Gary Sparrow

Gary Sparrow is the fictional main character in the long-running TV sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart which lasted from 1993 to 1999 and ran for six series with a special one off episode airing in 2016. The character is portrayed by Nicholas Lyndhurst, most famous as Rodney Trotter from Only Fools and Horses.

Biography
In the first episode of the first series it is revealed that Gary Sparrow is a somewhat bored TV repair man living in 1990s London, in the area of Cricklewood. He currently married to Yvonne, who is a sterotypical power woman of the time and corporate minded yet socially and environmentally aware. While he is out on a TV repair job he finds himself in an unfamiliar part of the East End and asks a policeman for directions. Unknown to him, this is actually the grandson of PC Reg Deadman - one of the first characters Gary meets when he first stumbles across the time portal that leads him back to 1940s London of yesteryear. There, he also meets Phoebe Bamford and her father Eric who run the local pub - The Royal Oak. The first time Gary enters the Royal Oak, he thinks its some 1940s themed pub, but it is only when an air raid occurs that he realises he's travelled back in time. Once discovering that he can get back to the present, Gary begins making regular visits back to the forties and ends up having an affair with Phoebe - who at the time is still married to Donald Bamford - a British soldier serving in the Second World War. Gary's only modern day best friend is Ron Wheatcroft - who is married to Stella - and he is able to confide in him about his travels as they get more complicated, such as when he and Phoebe get married or when she has his baby, a son called Michael. Because Ron is a printer, Gary is able to get him to replicate white fivers - the money used at the time - and other items such as ration or identity cards although this ends up eventually being responsible for Ron's marriage disintergrating as the series continues. Ron also helps him to come up with excuses to explain to Yvonne where he's been when travelling back in time to the past. Because he is from the future, Gary is able to tell people about when certain wartime events are going to happen. In one episode, Is Your Journey Really Nescessary? he darts back to warn Pheobe, Reg and Eric when an air raid is going to happen. Instead of telling any of them that he's from the future - he instead claims he's a secret agent and in another episode that also he's going to America. Gary also plays classic songs on the piano - for example, When I'm Sixty-Four and pretending he wrote them. In reality, he's just an ordinary bloke living in another time and married to another woman and actually also committing fraud. Neither Phoebe (who was ill in hospital and unconcious when Gary tried to tell her) or Reg (who was drunk when Gary tried to tell him) find out that Gary is a time traveller from the future. In the final episode, Accentuate the Positive, the time portal closes for good, leaving him trapped in the past permanently with Phoebe, son Michael and Reg. Thus Gary and Yvonne are seperated, with his best friend Ron having to tell her the whole truth in 1999.