Benjamin J. Burke-Kennedy was born in Dublin on 3 May 1956, to Bernard Ernest Burke-Kennedy, an accountant, and Esther Nagle, who had married in Cork in 1938. Under his stage name Ben Keaton, he became a theatre actor. He appeared at the
Royal Exchange Theatre in
Manchester in
Animal Crackers,
American Buffalo,
Harvey, and
Cyrano de Bergerac, and played the role of David Bliss in
Noël Coward's
Hay Fever. Keaton also worked as a comedian, and had won the
Perrier Comedy Award at the 1986
Edinburgh Festival, two Manchester Evening News Best Actor Awards and a Laurence Olivier Nomination. He was a regular guest member with the Comedy Store Players, Keaton also set up a Twitter page for the character, and a website where fans can purchase customised Father Austin Purcell video greetings. In 2015, he set up Lincoln Comedy Academy with Paul Mutagejja to teach performing and writing comedy for stage and screen. His documentary series
The I Am Project records the lives of children who are moving from primary to secondary school and from secondary to further education, and has taken place in a variety of schools since 2008. The series has been admitted into the Media Archive of Central England. In 2017, he and his son, Waldo Fox Kennedy, set up Bracket Energy Media Production which produces video for business and specialises in online content. Keaton lived in
Alford in
Lincolnshire. He died in
Lincoln County Hospital in
Lincoln, on 20 March 2026, at the age of 69. ==Filmography==