Thora Hird

On 13 September 2013 a memorial plaque to her was unveiled in Morecambe near where she was born. It is outside the Eric Bartholomew pub, named in honour of Eric Morecambe whose real surname was Bartholomew and who was also born in the town.

A memorial service was held for her at Westminster Abbey, London on 15 September 2003.

She was the subject of BBC1's "This Is Your Life" at Christmas 1996.

Made guest appearances, during the 1990s, in such BBC programs as That's Showbusiness (1989) and One Foot in the Past (1993).

She starred in a succession of hit TV comedies throughout the 70s and 80s but proof of her talent as a straight actress came in 1987, when she starred in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologue, A Creamcracker under the Settee for which she won a BAFTA award.

She was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1983 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama and the DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1993 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.

For several years she was presenter of the BBC1 religious program "Your Songs Of Praise Choice" (later retitled Praise Be (1981)), from the mid-1970s.

As her career progressed, she frequently returned to the stage, often in comedies, with comedians such as Arthur Askey and Harry Secombe, and, in 1964, she was memorably team with the comedian Freddie Frinton in the TV series, Meet the Wife (1963).

She gave outstanding performances in Simon and Laura (1955) and The Entertainer (1960), opposite Laurence Olivier, but one of her best- remembered roles was that of the monstrous TV-addicted mother in A Kind of Loving (1962).

In the 1950s, Hird was under contract to the Rank Organisation and was established as a major character actress. She worked with some of Britain's finest directors, including Herbert Wilcox, Lewis Gilbert and John Schlesinger but, by her own account, was not easily awed. "I've appeared in hundreds of films and television things and, in some cases, I literally mean 'appeared' around the door, that was all. Like anybody earning a living, I took most of the work that came along".

Put under contract, she first appeared in Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942) with Will Hay and a string of comedy films and dramas followed. In the same vein as the saucy seaside postcards of her Morecambe birth, Hird was usually cast as the all-seeing boarding house landlady, a gossiping neighbour or a sharp tongued mother-in-law.

In a career than spanned eight decades, Thora Hird was widely-regarded as one of Britain's finest character actresses. She made over 100 films as well as starring in a host of TV comedies and, as a straight actress, excelled in the works of playwright Alan Bennett. Even in her 90s, she was working almost daily. Born in Morecambe, Lancashire, the daughter of the manager of the local Royalty Theatre, she was carried on to the stage in a melodrama at the age of eight weeks. When old enough, she joined the Royalty's theatre company, although she kept a day job as a cashier in a grocery store. "I spent 10 years working in that grocery store", she recalled, "and I've played nearly all the customers I used to serve - maids, landladies, cleaners, forthright parents. When I'm acting, I'll do some little thing I've remembered, so simple". At the theatre, she appeared in over 500 plays and, in 1941, the comedian George Formby, on a visit to the theatre, recommended her to Michael Balcon at Ealing Film Studios.

Made her stage debut in 1911 at the age of two months when she was carried on stage at the Royalty Theatre Morecambe in a play directed by her father, who was also the stage manager.