Robin Ramsay (actor)

Robin Ramsay (born 31 May 1937 in Melbourne) is an Australian television, film and stage actor. He is the grandson of Kiwi shoe polish founder William Ramsay and father of Robina Ramsay, an internationally ranked dressage rider, and Dr Tamasin Ramsay.

Ramsay studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1957. He worked briefly for the BBC then returned to Australia. He joined the fledgling Union Theatre Company in Melbourne, whose members included Zoe Caldwell and Barry Humphries. He starred in the first Adelaide Festival in 1960, in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl.

He went to the United States in 1961 and joined the Theatre Company of Boston. He then toured the country in The National Repertory Theatre, with Eva Le Gallienne and Faye Emerson.

In 1964 he took the role of Fagin in the hit musical Oliver! on Broadway, a role he played for a further two years in New York, followed by a record-breaking national tour. He shared the bill with the Beatles, singing a song from the musical in a subsequently memorable edition of The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1966 Ramsay recreated his role of Fagin for a West End revival of Oliver!, with Marti Webb as Nancy.

Returning to Australia, Ramsay's role as Charlie Cousens, the dodgy real estate agent in Bellbird, Australia's first successful television soap opera, garnered him considerable public notice. A regular character on the show from August 1967, Ramsay decided to leave in May 1968 to take the role of Fagin in a Japanese stage production of Oliver!.

When the show's producers decided to kill off his character, staging what has been described as "one of the most-watched and best-remembered moments in Australian TV history", fans wrote protesting his death and even sent flowers to his funeral.

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