Kenneth Cope Dies: British Actor Who Starred In ‘Coronation Street’ & ‘Randall And Hopkirk’ Was 93
British actor Kenneth Cope, a popular TV and film star in the 1960s and ’70s thanks to leading appearances in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and Coronation Street, has died. He was 93.
Cope’s former agent Sandra Chalmers, of The Artists Partnership, announced that he died at his home in the northern seaside town of Southport in Sefton, Liverpool, the area where he was born in 1931.
Renny Lister, Cope’s wife of 63 years, and family m
embers, including actor daughter Martha Cope, were by his side. He is also survived by children Nick and Mark.
Chalmers said Cope was an “incredible icon of British TV & film.” Cope and Lister met in 1961 when they both joined the cast of long-running ITV soap Coronation Street. He played petty crook Jed Stone as a semi-regular through the early and mid-1960s. He later returned to the role after an absence of 42 years.
He honed his craft in repertory with the Bristol Old Vic and made his first appearance on television in 1952, playing a musician in a TV film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona as a musician. The camera liked him and he performed a string of roles throughout the 1950s.
The sixties proved to be a breakthrough decade for him with the double whammy of him playing in Coronation Street and, starting in 1962, appearing for a year with David Frost, Millicent Martin, Roy Kinnear, David Kernan, Willie Rushton, and Lance Percival on This Was The Week That Was, a seminal late-night satirical show that aimed its sharp wit at the establishment.