[Deathwatch] Mollie Sugden, actress, 86

[Deathwatch Central]

Actress Mollie Sugden has died at the age of 86, her agent has said.

The TV star, best known for playing Mrs Slocombe in long-running BBC
sitcom Are You Being Served?, died at the Royal Surrey Hospital after a
long illness.

The Yorkshire-born actress's twin sons, Robin and Simon Moore, were at
her bedside, agent Joan Reddin said.

David Croft, one of the writers of Are You Being Served?, remembered
her as a "marvellous character" who would never turn down chances to
make people laugh.

"She would never refuse any sort of comedy situation no matter how
undignified it was she would always go along with it. She was
marvellously funny," he said.

'Lovely person'

Actor Frank Thornton, who played Captain Peacock in the sitcom, told
the BBC she was part of a very happy team.

"We all enjoyed each other's company, which, if you're doing comedy, is
rather necessary," he said.

"You can't play comedy with people you dislike. Mollie, of course, was
an excellent comedian."

Mollie Sugden had a long and successful acting career

Ms Reddin, who began representing Sugden in the 1960s, said the actress
had become a "very close friend".

"She had had a long illness and various problems but it was very quick
in the end. Her twin boys were with her and she faded away.

"She was a lovely, lovely person and I never had any trouble with her.
She was a great professional."

Sugden, who lived in Surrey, was married to fellow actor William Moore.


But she never fully recovered from his death nine years ago, Ms Reddin
said.

"They were very much in love. She started to go down when he died."

Born in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in 1922, Sugden attended the local
grammar school before training at the Guildhall School of Music and
Drama.

She went on to serve a long apprenticeship in repertory theatre before
television gave her a taste of fame - and it was while treading the
boards in 1956 that she met her husband.

Sugden starred alongside Wendy Richard in Are You Being Served?

They married two years later, when she was 35 and he was 39. Their twin
sons were born six years later.

Sugden found early TV success with comedy series Hugh and I in 1962 and
in Coronation Street as the gossiping Nellie Harvey.

But it was The Liver Birds in the late 1960s and early 1970s that
enabled her to make her first real impact, as Nerys Hughes' snobbish
mother Mrs Hutchinson.

And then in 1972 came Are You Being Served? and the role she became
best known for - the blue-rinsed Betty Slocombe, with her affectation
of middle-class gentility and her outrageous use of the
double-entendre.

Sugden went on to have her own slot on consumer programme That's Life
and even found new fame in the US where re-runs of Are You Being
Served? transformed both Sugden and co-star John Inman into cult
figures in the early 1990s. 

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary