Star of EastEnderswho endured two battles with cancer.
WENDY RICHARD, who has died aged 65, was one of the most popular English TV actresses of her generation. For more than 20 years, she starred in the BBC soap EastEndersbut was a household name before that as a result of appearing in the department store sitcom Are You Being Served?
She endured two battles with breast cancer in the mid-1990s and then in 2002. The cancer went into remission after years of treatment, but last year it was discovered that the disease had returned in an aggressive form, attacking her kidneys, bones and spine.
Last October, she disclosed in a newspaper interview that the cancer was terminal and that she was dying.
Wendy Richard was born Wendy Emerton in 1943. She was educated at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, Herts, and then at the Italia Conti Academy stage school in London.
She first became familiar to TV audiences playing Joyce Harker, a regular in the BBC's 1960s soap The Newcomers. But she became famous in the 1970s sitcom Are You Being Served?
She played a Cockney shop assistant, Shirley Brahms, a role she continued to play in the sequel, Grace And Favour, in 1992 and 1993.
She joined EastEndersas matriarch Pauline Fowler when the programme began in 1985 and remained in it until 2006, when her character died. The reason she gave for her departure was an objection to certain parts of the storyline.
Her first three marriages ended in divorce. She lived with her partner of 12 years, John Burns, and the two married on October 10th last year.
Wendy Richard: born July 20th, 1943; died February 26th, 2009