Christopher Eccleston - Grouchy Northerner to Fantastic Time Lord

I find it hard to comprehend that almost three decades have elapsed since Christopher Eccleston first appeared on our screens. In my experience, nobody does tall, shouty but usually principled Northerners quite like him. Furthermore, his name in a cast list is one of the few which commands an almost cast-iron guarantee of the programme’s quality. While I was aware of his growing reputation in British films in the early Nineties, and probably saw him in episodes of Casualty and Inspector Morse, it wasn’t until his late twenties that he first made a major impression on me. 

It’s no secret that the acting profession is a very fragile one, and I daresay there remain thousands of fully-trained drama school graduates waiting for their Big Break. This son of Salford was 25 when making his professional stage debut, then came the film Let Him Have It, with TV parts in hot pursuit.  It was in 1993 that Eccleston first appeared in the new ITV crime series Cracker as the ambitious, young DCI Bilborough. 

He wasn’t the star. That status was reserved for Robbie Coltrane, whose performance as criminal psychologist Fitz rightly earned him three successive BAFTAs. The creator and lead writer was Jimmy McGovern who, in the coming decade became synonymous with tough, gritty Northern television drama. Therefore Cracker was no ordinary cop show. Conventions were frequently turned on their head which made it such compelling viewing. You never knew what was coming next, yet I remember the shock when Eccleston’s character was lured to his fatal encounter with a bayonet in the hands of serial killer Albie (Robert Carlyle). That particular three-parter remains possibly the most stunning example of crime fiction I’ve ever seen – “spellbinding”, I called it in my contemporary diary.

Like McGovern, Christopher Eccleston was also for a while to be associated with hard-boiled, uncompromising drama set in Northern England, just like the movies which had originally attracted him to acting. In ’95, I was moved to describe his “brilliant performance” in another McGovern work, Hearts and Minds. This time he played a young, idealistic teacher up against the system. In particular, his unorthodox way of making iambic pentameter engaging to a bored class was truly magnetic. 

The following year, he was another young, idealist, up against the, etc, etc. Peter Flannery’s Our Friends in the North could have been one of those BBC2 serials I sometimes tuck away in the pigeonhole labelled ‘Worthy but Too Difficult” but, like millions of others, I was hooked from the off. Much of the appeal of the production, which followed the lives of four Newcastle friends across three momentous decades, lay in the performances of the four leads. The supporting cast was to die for but Eccleston was the only star I’d heard of. Gina McKee, Mark Strong and a certain Daniel Craig were the others. Whatever happened to him? The Albie story in Cracker was memorable, but the finale to Our Friends…, played out to the then-current Oasis hit ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, was a five-minute nugget of epoch-making TV gold.

Fast forward four years and Chris was back in Lancashire, albeit in a relatively minor role. He cropped up in a few episodes of Paul Abbott’s McGovern-esque Clocking Off, the classy cast of which read as a veritable who’s who of Northern acting talent, from Sarah Lancashire to Philip Glenister, Siobhan Finneran to Ricky Tomlinson. 

Various TV movies followed, before his career took what I considered an unexpected turn into left-field territory. In 2004, when the long-awaited reboot of Doctor Who reached the primary casting announcement, I was at first flummoxed. Christopher Eccleston? The DOCTOR?! Apprehensive that the successor to my childhood favourite show would founder on the decision to cast the familiar grouchy, miserable Mancunian as the much-loved lighthearted Time Lord, I watched the first part in 2005 with considerable anxiety. Of course, I needn’t have worried. The series was a huge hit. Even Dad enjoyed it! The Russell T Davies/Julie Gardner incarnation deftly retained ingredients from the original (Tardis, familiar adversaries, etc) while ramping up the special effects and making it a must-see drama for all ages.

From the moment he rescued Billie Piper’s Rose with an urgent “Run!”, Eccleston and his leather jacket wormed their way into my affections. When such an alien’s Northern accent was queried by Rose (let’s face it, we were all thinking the same thing), it was swiftly swatted away with something like “Why not?” Hmm, I mused, fair enough! It was even harder to reconcile the actor with such an enormous smile, habitually accompanied by his new catchphrase, “Fantastic!”, but he brought some genuine acting chops to that series. The episode with the last remaining Dalek in the universe, captive and emasculated, was as good as any I’ve seen. When in a later scene the Doctor yells an impassioned but uncharacteristically aggressive “Why don’t you just die?” the lonely old enemy’s perceptive retort was simultaneously chilling and thought-provoking: “You would make a good Dalek…” Ouch!

And yet, no sooner had he first appeared as the old Time Lord, word would leak that Christopher Eccleston would not be back for a second series. What? So soon? Instead he headed Stateside to rake in several fistfuls of dollars for roles in various sci-fi/fantasy ventures. 

The only one I watched, and purely because at the time I was living alone and there was little competition on Tuesdays at 9pm, was Heroes. Amidst a motley crew of reluctant heroes blessed – or cursed – with so-called ‘superpowers’, Eccleston played a twitchy invisible Claude, English accent unchanged, doing his best to thwart the evil bad guys seeking to exploit the powers for their own dastardly purposes. It was so compelling I even watched the entire series, although the novelty had worn off the following year. In any case, our Chris was no longer involved.

Indeed it was several years, and three house moves later, before I again caught him in a new production. BBC1’s Safe House featured Eccleston as an ex-cop who agrees to use his remote house in the Lake District as a refuge for potential victims of criminal reprisals and the two seasons proved to be superior thrillers. The star even seemed to indulge in some genuine lake swimming. 

However diving into open water in Sky Atlantic’s Fortitude was definitely inadvisable. The Arctic Circle environment was far too forbidding and hostile for such leisure pursuits. We only tuned in because of a limited-period Sky deal while we sat in our then-unfurnished living room in Saundersfoot, but we became hooked by the increasingly dark and frankly preposterous tale of unhinged polar bears and the even more unhinged Richard Dormer. Sadly, Eccleston’s contribution was brief. His research scientist character was murdered in the very first episode, one of a gruesomely impressive body count which also included Sofie Grabol, Michael Gambon and Ken Stott. Never mind, for a month or so it was perfect winter viewing.

His role in 2018’s Come Home was a meatier one, although some took exception to his Northern Ireland accent, and in The A Word, he is a nicely-judged comedy turn as the widowed granddad to an autistic boy. He’s not very good with people but adores young Joe. It’s another series set in The Lakes although this time he’s more into fell running than swimming. At the end of series two he collapses with a suspected heart attack so let’s hope he survives into the third run later this year, coronavirus permitting.

But then he’s Christopher Eccleston. Playing the same character for years doesn’t seem to be part of his career path, nor does it need to be. Whether as star or supporting, there can be few actors in greater demand, and justifiably so.

Rory Bremner - Something Else Entirely

Everyone loves a good impressionist. Whether in a guest slot on a variety bill, on a chat show or in their own series, there’s something we find particularly entertaining about a performer sounding and looking like a contemporary celebrity, sports star or politician, especially if they’re taking the piss out of them. Radio is the ideal medium, and I feel that Jon Culshaw’s Dead Ringers suffered from its transfer from Radio 4 to TV, partly because he and the gang aren’t notably visual or otherwise physical mimics.

There have been lots of examples on our screens over the years. Mike Yarwood was ‘Mr Saturday Night’ in the Seventies, Peter Goodwright one of the more competent all-rounders on ITV’s ‘Who Do You Do?’ and I can testify that Phil Cool was a brilliant live act whose Rolf Harris remains unsurpassed. In contrast, I find Bobby Davro’s celebrity status utterly unfathomable! Alastair McGowan is probably a better comedian than impressionist while Tracey Ullman is more of a supreme sketch comedienne, relying on prosthetics in her recent TV series (eg her Angela Merkel). 

John Sessions and Phil Cornwell were outstanding in the under-rated ‘90s schedule-filler Stella Street while Enn Reitel was also a master of his craft back in the ‘80s. Spitting Image gave free rein to a whole range of up-and-coming names, from Harry Enfield and Chris Barrie to Jan Ravens and Steve (Margaret Thatcher) Nallon, not to mention Steve Coogan, whose competitive ‘take offs’ with Rob Brydon in The Trip are often hilarious. But for me one man totally transformed the art of impressionism. No, not Monet or Renoir; I’m referring to Rory Bremner.

I’m not sure when I first saw him but it was probably on the very first early evening Wogan chat show back in February 1985. Barely out of Oxford and sporting an eye-catching barnet of blonde curls, he was a game-changer. I can’t find it on YouTube and can’t recall his victims – sorry, subjects – but it certainly made an impression (sorry) on me. First he was so young, actually just three months older than me, his voices were uncannily accurate, he exuded energy borne of student cabaret not the Northern club circuit and, crucially, he was funny with it. 

Shortly afterwards he was on Top of the Pops, in the guise of The Commentators, channelling the voices of cricket in a comic riposte to Paul Hardcastle’s hit ‘19’ and at first it was sport which provided the source of his most memorable targets. His Geoff Boycott, Richie Benaud, David Coleman and, best of all, Des Lynam always made me laugh, as did the Bremner versions of Michael Parkinson and Roger Moore. He had the natural advantage of an open face with few distinguishing features, making it easier for us to believe in his impersonations. 

In 1986 BBC2 signed him up for his own TV show Now, Something Else and it wasn’t long before it was his own name in the programme title: yes, The Rory Bremner Show. Around this time a group of us saw him live at the Cliffs Pavilion, Westcliff, and thoroughly enjoyed it. He was on top of his game. 

In November 1987 Rory lent his voices to ITV’s satirical puppet show Spitting Image, ranging from Prince Philip to Ronald Reagan, Jeffrey Archer to Roland Rat. Here he is playing Cabinet minister Norman Fowler to Harry Enfield’s Douglas Hurd. His stock was rising so high and fast that for producers seeking a guest to launch a new series, Bremner was the first name on the teamsheet. Besides Wogan, he appeared on the very first edition of comedy sport panel show They Think It’s All Over, one of my faves of the decade, in 1995, (then again five years later) and was on an early Have I Got News For You opposite Ken Livingstone in ‘92. He has brought his gift for impressions to several other panel games/quizzes. I actually saw him recording the Radio 4 perennial The News Quiz in 1990 and for a few series in the mid-Noughties he served as team captain on Mock The Week.

He was also an occasional guest on Channel 4’s improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Unfortunately, in the company of seasoned experts Greg Proops, Ryan Stiles, John Sessions et al, he seemed somewhat out of his depth. I remember willing him to be funny, to mix it with Tony Slattery and come out on top. Just once. Please? It helped that the scenarios often involved sports broadcasts and his John Major glasses prop came in useful more than once but, in a series which rarely failed to generate side-splitting laughs, they weren’t his career’s finest moments. On the other hand, he is always an engaging booking for a chat show, as on Parkinson back in 2000.

It wasn’t all commentators and film stars. Rory was steering a course towards more satirical, political territory. Of course, today’s topical satire is tomorrow’s history lesson and, with the exceptions of Mandela, Clinton, Kinnock and their ilk, reliving his trademark opening monologues today involves racking my brains to remember who the hell Malcolm Rifkind was. They may have dated but, in the moment, such machine-gun impressions were top-notch. In the early Nineties, his show also breathed new life into the careers of those TV satire stalwarts, John Bird and John Fortune. Their apparently unscripted two-handers became as, if not more, popular than Bremner’s own segments. The scene was set for the three to command not only their own series but also equal billing. 

I tried to watch Bremner, Bird and Fortune as often as I could but the early evening weekend slot on Channel 4 wasn’t favourable. The showbiz themes were dispensed with completely; political satire was the only game in town. It became slightly heavier in tone but usually hit its targets with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile. The landscape had changed, though. The old-school adversarial party politics of the Thatcher/Major era had been replaced by the very different age of spin. The Tories were a forgettable bunch but Bremner could ‘do’ Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to a ‘T’ and the other absurdities of life were superbly handled by the two Johns. The programme lasted ten years but sadly Fortune died on the final day of 2013.

The last decade has been peppered by Rory Bremner specials but they’re not the appointment to view they once were. General elections, Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum have provided enough material for such one-offs but, quite frankly, many have possessed enough comedy without the need for lampoonery. I’m not sure what Bremner can do with such grey non-entities as Raab, Starmer or Sunak but while there are characters such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg I guess there is plenty for him to sink his teeth into. 

The fluffy curls are but a distant memory but I think Rory Bremner remains an important – and I choose that adjective with care – part of the broadcasting landscape to this day. He’s more niche, less mainstream than the Yarwoods or McGowans but, at a time of political or social crisis, it’s comforting to know that a Rory Bremner special is waiting to twist a sharp satirical knife into the bilious bellies of those causing it. 

Robert Lindsay - lovable leftie and testy dentist

Robert Lindsay is a difficult one. In the last decade he’s been tucked away on Sky 1, US TV, the Gold channel or fantasy nonsense like Atlantis, appearing in dramas with neither personal pulling power nor a position in the listings I’d ever trip over by accident. In the previous decade it was a similar story, the actor’s CV inflated by a host of TV movies, documentary narration and voicing children’s programmes. However the body of work which I did experience is more than sufficient to elevate him to ‘treasure’ status.

While there have been films, the only one I recall watching was Divorcing Jack, and that was neither on the TV nor public cinema. Instead, as a BBC Northern Ireland co-production I was invited to a special screening in London with some work colleagues. I enjoyed it, not least because Robert Lindsay had a prominent role, albeit as a charismatic but duplicitous politician.

A few years earlier, in 1993, he was the undoubted main attraction at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the title role of Cyrano de Bergerac. He was, of course, brilliant, combining a masterful comic touch and singing voice which brought the house down. He missed out on an Olivier Award but his mantelpiece must have been grateful for the temporary respite. After all, he has scooped major West End and Broadway honours for Me and My Girl, Oliver and Becket to name but three.

In the early Eighties, I must have seem him in the much-lauded BBC Shakespeare project productions of Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, although I have never been an aficionado of the classical theatre. I‘m not really a paid-up member of the more contemporary playwright fan club either. Each Stephen Poliakoff play may be a Television Event - with capital letters – but I tend to find them rather dense, despite typically stellar casts. Lindsay was amongst the ensemble of Friends and Crocodiles in 2006 and I managed to stick it out to the end.

I find Alan Bleasdale to be more accessible to viewers like myself, although it helps that I’m generally receptive to his often powerful political polemic and social comment. Bleasdale’s 1991 Channel 4 series GBH was extremely watchable, featuring Robert Lindsay as a hard left Labour council leader obviously based on Liverpool’s Derek Hatton. As was presumably the writer’s intention, my relationship with the character, Michael Murray, was a tortuous one. His socialist principles chimed positively but his clashes with Michael Palin’s popular headmaster were less appealing. As MI5 agents left him increasingly paranoid and wracked with guilt, Murray ultimately wins back our sympathy. GBH was political satire cloaked in a healthy dollop of dark humour and Lindsay was in his element. 

It was as another Red Flag-flying leftie Citizen Smith that the actor first made an impression on me, and millions of others, in the late Seventies. Looking back, you can observe elements of John Sullivan’s subsequent comedy creation Del-Boy in ‘Wolfie’ Smith and his more half-hearted suburban revolutionaries. Much of the humour came at the lead character’s expense which left me torn. It was funny, but I would dearly have loved him to have achieved his political ambition of ‘Freedom for Tooting’. His armed invasion of Parliament predictably came to an inept conclusion but there were more poignant scenes such as the one where Wolfie ponders his politics at the grave of Karl Marx. Perhaps because like me he’s left-leaning in real life, Lindsay made it heartfelt, compelling and quite emotional.

In 1983-4, he starred in Geoff McQueen’s BBC comedy-drama, Give Us a Break. It was Minder meets Pot Black, shamelessly trying to harness the popularity of snooker and engagingly dodgy wide boys. I loved it. The supporting cast included a ‘who’s who’ of actors who seemed to specialise in TV East End gangsters and light criminals, from Alan Ford and John Forgeham to Ron Pember and Joe Melia, and I expected it to run and run. Surprisingly it had only a single series. Perhaps Lindsay and young co-star Paul McGann proved too busy to commit to another; I don’t know.

Like most of my favourite actors, Robert Lindsay maintains an air of humanity and reality; he’s what I’d call ‘grounded’.  Not just in terms of politics but as a supporter of Derby County and other – ahem – charitable causes. Comedy has been his TV forte and I’ve always been attracted to the roles which have been imbued with both heart and soul. Nightingales (1990) was an acquired taste but the talents of Lindsay, James Ellis and David Threlfall were incapable of producing a laugh-free dud.

Perhaps his most famous twenty-first century character has been dentist Ben Harper in My Family. I confess to watching several episodes but I just couldn’t find him sympathetic at all. It ran for eleven seasons, so what do I know?! He also brought his light touch and gift for satire to the occasional host of Have I Got News For You. Forget ‘the people’, may there always be power to Robert Lindsay.

Stuart Fell - Fire Eater and Fall Guy

I love cast lists. And TV credits. They’re a source of weird and wonderful detail – or at least they were.  With listings magazines and newspapers concentrating only on the lead actor or presenter, and on-screen credits ritually condensed into a tiny corner so small as to be illegible to make way for obscure helplines and promotions for shows I’ll never watch, my viewing enjoyment has been diminished in recent years. Besides putting names to faces and identifying vaguely familiar film locations, such records have over the years introduced me to all sorts of production roles and the people who fill them. 

Most are men and women whose skills contribute so much to the quality of a production, from sound and lighting to the runner and best boy and ‘rostrum camera’ (it was always Ken Morse). Many dramas seem to rely on fight arrangers or stunt co-ordinators and one of the best known in the Seventies and Eighties was Stuart Fell. He cropped up so often that Catherine and I would exclaim with delight every time he appeared.

Later on, Tip Tipping began to rival Stuart for ubiquity. I could even venture a weak joke about stunts involving Tip Tipping but only Stuart Fell. Hmm, pretty poor. Don’t go into comedy, Mike! Of course accidents are an occupational hazard in this line of work and tragically, aged only 34, TT died while filming a documentary. This was roughly the same time that Stuart also retired from such dangerous pursuits, although he was well into his fifties.

Uniquely for one of my TV Treasures, Stuart Fell is a legend whose face I would never recognise. Not only is he not a household name but even in his prime he could have knocked on our door and be greeted by a brusque “Not today, thank you”. This was largely because his work as a stunt double obviously depends on anonymity. Whether reversing Ronnie Corbett’s car into a gazebo, somersaulting over a hedge in Compo’s woolly hat and scruffy jacket or leaping from the path of a careering charabanc driven by The Master, if you couldn’t see the victim’s face clearly, if at all, it was probably Stuart Fell.

For example, I would have seen him dressed as Michael Palin tumbling through the banisters in the bloody climax to a 1977 Ripping Yarns tale, and in all likelihood emerging from and jumping into a river during a 1981 Last of the Summer Wine. So accident-prone were Compo and his mates that the latter series must have provided Stuart with regular pay cheques over the years. Some of his stunts didn’t actually involve him appearing on screen. As adviser or arranger, it was his job to ensure that a scene could look horrendously dangerous without unduly imperilling anyone else. Perhaps the most famous is the literal cliffhanger on Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em when Frank Spencer’s Morris was left dangling above a genuinely sheer drop. On that occasion it was Michael Crawford hanging from a specially reinforced exhaust pipe but it was Fell’s skills and preparation that ensured the star didn’t come a cropper.

He was also a regular on Doctor Who. Back in ’71 he was flinging himself theatrically to the ground in Jon Pertwee’s cape and Roger Delgado’s beard and he was to pop up as all sorts of monsters such as Cybermen, Sea Devils and Ice Warriors. What marked out Stuart Fell from other stunt/fight arrangers was that he was also frequently in the actual cast. He made regular appearances in the nether regions of credits as an actor, albeit one with few, if any lines and nary a close-up. Again in Doctor Who in a couple of stories he waggled claws and blinked a giant eye as the visually striking alien Alpha Centauri and in 1978 he enjoyed a healthy dose of screen time as a Sontaran leader albeit with only his eyes showing.

A few years later he was again encased in a helmet, this time as a motorcyclist incurring Ronnie Barker’s irritation in Open All Hours. However, many of his appearances were very minor, which made his credited appearances more notable. After all we would never have recognised fleeting shots of his Man in Toilet, Nazi Guard, or Bloke Somewhere In The Background Of A Dick Emery Sketch!

Another of his talents was as an old-school physical entertainer. In an episode of The Prince and the Pauper (1976), he hogged the screen for a whole minute as an acrobat, juggler and fire-eater, eliciting the admiration not only of us viewers but also, apparently, the 14 year-old star Nicholas Lyndhurst. He was also a blink-and-you-miss-it fire-eater in Poldark the following year. 

Whether as an alien soldier, back-to-the-camera stuntman or humble extra, Stuart Fell seemed to generate a peculiar aura in our household, accentuated by his perennial inconspicuousness. We usually never realised he had appeared until we saw his name in those all-important credits. Unfortunately I doubt we’ll ever see – or read – his like again.

Dame June - a Treasure for any month of the year

It’s a well-worn cliché but, when Dame June Whitfield died at the tail end of 2018 there was a genuine end-of-an-era aura around the announcement. She was one of the last remaining stalwarts of BBC Radio light entertainment in the 1950s, and went on to lend sterling TV support in the ‘60s to established stars such as Tony Hancock, Jimmy Edwards, Arthur Askey and Benny Hill. But all this was before my time. Well before!

In the Seventies, Whitfield remained a familiar face on telly. A bit more versatile than another of my Treasures, Pat Coombs, she featured in loads of comedy shows, from The Goodies to The Dick Emery Show. She was too big a name to be a mere short sketch stooge but anything requiring some proper acting and perfect timing of a funny line, June was the one who you were gonna call. 

For years I automatically associated her with Terry Scott. The moon-faced comedian was an even bigger part of my childhood. I remember watching him as a six year-old with Hugh Lloyd in Hugh and I then The Gnomes of Dulwich and he had a few series of themed sketch shows called Scott On…, with June as the primary female comrade-in-arms. My 1973 diary records that I watched some of these programmes but it was the arrival the following year of Happy Ever After that cemented their professional TV relationship.

In what was arguably the golden era of TV comedy, much of which has lost none of its ability to make me chuckle, Happy Ever After was hardly a beacon of brilliance, and yet it ran for five years. It was surpassed in terms of both longevity and harmlessness by Terry and June which provided more of the same, albeit in a different average suburban street with a different average suburban surname. The ‘naffometer’ reading was off the scale but there was usually something to smile at. With Scott’s childish naivete and permanently sunny outlook, and Whitfield’s more practical wife struggling to keep him out of trouble, it became part of the BBC’s midweek furniture well into the ‘80s, by which time it had become a byword for old-fashioned, old-school comedy. ‘A bit Terry and June’ was a phrase I’d use for something safe, undemanding and not particularly funny, but it was hardly June Whitfield’s fault, and it didn’t stop her showing up in a great range of programmes. Most of them were off my personal radar but I did catch her in a 1984 episode of Minder, also featuring young Ray Winstone and Jimmy Nail. However, in 1992 came a role which would make her more popular than any other show since the early sixties.

Launched on BBC2, Absolutely Fabulous quickly became one of the network’s biggest hits. While most of the humour was generated by the joyously outrageous characters like Edina, Patsy and Bubbles, the show would not have been the same without the strait-laced daughter Saffy (Julia Sawalha) and her slightly dotty gran played by June Whitfield. They had some delightful scenes together but often it was June whose almost throwaway lines disguised sharp barbs which so effectively punctured the balloon of pomposity and ego that doubled as the brains of the two leads such as this classic put-down.

Sadly, for me after two or three series, Ab Fab lost its element of surprise and with it what made the show so original and funny. I haven’t seen the movie and the periodic one-offs just don’t do it for me. Only la Whitfield continued to make me smile, fussing around the kitchen unfazed by the appalling Patsy and guest stars like Lulu or Emma Bunton on whom Ab Fab came to depend. Her small stature only served to make her character greater. I saw her once, in Broadcasting House back in ’98, only then realising how short she was.

In between those sporadic specials with Jennifer Saunders et al, June Whitfield, by then a CBE, made many more appearances on the screen. I never watched her on Last of the Summer Wine – its personal appeal having faded three decades earlier – nor did I witness her sprinkling a dose of stardust on either EastEnders (as a nun) or Coronation Street. However, I did enjoy her cameo as the cheeky ‘Minnie the Menace’ with Bernard Cribbins and David Tennant in Doctor Who’s 2009 two-parter The End of Time and we were treated to two Junes for the price of one in an otherwise lacklustre 2014 Jonathan Creek, portraying whimsical twin sisters.

Whitfield was belatedly made a Dame in 2018 and died almost a year later. At 93, she left a massive legacy of roles, be they on radio, stage, TV or the silver screen which surely few can match.