FRIEL Life Remembered: Bill Owen...

William John Owen Rowbotham, MBE, better known as Bill Owen, was an English actor and songwriter. He was born in London on March 14, 1914 and died in Westminster, London on July 12, 1999.

Owen was a squat, square-chinned, wide-eyed and pugnacious exponent of outspoken cockney comedy and wary northern humour in scores of films and plays for more than half a century.

The character for which Owen will be best remembered was first seen on British television in 1973 and endured through the 1980s and 1990s - that of the scruffy, cheerful, woolly-hatted vulgarian named Compo in Roy Clarke's series, Last of the Summer Wine.

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