Mollie Sugden

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 20:51

Actress

Born: 21 July, 1922, in Keighley, West Yorkshire.

Died: 1 July, 2009, in Guildford, Surrey, Surrey, aged 86.

AS MRS Slocombe, the blue, purple or pink-rinsed, battleaxe shop assistant in the long-running TV sitcom Are You Being Served?, Mollie Sugden became something of a national treasure. The ladies separates and underwear department of Grace Bros department store was the perfect stage for her, in her ruffles and faux posh accent, to spout a steady stream of saucy innuendos, mostly about her beloved cat – "my little pussy".

Sugden's face was among the most instantly recognisable in the nation during the show's run from 1972-85, and in the 1990s she became a cult figure on the other side of the Atlantic – notably among the gay community – after repeats were shown in the United States on Friday nights. The latter success had much to do with the memorably camp Mr Humphries, Mrs Slocombe's counterpart in menswear, with his catchphrase "I'm free!", played by John Inman, who died in 2007.

As well as the show's early great scripts, Sugden's comedy timing and her willingness to engage in slapstick were major factors in the programme's acclaim. We all knew someone like Mrs Slocombe in our local department store – whether in Edinburgh, Glasgow or elsewhere, the accent moving up a class or two while serving but resorting to the vernacular/vulgar once the customer was out the door.

And then, of course, there was the hair. For the first season, Sugden dyed it a different colour for each episode, until her twin boys expressed embarrassment over her rainbow-coloured coiffure when she picked them up from school. She then persuaded the BBC to fork out for wigs.

Seven years after the end of the series, she reprised the role of Betty Slocombe in the follow-up sitcom, Grace & Favour, in which the Grace Bros staff inherited a countryside manor.

Mary Isobel Sugden was born in 1922 in Keighley, West Yorkshire, where she recalled hearing a local woman crack up her audience by reading a funny poem at a village fete. "I realised how wonderful it was to make people laugh," she said, something that motivated her throughout her career.

She had just left school when the Second World War broke out and she helped make weapons for the Royal Navy in a local munitions factory. After the war, she enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she first found herself bending her Yorkshire vowels to fit in with her southern peers.

Although she will always be Mrs Slocombe to most viewers of a certain age, Sugden appeared in numerous other sitcoms, initially as another battleaxe, Mrs Hutchinson, in The Liver Birds in the late 1960s and early 70s. She was later the housekeeper Ida Willis in That's My Boy (1981-86) and played opposite her real-life husband, William Moore, in My Husband and I (1987-88). Moore, whom she described as the love of her life, became better known as Cyril Turpin in Coronation Street and as Ronnie Corbett's father in Sorry!, famously putting the term "Language, Timothy!" into the national lexicon.

With occasional appearances herself on "Corrie", as Nellie Harvey, landlady of The Laughing Donkey, she invariably crossed tongues with Annie Walker (Doris Speed) of The Rover's Return.

Also in demand as a serious character actress, she appeared in such drama series as Z Cars and The Bill, and as Mrs Goddard in the 1972 TV mini-series Emma, based on the Jane Austen novel. Her national popularity won her a spot as co-presenter of the pro-consumer series That's Life, alongside Esther Rantzen, in 1986.

To younger viewers, the name Mollie Sugden might most be identified with the TV series Little Britain, in which a character called Liz (David Walliams) is obsessed with having been "Mollie Sugden's bridesmaid". In the final episode of the first series, Sugden herself made a cameo appearance, saying someone else had been her bridesmaid, prompting "Liz" to throw a knife at her back.

Shortly before he died, John Inman compared Sugden with the great American comedienne Lucille Ball. "Like Lucy, she was never afraid to do anything, whether it be to act or dress downright silly, or to take a pie in the face," he said.

Until her husband's death and her subsequent poor health slowed her down, Sugden was famed, well into her seventies, for driving fast cars, including Porsches and Mercedes. Her twin sons recall a time when a police patrol car flagged down her Rolls-Royce doing close to 100mph on the M1 at the peak of her fame. "You should have seen their faces when Mrs Slocombe rolled down the window."

Sugden's husband, whom she married in 1958, died in 2000. Friends said she was never the same thereafter. She is survived by their sons, Robin and Simon Moore, who were at her bedside when she died.