G-g-g-g-granville, fetch yer cloth! One of the late Ronnie Barker’s favourite comic characters, tight-fisted store owner Arkwright from 80s BBC sitcom Open All Hours, has been voted the nation’s favourite TV shopkeeper in a new poll conducted by payment network Paypoint.Arkwright, famous for his stutter, brown overcoat and excessive penny pinching, topped an online survey of more than 1,000 people. Open All Hours ran from 1976 to 1985 and co-starred David Jason as Arkwright’s half-Hungarian nephew Granville and Linda Baron as Nurse Gladys Emmanuel, the never quite attainable object of the aging Arkwright’s affections.
Trailing in Arkwright’s wake were a host of well-loved store-owning comedy and soap characters. Second place in the poll went to Simpsons fave Apu, owner of Springfield’s Kwik-E-Mart. He was followed in third place by much missed Coronation Street cult hero Reg Holdsworth, played by Ken Morley who starred in the Weatherfield soap from 1989 to 1995.
Reg was just one of three Corrie characters to make the Top 10. Dev Alahan, played by melodramatic master Jimmi Harkishin, placed fourth while Street perennial Rita Sullivan was rewarded for her years of long service on the Street after her work at The Kabin earned her ninth place.
Possibly the most terrifying addition to the Top 10 was the League of Gentlemen characters Tubbs and Edward Tattsyrup, the husband and wife (and possibly brother and sister) responsible for running Royston Vasey’s local shop. Despite the string of outsiders they murdered and the fact that they were hit by a train on an ill-feted sojourn to London, the pair claimed tenth position in the Paypoint poll.
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