PAT COOMBS: Physically slight, twitteringly meek, the character-actor Pat Coombs, who died on May 25th aged 75, was a natural for portraying women comically under the thumb of stronger personalities. In the mid-1950s, she featured in the radio series Hancock's Half Hour, and, between the 1960s and 1980s, appeared on such television shows as Dad's Army, Till Death Us Do Part, its successor, In Sickness And In Health, On The Buses, and its successor Don't Drink The Water - in which she played the twitchy Stephen Lewis.
Her film appearances began with an uncredited appearance in the Norman Wisdom vehicle Follow A Star (1959). There was Carry On Doctor (1968), Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall (1972) - in which she played Spike Milligan's mother - and Ooh, You Are Awful (1972), alongside her frequent screen associate Dick Emery.
She achieved considerable prominence as Peggy Mount's bullied sister-in-law, Violet, in Lollypop Loves Mr Mole (1971). She appeared again with Mount - they were close friends - in the retirement home situation comedy You're Only Young Twice (1977), playing the vague and dithery Cissie Lupin.
Pat Coombs was born on August 27th, 1926, in Camberwell, south London. After a holiday in Worthing, where she saw a concert party in a summer show, she decided -- at the age of six - that she wanted to become an actor. She recalled "falling in love" with the gypsy violinist, "and everyone else in the show". But, fearful of being laughed at, she told no one at school about her ambition.
Instead, she worked as a kindergarten teacher for three years, before a chance conversation with Vivien Merchant led them both to taking private acting lessons. She then studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where she later briefly taught. Her talent, she recognised, was for mimicry rather than St Joan; funny voices rather than leading ladies.
Gravitating into repertory theatre in the late 1940s, she had begun her comic career by the mid-1950s, working with the comedian Arthur Askey in his BBC radio show Hello Playmates, and with Charlie Chester in A Proper Charlie. Her career was built as a foil to that era's comedians, people such as Jimmy Edwards, Cyril Fletcher, Bill Maynard and Terry Scott.
Having been a radio voice, she became a television face. She was a regular on the Dick Emery Show (1963), played Mrs Hobbit in Barney Is My Darling (1965), and had a star role in the series Beggar My Neighbour (1967), as Lana Butt, Reg Varney's wife. Cry Wolf followed a year later. By 1971, she was playing Henrietta Salt in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.
It was an ironic tragedy that in 1995 it was osteoporosis of the spine that shrank Pat Coombs from 5ft 8ins to 5ft 2ins, and emphasised the very vulnerability which had been her trademark. But she bore the condition with good-humoured fortitude, and became a fund-raiser for the National Osteoporosis Society.
Appearing as a guest on This Is Your Life, she had to sit through the programme, rather than striding on from the wings to be recognised by the subject. She said afterwards: "They couldn't do enough for me, but I felt a bit of a problem." It was characteristic of her indomitable diffidence.
Pat Coombs never married. She said she had come close to it twice, but was not sure enough to proceed. She doubted whether she would have had an acting career at all, had she committed herself to married life. Shortly before her death, she recorded an appearance on the Radio 4 comedy series, Like They've Never Been Gone.
Pat Doreen Coombs: born 1926; died, May 2002