Couplinger Sarah Alexander’s former lover Gerald Harper dies 96 years while a tribute flows in for Hadleigh actor

Couplinger Sarah Alexander’s former lover Gerald Harper died at the age of 96.

The actor was known to the TV audience from the 60s and 70s as the Suave star of Hadleigh, and Before that, Adam Adamant Lives!, An Edwardian Lord who is being pushed into London in the swinging 1960s.

CDM Talent Agency confirmed the sad news in a statement on social media on Friday.

They wrote: ‘It is with great sadness that Gerald Harper has recently passed away – he was a valued customer before he went Spain To enjoy his retirement. ‘

Sarah, 54, was only 25 when she was first seen dating Gerald Harper, then 68, in 1996.

A passer -by told The Sunday People of Alexander and Harper: ‘They were super glowed together! They were all over each other and didn’t care who she saw.

“Funny enough, the young lady made a lot of running and he kept grabbing him to kiss him French – it was a whole exhibition.”

When Sarah, whose big TV break would come in combination with Jack Davenport in 2000, moved to Harper in his big Notting Hill House, the eyebrows of friends were lifted, especially because she is eight years younger than the daughter of her new friend, confusing Sarah.

But they refused to stand in the way of the generation gap. Friends said Harper was ‘absolutely robbed’ when Sarah left him in 2002 for Amandaland star Peter Serafinowicz.

For his relationship with Sarah, Gerald was married to Carla Rabaiotti, a former Pan American Air Stewardess.

The couple, which later separated in 1983, shares a son.

Harper was previously married to actress Jane Downs from 1957 until they divorced in 1975. They share a daughter.

At the height of his fame, Harper was the most eligible bachelor of TV in ITV’s Hadleigh, who ran from 1969 to 1976.

He was perfectly cast as Urbane English Toff James Hadleigh, a rich, handsome Playboy who lived in a mansion in the West and led the local newspaper.

He said to the Express in 2006: ‘There was not much to look at then, so we had a huge audience.

‘However, the top brass at Yorkshire television did not think Hadleigh would work and placed us very late at night.

“When they realized that they were wrong, they apologized. I tore my contract and said, “Shall we start again?”

‘I not only received more money, I received the loan from a estate for a year complete with staff. I lived like a gentleman. It was very glamorous.

“I was a TV star on my own conditions and for the best part of 20 years I had virtually no day off.”

After his TV career, he returned to his most important love, the theater. His classical work includes playing on Broadway with the old Vic Company, who plays IAGO in the Bristol Old Vic and Benedick in the Chichester Festival Theater.

Age never stopped Harper, and when he approached his 75th birthday, he flew to the Masai Mara in a light plane and rode a horse over Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Park.

On the return bone the plan poured through a hedge and ended up on its side.

He remembered: ‘I turned to the pilot and said:’ Do not make any trouble with the next location, my good man. Just get me away here to Nairobi and the civilization! “Enough was enough. ‘

A former student at Haileybury Public School, he was originally planning to become a doctor, but caught the acting bug while he did his national service and won a place at Rada.