RIP Mollie Sugden

That wonderful British actress, Mollie Sugden, best known in the US as Mrs. Slocombe, has passed away at the age of 86.

Sugden found early TV success with comedy series Hugh and I in 1962 and in Coronation Street as the gossiping Nellie Harvey. But it was The Liver Birds in the late 1960s and early 1970s that enabled her to make her first real impact, as Nerys Hughes' snobbish mother Mrs Hutchinson. And then in 1972 came Are You Being Served? and the role she became best known for - the blue-rinsed Betty Slocombe, with her affectation of middle-class gentility and her outrageous use of the double-entendre. Sugden went on to have her own slot on consumer programme That's Life and even found new fame in the US where re-runs of Are You Being Served? transformed both Sugden and co-star John Inman into cult figures in the early 1990s.

I remember seeing Mollie recently in the old BBC/PBS series "The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth". She played the "Kindermädchen" (nanny/governess) of Henry's 4th wife, Anna von Cleve. I didn't spot her at first but that voice... even with a German accent was unmistakable. And who can forget all of the doubles entendres Mrs. Slocombe dropped in reference to her pussy? I know she will be remembered for a long time to come.