PHOTO
Penelope Keith made her name by playing upper class snobs, a stage persona well at odds from her humble own background.
The much-loved comedy actress became a star of British TV thanks to her masterful portrayal of Margo Leadbetter in 1970s sitcom The Good Life, and cemented her celebrity in her follow up hit series To the Manor Born, playing true-blue aristocrat Audrey fforbes-Hamilton. She eventually became Dame Penelope in 2014.
All of that would likely seemed preposterous to a young Penelope Hatfield while growing up in the South London suburb of Clapham. Her mother Constance worked on the seaside resort circuit organising children’s entertainment. Her soldier father left the family when she was still a baby.
Her mother remarried and her daughter took her stepfather’s surname, Keith. However, they did not get on and she seldom spoke of him.
Keith decided early on that she wanted to be an actress but initially failed to get into drama school, apparently for being too tall. She was eventually accepted into the Webber-Douglas acting school and gravitated toward comedy, feeling that would be a more likely path to success.
After working in repertory theatre Keith was hired by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963. She combined stage work with appearances in shows as diverse as The Avengers and The Morcambe and Wise Show, and also snared a co-starring role in Yorkshire Television sitcom Kate, in which Keith played a stern magazine editor.
In 1974 Keith appeared opposite Felicity Kendall in a new Alan Ayckbourn play, The Norman Conquests and a year later — on Good Life co-star Richard Briers’ recommendation — the actresses were reunited on The Good Life.
Keith’s character, Margo, was originally a minor part — she did not even appear in the first episode. However the comedy’s basic plot — the Goods (Kendall and Richard Briers) decision to become self-sufficient in the London suburbs — meant that they were often at odds with their neighbours (Keith and Paul Eddington).
That meant Margo became more prominent, and Keith’s acting skills did the rest. Despite the character being pompous and occasionally blindly inconsiderate Keith did not make her a caricature or a villain; rather her bemused mystification at her neighbour’s antics meant that viewers quickly identified with her.
In 1977 Keith won the first of two Baftas, for her portrayal of Margo. The same year she met her husband, policeman Rodney Timson.
He left the force to become her manager; the couple later adopted two boys.
When The Good Life ended in 1978 Keith had the great good fortune to land another hit series immediately.
In To The Manor Born Keith played a widow forced to sell her late husband’s grand estate upon his death, then watch seething through the curtains of her new home in the neighbouring lodge as new money supermarket tycoon Richard De Veere (Peter Bowles) took over the house and her former life.
Although it was clearly telegraphed from the start that the polar opposites would fall for each other, the suspense was maintained for three hit seasons, with individual episodes regularly topping the weekly viewership chart. The characters eventually married in the show’s final episode, in 1981.
Keith appeared in several different sitcoms subsequently but never again struck the great heights of The Good Life or To The Manor Born.
Her career instead gravitated back to theatre and she was regularly cast in revivals of comedy classics by the likes of Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde.
Away from the stage Keith spent much of her time working for charities; her OBE was as much for that as acting and her subsequent elevation to CBE in 2007 was for charitable services. She became a Dame in 2014 for services to acting and charity.
Her interests were diverse, and included sitting on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for six years.
Keith was a long-serving president of the Actors' Benevolent Fund, and was also a regional president for the National Trust. She was closely involved with armed services and nature charities, and the countryside in general.
She served a term as High Sheriff of Surrey, and went on to front several documentaries and lifestyle programmes on country matters, including Penelope Keith's Hidden Villages, Village of the Year with Penelope Keith, and Saving Country Houses with Penelope Keith.
Dame Penelope Keith died on June 29, aged 86. — Allied Media