Tom Owen

Tom Owen, born Thomas William Stevenson Rowbotham on 8 April 1949, was a British actor who worked across theatre, television, and film over the course of a career spanning more than five decades. He died on 7 November 2022, at the age of 73, and is buried at St John the Evangelist Churchyard in Upperthong, West Yorkshire, alongside his father and Last of the Summer Wine co-star Peter Sallis.

Owen began his professional training in 1966 as a student assistant stage manager at the Leatherhead Theatre, subsequently building a substantial career in repertory work as both an actor and director. His stage work encompassed a wide range of productions, including appearances in the West End in the Lulu plays by Wedekind and more than twenty pantomimes. He portrayed Krapp in a production of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape directed by Fiona Baddeley, a performance that drew comparisons to those given by Michael Gambon, John Hurt, and Harold Pinter. In 1974, Owen appeared on Broadway as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in its production of London Assurance.

His television career began in 1968 with a role as Bill Cowan in Southern TV's Freewheelers, in which he appeared in fifty-two episodes. A long list of series followed, among them Z-Cars, Upstairs Downstairs, Minder, The Bill, Our Mutual Friend, The Piglet Files, The Hello Goodbye Man, Tottering Towers, Wreckers at Deadeye, and Horse in the House. He also appeared opposite Kirk Douglas in the television film Queenie, with Michael York in Great Expectations, and alongside David Hemmings in Unman, Wittering and Zigo.

Owen was the son of Bill Owen, who portrayed William "Compo" Simmonite in the long-running BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine across 184 episodes over twenty-seven years. Tom first appeared in the series in 1991, playing a bank customer in the episode "Situations Vacant." Following his father's death, he joined the cast as a regular in 2000, playing Tom Simmonite, the son of his father's character, and remained with the show for 93 episodes until it concluded in 2010.

His film work included the role of schoolboy Farley in Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1969, a part originally played by John Mills. He also appeared in two films released in 2018, The Bromley Boys and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Owen married Mary Bernadette Therese Moylan in 1978, and the couple had two sons, James and William.