early 1960s Barry Evans worked at the Nottingham Playhouse and spent a year with the National Theatre while acting in films - among them Lindsay Anderson's The White Bus - and television series. He was perfectly cast in the central role of Clive Donner's 1968 Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, one of the key "Swinging London" movies of the period, in which he brought a refreshing charm to the role of a young man intent on losing his virginity.