Arkwright (Open All Hours) to be too small for the act. Arkwright and Gladys apparently never got married before Arkwright's death; Gladys claims he died to save the cost of the church. Arkwright (Open All Hours) Albert E. Arkwright, usually referred to simply as Arkwright, is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the British sitcom, "Open All Hours", played by Ronnie Barker. Arkwright is the uncle of Granville and the proprietor of an old fashioned Yorkshire corner shop, which in the era of the programme (1970s and 1980s) was a product of a bygone age. Arkwright's signature characteristic is his stutter, which
Ronnie Barker accepted on merit and not just because he, as a star of the programme, had written them; he continued this tradition with the material he wrote later in his career. Barker brought his sketches in, claiming they had come from Wiley through Barker's agent Peter Eade, and they were very well received. To maintain the deception, Barker had criticised material he himself had submitted under the pseudonym; when a Wiley-credited sketch about a ventriloquist had been poorly received by the audience Barker told Corbett "Well, Gerald Wiley let us down there", and on another occasion, when looking at a script,