Denise Coffey

Denise Coffey was born in 1936 in Aldershot. She began her career at the Gateway Theatre in Edinburgh. Her films include 1962’s “Waltz of the Toreadors” and “Far From the Maddning Crowd” with Julie Christie and Terence Stamp.

IMDB entry:

Denise trained at the College of Dramatic Art and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. She began her career in rep. at the Gateway Theatre in Edinburgh and then transferred to the Palladium Theatre, also in Edinburgh, where she appeared in various variety shows. She worked as an interviewer for BBC radio before finding work as an actress on the West End stage. Her theatre credits include West End productions of ‘High Spirits’, ‘The Beggars Opera’ and ‘Let’s Get a Divorce’ and numerous productions at the Mermaid Theatre. Denise appeared in the feature films “Waltz of the Toreadors”, “Georgy Girl” and “Far From the Madding Crowd” and made many television appearances, most notably the “Stanley Baxter” series, “Do Not Adjust Your Set”, “Captain Fantastic” and “Girls About Town”. Denise’s pastime interests include sea angling and playing the flute.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary P. Rose

Irish Times obituary in 2022:

Denise Coffey obituary: Comedy maven

Denise Coffey celebrates her birthday on the set of Do Not Adjust Your Set in December 1967. Photograph: Blandford/Mirrorpix/Getty

Sat Apr 2 2022 – 01:21

Born December 12th, 1936; Died March 24th, 2022

There have been few genuine clowns in theatre and television as good as Denise Coffey, who has died aged 85. She was a key TV presence in British comedy over its most redefining postwar period, and to see her on stage, always puckish and delightful, was to invest in two or three hours of an invaluable spiritual tonic.

She was a crucial member of the ebullient Young Vic company formed in London in 1970 under the aegis of the National Theatre at the Old Vic to deliver classics and new plays with regard to a younger audience. She had already, in the 1960s, played a series of classical and low-life roles at Bernard Miles’s Mermaid theatre in Puddle Dock.

She emerged at the Young Vic, under Frank Dunlop’s direction, trailing several film credits and a high profile in surreal TV comedy – notably in ITV’s Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967-69) – influenced by the radio comedy of the Goons and prefiguring Monty Python. She and David Jason formed the “legit showbiz” element in a company of university wits – Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, the producer Humphrey Barclay – with musical incursions from Vivian Stanshall’s delirious Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

There followed two popular series on ITV: Girls About Town (1970-71) in which she and the singer Julie Stevens were living it large in Acacia Avenue; and Hold the Front Page (1974), in which Coffey led a bunch of crazy newsroom assistants chasing down a “Mr Big” involved in a Great Rug Scandal. End of Part One (1979) was a satirical soap in which Mr and Mrs Straightman (Tony Aitken and Coffey as Norman and Vera) were disrupted in their domestic dullness by a panoply of famous people on TV; Coffey herself turned up as Robin Day in those trademark cruel glasses.

She was a total one-off: under 1.5m tall, elfin-looking, punchy and eccentric. In her private life, she was determinedly single, vegetarian and finally remote, especially after she discovered the joys of the West Country – she moved from London to Salcombe in Devon – and living by the sea.

Denise was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, the only child of Dorothy (nee Malcolm), and her husband, Denis Coffey, a proud Irishman from Cork and squadron leader in the RAF. They moved north to Dorothy’s native Scotland,where Denise was educated at Dunfermline high school and trained at the Glasgow College of Drama and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music.

She made a professional acting debut at the Opera House, Dunfermline, in 1954, “as various apparitions” in Macbeth. By 1962, she was playing the star turn, the word-mangling Mrs Malaprop, in Sheridan’s The Rivals at the Gateway in Edinburgh .

She had made her TV debut in 1959 in a BBC adaptation of Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet and consolidated her theatre reputation at the Mermaid in various classics and new plays.

She also featured in several important 60s films: as Peter Sellers’s eccentric daughter Sidonia Fitzjohn in John Guillermin’s Waltz of the Toreadors (1962); as Lynn Redgrave’s mousy little friend, Peg, in Georgy Girl (1966); and as Soberness in John Schlesinger’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates.

On location in Dorset for the last of these, she visited nearby Devon, where she would return to live permanently. But not before her Young Vic stint – as both actor and associate director – in the 70s.

She toured Europe and the US with the company, appearing with them at the Edinburgh festivals of 1967, 1971 and 1972, notably as a harassed Scottish housewife in a Comedy of Errors relocated from Ephesus to Edinburgh.

Her work on radio included guest appearances on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and Just a Minute, and two series by Sue Limb: The Wordsmiths of Gorsemere (1985-87), a very funny send-up of the Lakeland poets.

A 1980 film written by Stanshall, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, in which she played a tapeworm-obsessed woman called Mrs E, won cult status when issued on DVD in 2006. “It’s impossible to do justice,” said the critic Nigel Andrews, “to the film’s arrant and quite unique lunacy.” In the 80s, in Canada, she directed plays for John Neville at his Neptune theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and for Christopher Newton at the Shaw festival in Ontario.

Her output was increasingly sporadic as she happily hunkered down in Salcombe, “exploring my artistic bent”, fishing in a small boat with a tiny outboard motor, gardening and making rare excursions to London, always travelling by taxi.

She is survived by a cousin, Linda

Patricia Cutts was born in London in 1926. Her film debut was in “Just William’s Luck” in 1947. She amde “Merry Andrew” in 1958 with Danny Kaye and Pier Angeli. She was also in “North by Northwest” and “The Tingler”. In the early 70’s she returned to Britain and axted on British television. She had just been cast as Blanche Hunt, mother of Deirdre Barlow in “Coronation Street” when she died suddenly in 1974. She was replaced by Maggie Jones.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Born in London, Cutts was the daughter of the writer-director Graham Cutts.^[2] Her first roles were small parts in American films such as I Was a Male War Bride and The Man Who Loved Redheads and the television shows Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Perry Mason, where she played defendant Sylvia Oxman in the 1959 episode, “The Case of the Dangerous Dowager,” and murderer Ann Eldridge in the 1966 episode, “The Case of the Bogus Buccaneers.” She continued to work consistently in film and television on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 1950s, including a small appearance in North by Northwest. As a young actress in 1951, she appeared on Groucho Marx‘s quiz show You Bet Your Life with football coach Jack Curtice as her co-contestant.^[3] She was a regular panellist on the hit DuMont quiz Down You Go^[4] and starred alongside Vincent Price in The Tingler. In 1958 she appeared in the film Merry Andrew as Letitia Fairchild, however in the 1960s, her screen appearances were restricted to guest spots on television shows such as The Lucy Show, Car 54, Where Are You?, Adventures in Paradise, and Playhouse 90.

After several quiet years she returned to acting in the 1972 British television series Spyder’s Web^[5] before accepting the role of Blanche Hunt in the top rated ITV soap operaCoronation Street in 1974. It would have been her most high profile regular role to date. However, producers were shocked when, after appearing in only two episodes, Cutts was found dead at her London flat, aged 48. An inquest into her death produced a verdict of suicide by barbiturate poisoning.^[4] The role of Blanche Hunt was taken over by Maggie Jones, who played the part until her own death on 2 December 2009.^[6]

Heather Angel was born in 1909 in Oxford. She began her stage career in 1926 at the Old Vic. Her movie debut was in “City of Song” in 1931. By 1933 she was in Hollywood and made such films as John Ford’s “The Informer” with Victor McLaglan, “Pride and Prejudice”, “Lady Hamilton”, “Suspicion” for Alfred Hitchcock. One of her later films is the cult classic “The Premature Burial” from 1962 with Ray Milland, Richard Ney and Hazel Court. On television she was featured in the series “Peyton Place” and “Family Affair”. Heather Angel died in 1986 in Santa Barbara.

Her IMDB entry:

Heather Grace Angel was born in Oxford, England, on February 9, 1909. She dabbled on the stage for a time before coming to California to try her luck on the screen. Heather was 20 years old when she landed a bit part for the 1929 film, Bulldog Drummond(1929). Although she didn’t know it at the time, she would become a staple of that particular series eight years hence. That movie would be her only foray onto celluloid for two years. When Heather did return, she did so in 1931’s Night in Montmartre (1931). Not only did she land a part, but it was the leading role in the picture, starring as Annette Lefevre. Later that year, she again landed the leading role in the acclaimed The Hound of the Baskervilles (1932). Throughout the 1930s, Heather’s services were in high demand. She kept very busy in such productions as Men of Steel (1932), Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case (1933), Orient Express (1934), and Daniel Boone (1936). In 1937, she began playing Phyllis Clavering in the serial about Bulldog Drummond. Audiences delighted in catching the latest adventures of Drummond. After the last Drummond film,Arrest Bulldog Drummond (1939) in 1939, Heather went on her way in other films. Although she didn’t have the leading role, she did appear in top movies such as 1940’sKitty Foyle (1940) and Pride and Prejudice (1940) and in 1943’s Cry ‘Havoc’ (1943). AfterLifeboat (1944) in 1944, Heather wasn’t seen again on the silver screen until The Saxon Charm (1948) in 1948. As with other actresses, Heather’s time had come and gone. Her last appearance anywhere was in 1979’s television mini-series, Backstairs at the White House (1979) when she played President ‘Harry Truman”s mother-in-law. On December 13, 1986, Heather died in Santa Barbara, California, of cancer. She was 77 years old.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson

Her IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Daniel Boone, poster, US poster art, from top right: Heather Angel, George O’Brien, 1936. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Yvonne Buckingham was a beautiful actress who was featured in British films in the late 1950’s and into 1960’s. Her film debut was in 1957 in “Robbery Under Arms”. “Blood of the Vampire”, “Passport to Shame” with Diana Dors and “The Frightened City” with Sean Connery.

Jeremy Sinden was born in London in 1950. he was the son of the actor Sir Donald Sinden. He made his film debut in 1977 in “Star Wars” and followed with “Chariots of Fire” and “Madame Southeska. He sadly passed away in 1996.

His “Independent” obituary by Adam Benedick:

Jeremy Sinden was a chip off the old block: a bit of a buffoon; an able comedian; a stylish farceur; and a man of the theatre who did not disdain the bold touch, the emphatic gesture, and a sense of timing which took enough account of the audience sometimes to seem to outstare it. This relish for the stage was in the blood. As Donald Sinden’s elder son, Jeremy might have been tempted to take another theatrical tack since the risk of “oderous” comparisons was obvious. Certainly his parents, both actors, both aware of the ups and downs of the player’s life, saw no reason for him to join their profession. But young Jeremy wasn’t going to be put off. He had seen glimpses of the good theatrical life – or rather the film star’s life, for his father made a name in films long before the theatre – and would have a go.

That he should come to resemble his father in both looks and acting style, sharing a temperamental exuberance and a taste for the theatrical stance, was perhaps not surprising. What did surprise young Jeremy’s well-wishers was that he showed every sign of becoming a player of quality in his own right. It is true that father and son also shared a mannerism of gazing at the house as if to watch for its reaction rather than trusting to it. Like his father, Jeremy Sinden was accused more than once of playing to the audience rather than playing his part. Nevertheless, young Jeremy, though showing no signs of the paternal range as either a comedian or tragedian, could sometimes be far funnier in his own right. This was perhaps owing to that rare ability to conceal his awareness that he was meant to be funny. In other words he could keep a straight face not only physically, but psychologically. You could watch that visage for signs of inner amusement, for hints that he was also enjoying himself and they never, in my experience, came.

Behind the corpulent figure, the strong, dark eyes, the innocent glare, the huge head, and the tendency to strut about self-importantly was not the least intimation that we ought to giggle.

There are straight faces and straight faces in the theatre, and Jeremy Sinden knew how to keep his straighter than most. Never more so, of course, than as the absurdly vainglorious Toad in Jeremy Sams’s recent revival of Alan Bennett’s version of The Wind in the Willows (Old Vic, 1996).

One has seen Toads of the old, self-preening sort prancing about the stage without making any kind of contact with the audience because they were trying so hard to raise laughter and had not Sinden’s blessed capacity to seem so free of self-awareness. Others have been merely sympathetic or childish or content to be jeered at; but Sinden’s Toad almost touched the art in being ruled by his own shameless nature. He had no idea why we laughed.There was not a trace of patronage in the performance or of condescension to the children. Sinden relished the character, not just the role; and we were bound to relish the performance in turn.Two years ago at the National Theatre he had also been the making (I believe) of a revival of Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. Sinden played Major Swindon. You forget the part? It seldom makes enough impression for people to talk about; but as that absurdly conscientious and inefficient soldier in the court-martial scene opposite Daniel Massey’s General Burgoyne, the actor came into his bombastic own, with gusto, polish, discipline and earnestness which proclaimed him a first-class character actor. The court-martial scene became worth seeing for itself alone. There had been proof a couple of decades earlier of a natural-seeming talent for representing officers and gentlemen and scoundrels at the engaging English best. In a 69 Theatre Company revival from Manchester of R.C. Sherriff’s famous slice of trench-life in the Great War, Journey’s End (Mermaid and Cambridge, 1972), Sinden got his first West End part. It was Private Broughton. Imperfect casting perhaps for a former public school boy, but before the run ended he got the chance to play Captain Stanhope (Laurence Olivier’s old role in the original Sunday try-out). This taught him perhaps how little he really knew about emotional acting. At any rate, though he found himself in the leading role, it had been agreed that he would go (at last) to drama school; and so he went.

His love of the stage (financed as for so many actors by television appearances) came out most forcibly in the 1980s when he and his wife – the actress Delia Lindsay – formed a classical touring company which revived, with some success, Wilde’s An Ideal Husband.

This reached the Westminster Theatre with Sinden, foppish enough, in what was seen as the Oscar Wilde role of Lord Goring and the young Mrs Sinden as the adventuress Lady Cheveley. It was not a highly-rated revival, but while Sinden’s supercilious manner had a way of getting up some critics’ noses and the enterprise smacked of the actor-manager’s tendency to find fat parts for himself, there was no doubt about the stage presence of this Goring, especially when viewed as Wilde getting his own back on society.

Even the most sceptical reviewer conceded that the actor “ambles in a convincing, plump languor, a stranger to high emotion and quite at ease on a stage where few others are”. Another critic saw in Sinden’s acting “touches of Simon Callow and Rowan Atkinson . . . but he made the part memorably his own.”

It was characteristic of a most serious-minded young actor (is that why he could be so funny?) and first-born of a well-known theatrical family that after leaving Lancing College (which he greatly enjoyed) he ducked the chance of university.

Instead he headed straight for the tented theatre at Pitlochry to learn the ropes as a deputy assistant stage manager, lowliest of theatrical appointments.

After two seasons of spear-carrying at Stratford-on-Avon (1970-71) where Papa was doing some of his very best work, came stints in pantomime and rep (Bournemouth, Farnham, Leatherhead, Windsor). Then a season at Chichester (where father was again doing fine work, this time in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People) and a tour of The Mating Game and The Chiltern Hundreds.

It was all good experience but was it good enough? On the grounds that it is never too late to learn from instruction as well as experience, Sinden went in his twenties for three years to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art where he gained the Forsyth award.

Not that such awards bring immediate stardom, but thereafter young Sinden gave every sign of developing into an actor to be taken seriously. The cinema (Star Wars, Chariots of Fire, Let Him Have It, Ascendancy, Woodford in Madame Souzatska, The Object of Beauty, The Innocent) and television (The Expert, Crossroads, Soldiers Talking Cleanly, Brideshead Revisited, Fortunes of War, The Far Pavilions, Mountbatten, Trainer, Middlemarch, and lately, Our Friends in the North) began to appreciate his mildly pompous airs and amusing graces.

As “Boy” Mulcaster in Brideshead Revisited (1981) he was nominated for an Emmy award; and, the life-belt for many a struggling actor, the voice-over, and Talking Books, especially Wodehouse’s Blandings novels, came to the rescue.

Other West End credits included Follow the Star (Westminster), Lady Harry (Savoy), The Gypsy Princess (Sadler’s Wells) and Semi-Monde (Royalty, 1988).

Jeremy Sinden, actor: born London 14 June 1950; married 1978 Delia Lindsay (two daughters); died London 29 May 1996.

This “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Saeed Jaffrey was born in the Punjab in India in 1929. He studied at RADA in London and then went on the U.S. for further study under a Fulbright scholarship. He returned to Britain and began an acting career. He has many fine films to his credit includinf “The Guru” in 1969, “The Wilby Conspiracy”. the terrific adventure directed by John Huston, “The Man Who Would Be King” in 1975 and “My Beautiful Launderette” in 1985 opposite Shirley Anne Field and Daniel Day-Lewis. He died in 2015 in London.

“Independent” interview from 1994:

T’S MID-AFTERNOON, and Saeed Jaffrey strides into the bar at Bafta, says he’d like a white wine and launches into an anecdote about collecting an award, a Golden Toucan, at Rio de Janeiro. Best known in Britain for My Beautiful Laundrette, Gandhi and Tandoori Nights, this short, dapper, ebullient actor turns an interview into a monologue. Two hours, several drinks and many anecdotes later, we say goodbye in a blur of good wishes and exchanged phone numbers. A driver whisks him off to an evening rehearsal, leaving the photographer and myself standing on a pavement in Piccadilly, in high spirits. Victims of his charm.

Many things are ‘wonderful’ in Saeed Jaffrey’s life, and quite a few things are ‘wonderful-wonderful’ (particularly the great actors he’s worked with, like Gladys Cooper, Sybil Thorndike and Ingrid Bergman).

After only a couple of hours, you can only feel fond of someone who’ll draw you a cartoon, sing you a song, and burst into tears at the memory of a friend.

We’re here to talk about his new series on Channel 4, Little Napoleons. But straight after the Toucan story, Jaffrey is on to a second: ‘Similarly, what I was going to say . . .’ Quite ordinary events take on the dimensions of a fable. ‘By the way, remind me . . .’ he says. ‘I’ll come to that later on. Lovely story.’

In Little Napoleons, in which Jaffrey co-stars with Norman Beaton, two rival solicitors become local councillors. Written by Michael Abbensetts (also responsible for Empire Road), it’s a comic insight into north-London politics which gives two old pros a roadworthy vehicle for their talents. Little Napoleons has a political edge, but Saeed Jaffrey doesn’t worry about politics. He looks blank at a standard question about the representation of Asians on television. He trusts his heart, he says, and (pointing a finger to the sky) the Governor.

The Governor has looked after him well: Jaffrey has made more than 70 films for Bollywood – the Indian film industry – sometimes doing three or four parts in a day for what he refers to as ‘Bombay cinema rep’. The Hindi films have taught him to be a quick learner. ‘You don’t have any credibility unless you are working on 12 films at the same time.’

Like Roshan Seth (last seen in Britain in The Buddha of Suburbia), Saeed Jaffrey has two careers: he’s well-known in Britain, and he’s huge in India. These two actors, who appeared together in Gandhi and My Beautiful Laundrette, in fact seem like opposites. While Seth is dry, detached, angular, Jaffrey is moist, engaging, round: he leaks expressiveness from every pore.

The day before the interview Jaffrey had been at the press screening of Little Napoleons. He was sitting in the same row as me, but further along, and although his figure was obscured, I could see his hands dancing in the air as he talked. He has quite a repertoire of hand gestures. There’s the stately sweep of the palm, the defiant index finger that precludes any objection, and the equivocal fluttering of fingers as if he’s practising scales. Watching Little Napoleons you see that he almost doubles the size of his role by giving his fingers a lot to say.

He’s a small man with a large physical presence: he has immaculate silver hair, a glint of cunning in his eyes, and a cartoon-like nose. Whether in Tandoori Nights, The Jewel in the Crown, The Far Pavilions or Staying On, Jaffrey has a Dickensian skill for investing self- importance, greed or slyness with a fullness of feeling that makes them sweetly human.

He’s been an actor for nearly 40 years. ‘I’m a Capricorn,’ he says, with deliberation. ‘The years up to the age of 40 are Capricorn’s apprenticeship years, when you get to know love. Life. Letters. The world. After that comes achievement and recognition. Which is what we want. Like Ismail Merchant.’ His eyes light up. ‘I told you about Ismail Merchant? Introducing him to James Ivory?’ (No.) ‘No?’

And he’s off: explaining how he and his first wife knew a man who was very talented and very sensitive, but who was useless at selling himself. But they also knew another man who was ‘Sammy Glick from Bindi Bazaar in Bombay’. A man who could sell anything.

One night the Jaffreys got the two of them round for dinner. Yes: ‘Within a week Merchant Ivory was born.’ He beams, raises his glass. The wine glasses clink. ‘Cheers. God bless.’ Salesmanship and sensitivity: there’s a quite a bit of Merchant and quite a bit of Ivory in Saeed Jaffrey.

His career started in Delhi in the mid-Fifties with All-India Radio. Through the job (‘which paid for the YMCA room’) he met artists and writers: the musician Ravi Shankar, the writer Khushwant Singh, and his first wife, Madhur, the actress, who later became a television cook (that’s another story). They married in 1958, had three daughters (one of whom is an actress) and divorced in 1966. His second wife, Jennifer, is a casting director and his agent (‘so wonderful, so tough’). In Delhi, Jaffrey started the Unity Theatre, performing Wilde, Shaw, Priestley. Why English plays? ‘I was much more comfortable with the English language.’ His father, Dr Hamid Hussain Jaffrey, had been a medical officer in Uttar Pradesh, which meant the family moved somewhere different in the area every three or four years.

‘I was exposed to a Muslim school, so I learnt Urdu. I was exposed to a Hindu school, so I learnt Hindi. I was exposed to a Church of England school, so I got my Senior Cambridge certificate.’ Not only was he cosmopolitan, but he and his two brothers and sister had, he says, ‘the good fortune of coming from rather good aristocratic Mogul stock’.

More directly, he inherited several talents from his mother. ‘One was to paint and sketch. One was to write – which I do – in Urdu, Hindi, English. One was mimicry, acting.’

His first wife, Madhur, wanted to go to Rada. ‘I said to her, look, as a mark of my love, I’ll stand down, so there’s no competition, and I’ll go next year.’ Next year, however, there wasn’t a scholarship available, so he got a Fulbright scholarship instead to the Catholic University of America, in Washington DC (Jon Voight was a fellow student). When the scholarship ended Jaffrey had three hungry months in Washington with hardly any money. A classmate invited him over one evening for a meal. He thought: ‘Why wait for supper, man? Let’s go now.’ But, with Mogul pride, he took out his diary to see if he was free.

In America, he was both the first Indian to tour Shakespeare, and the first to appear on Broadway, where he played Professor Godbole in the stage version of A Passage to India. In the first scene Godbole gets to sing a song; Jaffrey decided to sing a raga, an evening puriya. (He tried it out, first, down the phone to Ravi Shankar.) He sings me the raga in the bar at Bafta, then quotes the Saturday Review, which said (with good reason) that when Jaffrey sings ‘we are no longer in the concrete jungle of New York but transported to an ageless and beautiful India’. At that time Jaffrey played mainly non-Indian characters, including the Charles Laughton role in Witness for the Prosecution. Later, when he came to England, ‘I said to myself it doesn’t matter if it’s a six-line part. If they offer it to you, take it – enrich it with your background, and everything – so much that people will never forget it. That became my religion.’

An example of a small part making a big point was the role of the punkah-wallah in a television series called The Regiment. In a single line he reversed, he says, the cliche ‘all wogs look alike’. When asked to identify the officer who has committed a rape, Jaffrey’s character declines, rolling his head and saying: ‘All sahibs look alike.’

The best directors he has worked for – Satyajit Ray (The Chess Players), Richard Attenborough (Gandhi), John Huston (The Man Who Would Be King) – have all been ‘gardeners’. They’ve nursed actors.

David Lean, who directed him as Hamidullah in A Passage to India, is not among them. Jaffrey offers to do a drawing of Lean. He scratches away for 10 seconds, starting at the mouth and nose, working up to the hair and round to the neck. ‘You can only do cartoons of people that you don’t like all that much.’ The pen is too thin, but no matter, the feeling is there. Only Lean, he says, could have reduced ‘my lovely Dame Peggy’ to tears.

Jaffrey appears to be equally vulnerable to directors’ cruelty. When he was rehearsing Captain Brassbound’s Conversion in Brighton in 1971 this ‘ageing queer director was giving me the hardest time possible’. The show’s star, Ingrid Bergman, went to his defence. ‘At rehearsals, God bless her soul, the great tigress protecting her brood rose to her five-foot-10- and-a-half height and said: ‘Will you get off Saeed’s back]’ ‘ He then does a vicious impersonation of a simpering director backing down.

‘She was lovely . . ,’ he says. ‘Another good thing she did, before she died . . .’ (He halts, then suddenly starts crying. Half a minute passes. He whispers.) ‘She was, she was, she was . . .’ Some friends of his had come from India and wanted to meet her. (He takes off his glasses and puts them on the table and his hands cover his face. He’s heaving with sadness.) He had sent a note backstage to Ingrid Bergman and the dresser had taken them round. His friends were thrilled.

Each word from Jaffrey is now a struggle. ‘But the cancer had started to rise. Her fingers trembled and I could see the black marks.’ Bergman couldn’t stay long, she had to go to the hotel. It was the last time he saw her. ‘Great lady,’ he says, still in tears. He recovers a little from the memory, then the storyteller takes over again, and he reaches out for the next anecdote. ‘Years later, I was walking down Oxford Street . . .’

“Independent” interview above can also be accessed online here.

The Scotsman obituary in 2015:

Obituary: Saeed Jaffrey OBE, actor

Born: 8 January, 1929, in Malerkotla, India. Died: 15 November, 2015, in London, aged 86.

By The Newsroom

Thursday, 19th November 2015, 1:58 pm

Saeed Jaffrey, during his spell in Coronation Street. Picture: PA

For many years when British film and TV directors needed an actor for an Indian role Saeed Jaffrey would almost inevitably be near the top of their list of candidates. He appeared in adaptations of A Passage to India in theatre, television and film, even if David Lean did opt to have Alec Guinness “black up” for one of the other Indian roles.

In the 1980s Jaffrey played the Indian statesman Sardar Patel in Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning film Gandhi, he had major roles in British television’s two big Raj era literary adaptations – The Jewel in the Crown and The Far Pavilions, and he starred in the popular sitcom Tandoori Nights, playing the owner of an Indian restaurant called The Jewel in the Crown.

In the 1990s he had the recurring role of shopkeeper Ravi Desai on Coronation Street. Undoubtedly one of the best-known Indian actors in British films and television, Jaffrey was an even bigger star in India, where he made dozens of films for the domestic market, sometimes working on several at once.

And he claimed credit for introducing the ebullient Indian producer Ismail Merchant to the mild-mannered American director James Ivory, leading to the establishment of the Merchant Ivory company, which made films with considerable success, initially in India and then in England.

One of Jaffrey’s many memorable characters was as Sean Connery and Michael Caine’s lively little adjutant Billy Fish in the Rudyard Kipling adventure The Man Who Would Be King, forever buzzing round the two principals, seemingly moving and talking at twice the speed of anyone else in the film. Jaffrey brought much of himself to that particular role.

One journalist reported that in the course of a single interview Jaffrey regaled him with an endless stream of rich anecdotes, drank a fair amount of wine, quoted reviews about himself, sang a song, drew a picture of David Lean – who he did not like – and finally burst into tears at the memory of Ingrid Bergman intervening when he was bullied by a theatre director.

Jaffrey was arguably at his best in period dramas and there was something of a bygone age about him, telling this particular interviewer that he came from “rather good, aristocratic, Mogul stock”.

The son of a doctor, Jaffrey was born into a Muslim family in Malerkotla in the Punjab in 1929 and grew up under British rule.

His father’s job as a medical officer involved several moves and Jaffrey attended Muslim, Hindu and Church of England schools, which he credited collectively as giving him an excellent education and a very open outlook on life.

He took a degree in history and had more or less decided to become a teacher when he applied for and got a job with All India Radio, initially as an announcer. He started writing radio plays, including one with 35 characters, all of whom he played himself.

In his early 20s he set up the Unity Theatre company in Delhi to perform English-language plays. His first wife Madhur Bahadur was an actress with the company. She later enjoyed success in the UK both as an actress and with her Indian recipe books and food programmes, using the name Madhur Jaffrey.

The Jaffreys came to Britain in the 1950s and then moved to the US, where Saeed studied drama on a Fulbright scholarship at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He made his Broadway debut in 1962 in A Passage to India as the eccentric scholar Professor Godbole, the role Guinness would later play in the David Lean film. He also acted in several Shakespearean productions.

Jaffrey and Bahadur had married in 1958 and had three children. But he admitted he had a reputation as a ladies’ man and found “temptation all around” in New York. Bahadur left him after she discovered he was having an affair with an Indian dancer.

After returning to England Jaffrey had to establish his reputation as an actor all over again and between acting jobs he worked as a sales assistant at Harrods. “My former co-star Ingrid Bergman came in one day,” Jaffrey told one interviewer.

“I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me, so I put on my jacket and tie and acted like a customer. Ingrid said, ‘Oh Saeed, how lovely to see you – are you buying up Harrods?’ when in fact, I had about two pounds in my pocket.”

He appeared in a 1965 BBC adaptation of A Passage to India in a cast that also included Virginia McKenna and the legendary Dame Sybil Thorndike. He played Mr Hamidullah, the advocate who is also the uncle of Dr Aziz, the Indian character accused of sexual assault.

It was the same role he would play 20 years later in David Lean’s final film.

In between he appeared in numerous British television series, including Z-Cars, Crown Court and Minder, as well as the big-budget films and mini-series set in India.

He often played well-educated or aristocratic Indians, although he was just a punkah-wallah in the drama series The Regiment and has a great line when he is asked to identify an officer accused of rape and says the British all look the same to him.

He starred in the 1977 film The Chess Players, from the great Indian director Satyajit Ray. Jaffrey was one of two Indian noblemen more concerned with their game than with the British annexation of the hitherto independent kingdom of Oudh.

Richard Attenborough played the British General Outram and a few years later would work with Jaffrey again on Gandhi.

Jaffrey played the owner of the eponymous, misspelt establishment in My Beautiful Laundrette, which was made for Channel 4, but picked up for cinema distribution on the back of glowing reviews at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1985.

It helped launch the career of writer Hanif Kureishi, propelled Daniel Day-Lewis towards film stardom and brought Jaffrey a Bafta nomination.

Jaffrey was honoured with the award of OBE in 1995, he voiced all 86 characters in a BBC World Service adaptation of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy in 20 episodes in 1997, and he wrote an autobiography entitled Saeed: An Actor’s Journey, published in 1998.

He is survived by his second wife Jennifer, a casting director, to whom he was married for 35 years, and his three daughters from his first marriage.

Christopher Blake obituary in “The Stage”.

Christopher Blake was born in London in 1949. He is best known for his performance on television in the series “That’s My Boy” with Mollie Sugden which ran from 1981 until 1986. He also appeared in “Love for Lydia”, “Casualty” and “Brookside” amongst others. He died in 2006 at the age of 56.

Obituary from “The Stage”:

Actor and writer Christopher Blake, who enjoyed a prolific career in television, film and theatre, died on December 11, aged 55.

Born Peter Ronald Gray on August 23, 1949, in Chingford, he emigrated as a child with his parents and two brothers to Australia on a government-assisted grant. His education was interrupted by the family coming back to England in 1961 only to leave again shortly afterwards and finally return in 1966. He tried his luck at acting after working as an odd job man at a newly formed experimental theatre, the Brighton Combination.

Accepted in 1969 by the Central School of Speech and Drama, he changed his name to Christopher Blake. There followed more than 20 years of regular employment in theatre, television and film during which he played a vast range of parts. Blake specialized in the unflappable, quietly spoken charmer he was in real life, the type friends and strangers alike immediately trusted. Although best remembered for light comedy in the successful television sitcoms That’s My Boy and Mixed Blessings, he displayed an equal talent for serious drama in The Mill on the Floss, The Lost Boys and in particular an LWT adaptation of HE Bates’ Love for Lydia. In the theatre his roles ranged from farce to the eponymous Alfie, Milo in Sleuth and George in Same Time Next Year. Later in his career he took to playing villains.

More recently he became a regular writer on Channel 5′s Family Affairs and contributed to Sky One’s Dream Team. His last two completed scripts were for the ITV series A Touch of Frost.

Offstage, Blake played cricket and was for many years he was a valuable member of the Lord’s Taverners XI and of the Sargentmen, a side composed mostly of fellow actors, writers and producers. He possessed an easy charm and wry sense of humour that earned him a wide circle of loyal friends throughout his life.

In 1997 Blake met actress and theatrical producer Victoria Little with whom he found fulfilling happiness and contentment. While putting the final touches to a house they renovated in Spain, he was diagnosed with a rare form of Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. To the end he was his own man, battling a debilitating illness with typical fortitude and without a trace of fear or self pity.

He leaves three children, Charlotte, Louise and Sean.

Paul Wheeler

The above “The Stage” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Geraldine James was born in Maidenhead outside London in 1950. She is one of Britain’s most proflic stage and television actresses. She first came to public attention for her role in “The Jewel in the Crown” in 1984 as Sarah Layton. Her films include “Gandhi” in 1982, “Calendar Girls” in 2003 and the forthcoming “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”.

TCM Overview:

This softly attractive brunette is best known to British and American TV viewers as Sarah Layton in the miniseries “The Jewel in the Crown” (1984) to filmgoers as Mirabehn, the fanatical western follower of “Gandhi” (1982) and to theatergoers as Portia opposite Dustin Hoffman in the London and Broadway (1989-90) production of “The Merchant of Venice.” Geraldine James has kept a low profile to American audiences, but has had an active career in her native England, on stage and in film and television. She first won notice on the London stage as Dr. Von Zandt in the 1979 production of “The Passion of Dracula.” She played Jessica in a heralded Coventry production of “The Merchant of Venice” a decade before playing Portia opposite Hoffman.

James’ career was enhanced by playing opposite Dame Peggy Ashcroft in “She’s Been Away” (1989), for which they were both cited as Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. More international notice has come with TV roles including the moderately successful comedy “Blott on the Landscape” (1986), in which she was a woman trying to save her family’s estate, as the beloved teacher in the 1989 miniseries “Echoes” and as Nora’s friend Kristina in “A Doll’s House” (1992). James was also seen in the 1995 HBO miniseries “Band of Gold,” a thriller in which prostitutes were being hunted by a serial killer. She also gained notice for her turn as a courtesan in Pen Densham’s “Moll Flanders” (1996), starring Robin Wright.

Geraldine James. TCM Overview.

TCM Overview:

Geoffrey Hughes has been associated with three massivly popular television series, “Coronation Street” where he played binman Eddie Yeats, lodger of Stan and Hilda Ogden from 1974 until 1983, “Keeping Up Appearances” as Onslow the lazy, feckless brother-in-law of Patricia Routledge’s Hynicth Bucket from 1990 iuntil 1995 and most recently as Twiggy friend of Jim Royle in the hilarious “Royle Family”. He was born in 1944 in Cheshire. His film roles include “Smashing Time” with Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave in 1967 and “The Virgin Soldiers” in 1969 again with Lynn Redgrave and Hywel Bennett. Geoffrey Hughes lives on the Isle of Wight.

His “Guardian” obituary by Anthony Hayward:

The actor Geoffrey Hughes, who has died of prostate cancer aged 68, played gormless Eddie Yeats in the ITV soap opera Coronation Streetfrom 1974 to 1983, and thereafter was typecast on television as a lovable rogue.

Hughes contributed enormously to the comedy that Bernard Youens and Jean Alexander – as Stan and Hilda Ogden – brought to No 13 Coronation Street. His character, Eddie, a former Borstal boy and Walton Prison inmate, helped Stan on his window-cleaning round and was forever involved in money-making schemes – hiring out a timid guard dog and selling Albert Tatlock’s allotment vegetables, dodgy watches and curtains run up by Hilda – before finding work as a refuse collector and becoming the Ogdens’ lodger.

“He was always a softy,” Hughes told the writer Daran Little in 1995. “His villainy had been opportunist nicking, or thinking of a good idea and it didn’t matter if it was actually legal or not.” Eddie was also responsible for the mountain mural, or “muriel” as Hilda called it, in the Ogdens’ living room – at one time graced with three ornamental flying ducks. In 1983, Hughes chose to leave Coronation Street, and Eddie was married off and moved to Bury. He made a brief return four years later for a hospital visit by Eddie to Hilda.

Later, in the long-running drama Heartbeat, set in the 60s, he was Vernon Scripps (2001-07), who dreamed up hare-brained get-rich-quick schemes and had a small share in his half-brother Bernie’s garage.

Hughes was a more objectionable version of Eddie and Vernon in the sitcom Keeping up Appearances (1990-95), written by Roy Clarke. He played Onslow, the workshy, beer-guzzling slob married to the social-climbing Hyacinth Bucket’s sister Daisy and living in a council house. The vest-wearing Onslow irked Hyacinth by occasionally leading her husband, Richard, astray and rebuffed his wife’s advances with the excuse: “I’ve got a headache.”

The formula was much the same in The Royle Family, in which Hughes appeared on and off as Twiggy (1998-2008), the former convict visiting Jim and Barbara Royle with stolen goods.

Hughes was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, and attended Abbotsford Road secondary modern school, in the Norris Green area of Liverpool. While working as a car salesman, he performed with Merseyside Unity theatre company, where he was spotted by the actor Tom Bell, who introduced him to an agent.

Hughes turned professional and joined the rep company at the Victoria theatre, Stoke-on-Trent. His first West End role came in 1964 in the Lionel Bart-Alun Owen musical Maggie May (at the Adelphi theatre), about trade union disputes in Liverpool’s dockland.

In 1966, Hughes made his screen debut in The Likely Lads and was soon working regularly on television. His first appearance in Coronation Street was in 1967, as Phil Ferguson, a thug who beat up Albert Tatlock. A big break came in 1968, when Hughes voiced Paul McCartney in the Beatles cartoon film Yellow Submarine and, a year later, he was one of the young recruits featured in The Virgin Soldiers, based on Leslie Thomas’s comic novel. He then played Dick in Curry & Chips (1969), the writer Johnny Speight’s controversial television sitcom set in a factory and starring a blacked-up Spike Milligan. It was axed by the Independent Television Authority after six episodes.

Hughes continued to take one-off character parts in both dramas and sitcoms – four alone in Z Cars (1968-74) – until fame came as Eddie Yeats. This led to a lead role in The Bright Side (1985) as the mild-mannered prison warden Mr Lithgow, constantly being wound up by an inmate’s wife played by Paula Wilcox. The sitcom made little impression on viewers, but Hughes is still remembered by Doctor Who aficionados for his subsequent role as Mr Popplewick at a trial of the Time Lord in the story The Ultimate Foe (1986).

Although he was cast to type in his later successes, Hughes still managed to fit in other screen work. He played a detective in the TV film The Man from the Pru (1990) and Trinculo in The Tempest (1992), and supplied the voice of Dirk, a cynical talking dog, in the sitcom I, Lovett (1993). In the BBC’s Liverpool Nativity (2007), he led the cast as the Angel Gabriel, directing events as they unfolded live in the city centre. He also took three roles (2007-09) in the teen drama Skins. Hughes’s other films included the big-screen version of Till Death Us Do Part (1968), The Bofors Gun (1968), Carry On at Your Convenience (1971), Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1974) and Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976). In the West End, he appeared in Say Goodnight to Grandma (St Martin’s theatre, 1973), Run for Your Wife (Criterion theatre, 1984-85) and Semi-Monde (Royalty theatre, 1987-88).

During his time in Coronation Street, Hughes and his wife, Sue, had a smallholding in Northamptonshire and owned a nearby craft centre. Later, they moved to Newport, on the Isle of Wight, where they ran a wood supply company. In 2009, Hughes was appointed deputy lord lieutenant of the island.

He is survived by his wife.

• Geoffrey Hughes, actor, born 2 February 1944; died 27 July 2012.

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Denise Coffey

Irish Times obituary in 2022:

Denise Coffey obituary: Comedy maven

Patricia Cutts

Heather Angel

Yvonne Buckingham

Jeremy Sinden

Saeed Jaffrey

The Scotsman obituary in 2015:

Obituary: Saeed Jaffrey OBE, actor

Born: 8 January, 1929, in Malerkotla, India. Died: 15 November, 2015, in London, aged 86.

Christopher Blake

Christopher Blake obituary in “The Stage”.

Geraldine James

Geraldine James. TCM Overview.

Geoffrey Hughes

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