Robin Askwith was born 12th October, 1950 in Southport. He overcame a bout of polio as a child and attended the Merchants Taylor School in Rickmansworth from which he was expelled for a prank involving a robbery from a Post Office. Having shown an aptitude for performing in school stage productions he acquired an agent and became a professional actor, making his debut in the classic 1968 Lindsay Anderson film If....
For the first few years of his career he specialised in standard comedy roles, including an appearance in Carry on, Girls and the television sitcom Bless This House. In 1974 he had an unexpected career change when he starred in a cheap British sex comedy Confessions of a Window Cleaner which became the highest-grossing domestic picture of that year. Several sequels followed which established Asquith in the role of a cockney wide-boy caught in accidental "naughty" situations. He pursued this career on stage and in further television sitcoms including the almost-universally derided Bottle Boys which ran for two years starting in 1984 and which was written by former Coronation Street scriptwriter Vince Powell.
Askwith's CV does contain more conventional roles including a stage appearance in Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and the part of the Childcatcher in a production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
He appeared in Coronation Street as holiday representative Aidan in August 2007 when Steve McDonald and Eileen Grimshaw were on vacation on the island of Malta, and made a return to the programme in December 2013 as Ritchie de Vries, an old show business acquaintance of Dennis Tanner.