The Thick of It star and convicted pedophile Chris Langham has died aged 77 after a secret battle with the pancreas cancerwas unveiled today.
Langham, whose successful career on stage and screen ended when he was jailed for child abuse in 2006, died almost three months ago.
His second wife, theater director Chrissie, was by his side throughout. He is survived by her and their two children.
He also had three older children from his first marriage to actress Sue Jones-Davies. It is believed that everyone has supported him despite the scandal, as have his parents.
The actor and comedian was best known for his work BBC role of the hapless minister Hugh Abbott, who was mercilessly bullied and berated by Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi.
Langham was arrested days after winning the Bafta for Best Comedy Performance, the highlight of his career.
He has always maintained that he downloaded child abuse images as research for a comedy series he was writing and that he was not a pedophile, a claim rejected by police.
He later said his own “arrogance” and “ego” had led him to watch the abuse videos.
But the former star admitted the decision had ‘completely ruined my own life’.
‘It wasn’t circumstances. I don’t blame anyone or anything,” he said later.
Chris Langham, who won the Best Comedy Performance Bafta for The Thick of It, has died of cancer aged 77
Christine and Chris Langham at their home after his release from prison
His death was revealed today by The Times.
Born on April 14, 1949, he died of pancreatic cancer on June 24 of this year.
Langham, who started writing jokes for The Muppet Show and Spike Milligan, starred in the comedy sketch show Not The Nine O’Clock News.
His role as Roy Mallard in Radio 4’s parody People Like Us also became a cult classic and he also appeared on TV in the BBC’s Kiss Me Kate with Caroline Quentin in the early 1990s.
He really made a name for himself – and found critical success – in The Thick Of It.
Just days after winning one Bafta In 2006, Langham was charged in court with child abuse for his role in the political satire as bumbling Labor Minister Hugh Abbot.
He was charged with 15 counts of downloading indecent images, including clips showing the rape of a teenager and the sexual abuse of an eight-year-old.
During his trial, a juror became physically ill after seeing it.
He was sentenced to ten months in prison.
Despite his release from Elmley Prison in Kent after serving just three months in 2007, Langham’s acting career was effectively over.
He made several unsuccessful attempts to return to work, starring in two low-budget films, but they both bombed, and former friends and colleagues, including casting directors, shunned him.
Rejected by the showbiz world and out of work, Langham went down and withdrew from the public eye to his large family home in Cranbrook, Kent.
Langham told journalist Cole Moreton The Independent on Sunday: ‘I completely ruined my own life. They weren’t circumstances. I don’t blame anyone or anything.’
In his defense, he claimed he watched the content to help him understand his own past – and as research for a character in a psychotherapy comedy.
But Langham admitted: ‘That was foolish. And ultimately selfish. Arrogant.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to do this hard thing.’ But it had no respect for the children whose tragedies I was willing to witness.
“It was just driven by ego. Because then you would like to see me for raising this difficult subject and helping us all look at it differently [through comedy]. B*******.”
Before his fall from grace, he had managed to rebuild his career and family life after battling drink and drugs.
“My career consisted of being a drunk, working whenever I had five minutes to spare,” he told the Sunday Telegraph in 2005.
‘I was self-destructive. You don’t like yourself if you’re an alcoholic, and other people don’t like you either because your behavior is horrible. You are dishonest, unfaithful, full of self-pity.”
This behavior had cost him his first marriage.
His arrest came shortly after the pinnacle of his career, as the hapless minister Hugh Abbott in the BBC comedy The Thick of It
He also starred with Caroline Quentin in the BBC TV series Kiss Me Kate
Just weeks before he died, it was revealed that he made money during his retirement by renting out a cottage in the grounds of his large home.
The spacious home in Kent, suitable for up to six people, was available Airbnb from €250 per night.
His second wife, theater director, Chrissie, stood by him and supported him financially when his acting work dried up.
Langham’s working life would revolve around managing their properties.
He was a regular at his local gastropub.
A short drive away is a marina where he had a boat that he took out on the Channel.
A resident told the Daily Mail in June: ‘He is a nice man, always smiling and very funny. I don’t know much about his past, only that he was an actor and was once very famous. He now spends most of his time running the cottage. It is very popular with many guests and is busy all year round.’
Another resident said: ‘He’s a really nice man. I think he paid the price for what he did. You cannot continue to punish someone for their mistakes. And given what happened, he’s probably better off as an Airbnb host than returning to showbiz.”
Even before the scandal that ended his career, Langham never found fame easy.
After being chosen as a joke writer for Spike Milligan and The Muppet Show, Langham made his breakthrough with Not The Nine O’Clock News in 1979 – before being dropped for his excessive drinking.
He was replaced by Griff Rhys Jones for the second series, a blow that sent him into a cycle of drug and alcohol addiction.
He later said: ‘I couldn’t look at a newspaper for two years because whenever I saw a picture of Rowan [Atkinson]Pam [Stephenson] or Mel [Smith]I should go to Purdah for a week. I would burst into tears. I felt very ashamed.’
He added: ‘I didn’t know there was a series two.’
After checking into rehab and attending Alcoholics Anonymous, Langham landed his leading role in The Thick Of It – for which he was hailed as a ‘genius’.
But then everything collapsed. Weeks after season two aired, Langham was arrested by Kent Police on November 29, 2005, accused of downloading child sexual abuse images – including ‘level five’ material, the most extreme category.
Langham argued in court that he downloaded the graphic material as part of research into a sex offender role in the BBC series Help, which he wrote and co-starred in with Paul Whitehouse.
He also told the jury that he wanted to see images of child abuse because he was raped by a family friend as a youngster, and that he wanted to better understand what he had experienced.
During the police investigation, allegations emerged that he had groomed and repeatedly abused a 14-year-old girl who had come to see him ten years earlier in the musical Les Misérables – but he was acquitted of these charges.
The judge had emphasized: ‘Pedophilia is not an issue in this case – you are not a sexual predator.’
But a senior police officer who investigated Langham insisted to reporters outside court that he believed the actor was a pedophile.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Fotheringham, of Kent Police, said: ‘Langham doesn’t like the label but I am convinced he is a paedophile.’
A friend said before his death: ‘In a strange way it brought the family together because they had all been through a terrible time.
‘They are still very protective of Chris and have been through a lot, but it has made them very close and loving towards each other. It’s been a tough few years for Chris, but he has a lot of peace of mind and I think he is now enjoying the quiet country life and running his Airbnb.’
