[5] Royle played the hotel guest who dies in his room in the Fawlty Towers episode "The Kipper and the Corpse".
(replacing Jack Haig, who had portrayed Ernest's brother Roger),[7] and had a supporting role in a remake of Indiscreet (1988) and a new BBC version of a Lord Peter Wimsey story.
[10] He specialised in absent minded characters and used his acrobatic skills to fall down stairs and immediately get up again as if nothing had happened.
[11] Theatre critic Michael Coveney called him "simply one of the funniest men on the English stage".
[12] Royle died from cancer at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London on 23 January 1990, aged 61.