I think most of us forgot that he is actually an actor,..and isn't the character we watched him portray on "Starsky and Hutch".

Just goes to show you how we can so easily get fiction and reality blurred.

Let's be honest,...hardly any of us had a clue what he was really like did we?
But no matter how detatched and objective we felt we were, we still brought a bit of what we had seen of a fictional TV character to his personality didn't we?.

Antonia Fargas is probably more like Richard Briers or some other "nice" English actor, than he is to "Huggy Bear" in reality.

But in a strange sort of way, he is probably more a legend for being so different to Huggy Bear than if he was as similar to Huggy, as some of us felt he might have been. Because it shows what an excellent actor he must have been.

We take to people/stars who are more like us and as down-to-earth as can be, and Antonio is a perfect example of that. He truly loves this country and South London is his second home, just as David Soul, his co-star in S & Hutch is/or applying to be a British citizen after living here for many years to get away from the Hollywood lifestyle that was killing him.

Calling him Huggy is a measure of respect we still reserve for him for his humility and accessibility.