Actor. Born in Ashton Under Lyne, near Manchester, the son of a Scottish builder and decorator. During his military service, he served as aide-de-camp to the Governor of Cyprus. After his discharge, he won a scholarship to RADA, but left after only eighteen months. Instead, he became the dresser to Sir Donald Wolfit (as did Ronald Harwood, later to write a play on this subject) and, in 1953, the understudy to Sir Noel Coward in Shaw’s “The Apple Cart”. Among his many roles in film and television were Apthorpe in Evelyn Waugh’s “The Sword of Honour” (1967), Leo Lockhart in Robert Aldrich’s “The Killing of Sister George”, over whom Beryl Reid throws her drink (1968) and Basil Allenby-Johnson, known as The Badger, in Roy Clarke’s “The Misfit” (1970), in which he played a rubber planter who returns from Malaya to find that England has changed in his absence. In 1956, Ronald Fraser married the actress Elizabeth Howe. They had two daughters, but divorced in 1964.   (bio by: Iain MacFarlaine) Cause of death: Internal haemorrhage