Barrymore and his siblings were raised in the Roman Catholic faith of their Irish mother, Margaret. His father left when Barrymore was 11 and they never saw each other again. Barrymore was the subject of police investigations and legal action around the case over several years.īorn Michael Ciaran Parker in Bermondsey, he lived on the Dickens estate for the first 18 years of his life with his two elder siblings. He starred in Bob Martin from 2000 to 2001, a comedy drama in which he played the title role of a failing television game-show host.īarrymore's television career effectively ended after the death of Stuart Lubbock in 2001 following a party at Barrymore's house in Essex. After his peak of popularity in the mid-1990s, Barrymore appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and other shows including The Friday Night Project, Graham Norton's Bigger Picture, This Morning, The Sharon Osbourne Show and The Saturday Night Show. In 1993, he headlined the Royal Variety Performance.Īt his peak, Barrymore was voted the UK's favourite television star several times, and became one of the highest-paid stars on television from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s. These included Strike It Lucky, My Kind of People, My Kind of Music, Kids Say the Funniest Things, and his own variety show, Barrymore. Michael Ciaran Parker (born ), known by his stage name Michael Barrymore, is an English actor, comedian and television presenter of game shows and light entertainment programmes on British television in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

Royal by Anthea Sharp