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View Full Version : R.I.P Mrs Slocombe


joveski
07-02-2009, 10:39 AM
Molle Sugden has passed away - who's going to look after her pussy now?

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/07/02/1246127614187.html



Mollie Sugden, the television actor who played the cat-obsessed Betty Slocombe in Are You Being Served?, has died age 86.

Sugden, born in 1922 in Keighley, West Yorkshire, became a household name after appearing in brightly coloured wigs as the social-climbing matriarch in the comedy series between 1972 and 1975.

She also portrayed Mrs Hutchinson, another battleaxe, in The Liver Birds.

Joan Reddin, Sugden's agent, said that her twin sons, Robin and Simon Moore, were at her bedside when she died at the Royal Surrey Hospital on Tuesday after a long illness, The Times Online reported.

"She was a lovely, lovely person and I never had any trouble with her. She was a great professional," said Reddin, who represented Sugden for 30 years.

Sugden, who lived in Surrey, never recovered from the death of her husband, William Moore, who was also an actor, Reddin said.

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

Sugden starred in many other comedies, including Come Back Mrs Noah, That's My Boy and My Husband And I, which she made with Moore.

She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Her early career was spent in repertory theatre, where in Swansea in 1956 she met Moore, who she married two years later.

AAP

Auburn Annie
07-02-2009, 07:06 PM
Ah, yes, we watched "Are You Being Served" for years on the local PBS station. A bit dated but funny anyway. The ladies' department of Grace Brothers will never be the same.

timetraveler
07-04-2009, 11:19 AM
Damn! First John Inman & now Mollie. The lady was hilarious as the cat, and as I saw it, genteel man crazy lady. We first started watching Are You Being Served by accident when we didn't have anything better to watch one evening & found it to be the funniest thing we had seen in a long time, with the only other thing being Last Of The Summer Wine. It all puts me in minnd of one episode dealing with a lady that had lost a diamond & had offered a reward of 100 pounds when found. Well, it looks as if Mr. Lucas was right about who would be measuring folks from the department floor for their wings. Hopefully, Mr. Grainger made Mollies to fit her right. :(

Don Quixote
07-04-2009, 11:42 AM
Are you Being Served was one of my guilty pleasures. Definitely low-brow Brit comedy (and it really went downhill with the sequel, Are you Being Served Again, which took place in a kind of mansion-hotel), but fun.
DQ

joveski
07-04-2009, 10:25 PM
the sequel was called Grace & Favour down here.. i liked it, but some of the jokes were adted from the original series