David Kernan dead: Carry On star dies aged 85 as tributes paid to TV legend with ‘truly fantastic career’
TRIBUTES are pouring in for a TV legend who has died aged 85.
David Kernan is best known for his time in Carry On Abroad, but was said to have had a "truly fantastic career" outside the comedy.
The 85-year-old is said to have "passed away peacefully".
A post shared to his Twitter/X today read: "It is with the heaviest of hearts to announce that dear David has passed away peacefully.
"In this time of such sadness, we shall think of the wonderful man he was, and the truly fantastic career that he had on stage, and on screen."
The star died on Boxing Day.
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Kernan was known as an interpreter of the songs of Stephen Sondheim, but also appeared in stage musicals and variety shows throughout the 1960s and '70s.
In 1977 he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical.
The nomination came after his appearance in the original Broadway cast of Side by Side by Sondheim.
The Stephen Sondheim Society, which Kernan was a patron of, also paid tribute to him.
Mandy Dixon, former chair of the society, wrote: “David was a lovely, witty, man whose singing and championship of Sondheim's work was second to none.
"In the many Sondheim workshops that the Society ran at the Theatre Museum in the late 1990s, he generously gave his expertise in performing Sondheim to young actors who are now household names.
“He also raised huge sums of money for AIDS charities by putting on one-night musical theatre reviews, at a time when this was not a popular cause.
“I think, though, that my best memory of him was of him and his leather-clad companion getting steadily drunker and merrier at a Sondheim celebration aftershow party.”
