Outrageous Fortune star Frank Whitten dies

Frank Whitten with his award for Best Supporting Actor at the 2007 Air New Zealand Screen Awards. Photo / Greg Bowker

Outrageous Fortune star Frank Whitten has died after a battle with cancer.

The 68-year-old, best known as senile ex-safecracker Grandpa Ted West on the hit TV3 show, boasted a career including the 1984 film Vigil.

Speaking on behalf of the Outrageous Fortune cast, Whitten's co-star and friend Robyn Malcolm said last night: "We feel deeply for Frank's family and our thoughts, love and grief are with them.

"We were Frank's screen family for only a few years but in that time we got to know him and adore him as a wicked, irreverent man of lethal wit, a heart of gold and one of the best actors we'll ever work with.

"We all respected him enormously but in good Outrageous spirit we treated him with the disrespect and irreverence he loved.

"Like his screen character he never said a lot but when he did, it mattered."

Theo Brunt, a long-time friend of Whitten, said he saw him four weeks ago. "He was in good spirits, but the cancer spread very quickly."

Mr Brunt said the actor was very different from his Outrageous Fortune character. "Everyone really liked the guy. He was a truly nice guy and had a very quirky sense of humour."

In 2007, Whitten's role as Grandpa won him a best supporting actor award at the Air NZ Screen Awards.

He said he believed the show was so successful because it "reflects a kind of fantasy, blue-collar New Zealand".

For 12 years, Whitten, as the classic "Southern Man" in the Speight's beer advertisements, wryly delivered the iconic "Good on ya, mate" line.

Whitten grew up in the Waikato in the 1950s and became interested in acting as a result of embellished stories his grandfather told him.

At 21, he moved to England - "with little experience and even less money" - to become an actor.

Over the next 18 years, he worked in a working-class children's theatre and as a tutor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

He also made his name on Australian TV, often as "nasty" characters.

Whitten played the enigmatic farmer in Vigil, which the Los Angeles Times hailed as "an extraordinary visual and psychological experience".

Since then Whitten worked in New Zealand and Australian television, including episodes of Erebus: The Aftermath, Gloss, City Life, cult-themed mini-series The Chosen, hospital series All Saints, and award-winning mini-series The Leaving of Liverpool.

His family are planning a private funeral service this week.