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Just over a decade after retiring, Barker was persuaded to make occasional appearances on TV again.

In 1997 he appeared with Corbett at the Royal Command Performance, driving on stage in a motorcycle as the Two Fat Ladies, and in 1999 he was reunited with Corbett for Two Ronnies Night on BBC One, and the following year for A Tribute to the Two Ronnies.

In 2002, director Richard Loncraine persuaded Barker to appear as Winston Churchill's butler David Inches in the BBC-HBO drama The Gathering Storm and then cast him in the larger role of the General in the TV film My House in Umbria in 2003, alongside Maggie Smith ( whom he had, early in their careers, advised to give up acting as he felt she would not be a success ).

In the same year, he briefly reprised his role as Norman Stanley Fletcher in the spoof documentary Life Beyond the Box.