Bob Barker, long-time US TV game show host, dies at age 99

Barker, host of The Price Is Right from 1972 to 2007, won 19 Daytime Emmys and played a comic version of himself in the hit 1996 film Happy Gilmore

Barker gave millions of dollars to pro-animal causes, including US$5 million to stop Japanese whaling ships from killing whales off Antarctica

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American game show host Bob Barker waves goodbye as he tapes his final episode of The Price Is Right in 2007 aged 83. Barker has died at the age of 99. Photo: AP

Published: 2:13am, 27 Aug 2023Updated: 2:31am, 27 Aug 2023

Bob Barker, an affable fixture on US television for half a century who hosted the popular game show The Price Is Right for 35 years and was a committed animal rights activist, has died at age 99, NBC News and Fox reported on Saturday.

The silver-haired Barker, host of The Price Is Right from 1972 to 2007, won 19 Daytime Emmy awards, the top US television honours, and also was known for a memorable comic turn playing himself in the hit 1996 film Happy Gilmore, beating up a character played by Adam Sandler.

Barker died on Saturday morning of natural causes at his Hollywood Hills, California, home, his publicist Roger Neal said.

Barker gave millions of dollars to pro-animal causes, including donating US$5 million for a 1,200-ton ship named the Bob Barker that was operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to stop Japanese whaling ships from killing whales off Antarctica.

Bob Barker in Los Angeles in 2015. Barker criticised poultry producer Foster Farms after an animal-rights group released video showing chickens being shackled, punched and having their feathers pulled out while still alive. Photo: AP

The Price Is Right, in which contestants tried to guess the price of various consumer products and played a slew of games to win prizes, became a US pop culture institution on daytime television with the smooth-talking Barker at the helm for 6,586 episodes.