#james mellor

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: The Wrong-Un (1.7, LWT, 1972)

"What happens to them if they do get away with it?"

"Nothing, really; transfer to different prisons, serve their time. The system goes on."

"And stays the same."

"Yes."

"All a bit pointless, isn't it?"

[fattomatoz]

• Lost hearts (1973) Dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark

[brb-on-pluto]

Mr Bates vs The Post Office (2024)

Directed by: James Strong

Written by: Gwyneth Hughes

Genre: Drama | Based on Real Events

Staring: Toby Jones | Julie Hesmondhalgh | Monica Dolan | Shaun Dooley | Ian Hart | Will Mellor | Lia Williams

Runtime: 200 Mins

Rating: 8.9/10

Watched: 01/01/2024 - 04/01/2024

■■■■

I have never been more angry at a woman, person or company as I am at Paula Vennels and The Post Office.

The amount of people who will never get justice from the lies and sentences pushed by the Post Office.

This happened during my lifetime, my 10th birthday being a date directly referenced in the series. And I had no clue this travesty of justice was happening.

Great acting by all in this series omg - so so good.

Toby Jones was incredible. All the actors were. The friendship between Alan and Jo was so well done.

Oh, and the events depicted are still ongoing - Justice for the SubPostmasters.

[of-fear-and-love]

[elenichr]

Year of Lists

June Books

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors *3/5 - I expected more from this. I loved Cleopatra and Frankenstein. The characterisation is very good and the start is promising, but it just gets boring. I feel like there was so much more that could be done, both with the plot and with the exploration of themes.

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown *4.5/5 - the rating is a bit of a fuck you, like the book is a bit of a fuck you. There are many problems but it's certainly worth the read. Molly could sit alongside any great literary character and hold her own. She's one of those characters that stay with you as if they've lived - and in a way they have. The book is bold, loud, tenacious, and funny.

And it became increasingly clear that all Leroy and I had in common was a childhood full of ice cream, raisin boxes, and a mattress full of holes. But then I had never thought I had much in common with anybody. I had no mother, no father, not roots, no biological similarities called sisters and brothers. And for a future I didn't want a split-level home with a station wagon, pastel refrigerator, and a houseful of blonde children evenly paced through the years. I didn't want to walk into the pages of McCall's magazine and become the model housewife. I didn't even want a husband or any man for that matter. I wanted to go my own way. That's all I think I ever wanted, to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I'd rather be alone.

James by Percival Everett *4/5 - Beautiful writing, nuanced reimagining. Looking forward to reading more Percival Everett.

Brutes by Tate Dizz *2/5 - it starts off strong with language that forces you to slow down, like a sticky, sweaty summer haze. And then it fizzles out, kinda stays at that. The use of the plural is refreshing, dizzying, unnerving. It could have made a cracking short story. It fails as it tries to be more. Length doesn’t add to it, it takes away.

[downthetubes]

“Moonsleepers” Dan Dare art by Keith Watson offered at auction

An upcoming auction of “Books, Documents and Manuscripts” from Nottingham-based auction house Mellors & Kirk includes two pages of Dan Dare art by the late Keith Watson

[shakespearesdaughters]

Books To Read In 2025

A Brief History of Time

Agamemnon by Aeschylus

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Babel or the Necessity of Violence

Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates

Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope

Brave New World

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

Crime and Punishment

Corpus of Mycenaean Inscriptions from Knossos

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Lycidas by John Milton

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Marino Faliero by Lord Byron

Mémoires by Duc de Saint-Simon

Men of Thought and Deed by E. Tipton

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Orestia by Aeschylus

Othello by Shakespeare

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Poetics by Aristotle

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Republic, Book II by Plato

Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Bacchae by Euripides

The Broken Heart by John Ford

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Collector by John Fowles

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Iliad by Homer

The Lotus Eater by Homer

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Malcontent by John Marston

The New Testament

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Pirates of Penzance by W.S. Gilbert

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Untimely Meditations by Friedrich Nietzsche

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

With Rue My Heart is Laden by A.E. Housman

Journey from Chester to London by Thomas Pennant

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

The Club History of London by ?

The World Book Encyclopedia

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Rover Boys by Edward Stratemeyer

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

The Shining by Stephen King

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Normal People by Sally Rooney

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

[panelshowsource]

who do you think is an underrated panel show guest? like someone who doesn’t appear on them very often but should

ohh fun question... y'know the thing about panel shows these days is they're sooo so so comedian-centric and really a lot of the same people again and again — which i'm not complaining about! i think they're the funniest people in the room and understand the dynamic of a panel show better than anyone else 99% of the time! but when it comes to people i find underrated in the most exciting way it's usually the semi-rare non-comedian who just...gets it. like, back in the day it was people like john barrowman, martin freeman, josh groban, mark ronson, chris o'dowd, christopher biggins, professor green, a couple of the spice girls (they actually run in comedian circles, interestingly)... they just fit into these shows and dynamics so well!

most of the people who have really surprised me in this regard in the last 5 or so years (bc i don't wanna reach back to, like, 2012 for this hahaha) have been on celeb juice or something like graham norton, the last leg, etc. for example, i had no idea will mellor could really hang, take jokes, dish out jokes, and do physical comedy until i saw him on juice. i think that kind of discovery is so fun!

100000% the uk drag girls (the viv being the one we see the most, love her to death and GET HER ON TM!!) NEED to be on more panel shows, jordan north (and get william hanson on SOMETHING this MINUTE), shirley ballas, ronan keating is actually a laugh, a lot of the reality show people (MIC, TOWIE, etc) who do what they do because they don't take themselves too seriously really do Get The Vibe (this is how we got rylan hellooooo), maggie aderin-pocock is an angel, ore oduba, jordan stephens, judge rinder hmm

comedians-wise (ik the drag girls often are comedians, but otherwise), people we've seen a little bit who we should be seeing more of in the name of comedy — alasdair beckett-king, kiri pritchard-mclean, paul foot, larry dean (whoever has the ‘X days since panelshowsource has mention larry dean’ sorry but you gotta reset), glenn moore, amy gledhill, morgana robinson

+ they're not underrated per say but just people i'd like to see again/continue seeing more often include ivo graham, guz khan, chris addison, holly walsh, robert webb, elis james, catherine tate, jess hynes, josie long, peter serafinowicz, humphrey kerr (we haven't seen him in a minute but i always thought he could have developed more of a place in panel show culture), and ffs can we bring back angus? should we? but could we? can we? just for one episode idk? also graham norton get your ass on tm this INSTANT new years

these types of asks always drive me crazy for the rest of the week bc i'm like "ahh i forgot ____!!!" hahahah but lmk what you think too!

[taste-thewaste]

25 books for 2025

thank you for the tags @tailsbeth-writes and @anti-homophobia-cheese! You know I love talking about books :)

I'm a really big mood reader so compiling a list of books I want to read is hard...and I'll probably stray pretty far from it lol. But let's see!

Currently reading: Long After We Are Gone by Terah Shelton Harris, Heartstopper vol 1 by Alice Oseman, and The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg

Playworld by Adam Ross

Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gagne

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Henry Henry by Allen Bratton

Funny Story by Emily Henry

Heartstopper vols 2-5 by Alice Oseman (re-read)

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

James by Percival Everett

We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer

I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

Model Home by Rivers Solomon

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

A Banh Mi for Two by Trinity Nguyen

Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan

Anyone's Ghost by August Thompson

More, Please by Emma Specter

Becoming Ted by Matt Cain

After Annie by Anna Quindlen

Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus

Late Bloomer by Mazy Eddings

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun

The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas

My plan is for at least 55 books so here's to a good reading year!

tagging: @england-would-fall @bigassbowlingballhead @eusuntgratie @basil-bird @stratocumulusperlucidus

@insecuregodcomplex @stnichols

[oscarwetnwilde]

James Wilby as Clifford Chatterley in Lady Chatterley (1993) and James Wilby in an interview on him playing the role:

The People - Sunday, 30 May 1993:

Lady Chatterley’s vicious husband Sir Clifford made James Wilby bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, and a nightmare to live with. “I was taking the part home with me and refusing to come out of character,” admits Wilby, 32.

He realised he was going to have to live with a monster the moment he immersed himself in the part.

“He was wounded in the war and paralysed from the waist down,” Wilby explains. “But I felt no sympathy for him. He is vicious, manipulative, small-minded, yet incredibly intelligent. "He has no compassion and actually encourages his wife to have an affair with Mellors so he has an heir to his estate. “The role not only caused me stress and drained me physically and mentally, but made me feel deeply unattractive sexually. I know my wife Shana found it hard to kiss me. "I’d be rude to her about silly little things. If I found there was no coffee in the house I’d shout and swear at her and I must have been an absolute pain to live with. I had a permanent scowl on my face for five weeks. "But I knew I had to do it. At the time I still had scenes to shoot and I couldn’t risk slipping out of character. If I’d been anything less than convincing in the scenes I still had to do, the audience would have picked up on it and I’d have been furious with myself. "I know it caused tension between Shana and me but if you’re going to do a job properly, you have to be prepared to put yourself out. If not, it’s time to give up acting.” When Wilby worked with Angelica Huston on A Handful Of Dust, she had complained to him about the behaviour of Jack Nicholson, her then lover while he had been making the movie, The Shining. "Because his character had been evil, he behaved like a bastard, she said. So at least I was in good company! During the five weeks between the bulk of my filming and the few scenes right at the end of the shoot, Shana had to resort to humouring me rather than get into arguments.” To make matters worse for Wilby, his wife, a picture researcher, was five months pregnant with their second child, and having miscarried the previous year there was a fear she might do so again. “It was a very difficult time for us and I’m fortunate that I have such an understanding wife,” says Wilby. “Especially when I was shutting myself away until two or three in the morning so that I was absolutely certain that I was going to be able to go into the studio the following morning and deliver something that was believable and complete. But I can almost believe Shana was glad I was shutting myself away because I was behaving so badly.” Just learning Sir Clifford’s speeches demanded enormous concentration from Wilby. “My character’s part is actually bigger than that of gamekeeper Mellor's in terms of words. When Clifford opens his mouth, three paragraphs spill out, not just a sentence. "And he has this ridiculous small moustache. Ken Russell the director, insisted I grew one of my own and it came to symbolise everything I hated about my character and the effect he was having on me and my marriage. "I couldn’t wait to get it off and there was ceremonial shaving on the set at the end of the shoot,” he says. For DH Lawrence the story exemplified the class war in Britain. Clifford is from the landed gentry so he thinks himself superior to people like Mellors. “He calls Mellors a half-tamed animal with a gun and he means it," says Wilby. “Lawrence actually wrote three versions of the book- Lady Chatterley; John Thomas and Lady Jane; and Lady Chatterley’s Lover- and Clifford becomes more vicious as the books go on. The BBC version is an amalgam of all three books.” Wilby finally shed Sir Clifford when he went on a yachting holiday in the Mediterranean with three friends after he had finished filming Lady Chatterley. “Shana was going to come, but because she was pregnant she decided she couldn’t risk it. It was the best thing I could possibly have done. It was physically very demanding and I sweated Clifford right out of my system.”

[theuniversitychallengereview]

New Year, New Le(niency)

Before we start I’m going to plug my latest eBook — a collection of Grand Final reviews from the past decade. You can buy it here, or you could help me out by leaving a (glowing) review on Amazon…

We haven’t had a regular series episode of University Challenge for three weeks, which means that I’ve been able to distract myself by writing terrible poetry about the sky.

People going into Tesco When the sky is like this Into Sainsbury’s When the sky is like this

It also means that we have had our now-traditional Christmas interlude, with teams of well-to-do graduates from ten institutions having a crack at our favourite quiz.

This year there were three Cambridge colleges and one Oxford College, a ratio of 40% compared to the 29% we had in the regular series. Surely there are enough famous people who went to less salubrious establishments, but then again, maybe I’m wrong.

Sign up for The University Challenge Review

Spoilers ahead, be warned…

Durham were the only team who turned up for the first round, with Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer determined to take this very seriously, which I admired. They were the only team to score more than 200 points, which was 90 more than Queen’s, Cam who ranked second.

They were less dominant in the semis, beating Worcester, Ox by 35 points. Queen’s beat fellow Cambridge side Churchhill on a tiebreak to join them in the final.

This is where things get interesting.

The two sides traded early starters, with Denyer being perhaps controversially allowed the answer zirconium despite the fact she hadn’t actually buzzed. Queen’s had already buzzed incorrectly, but her teammate James buzzed at pretty much the same time Denyer started speaking.

However, watching back with frame-by-frame accuracy like a video assistant referee, it is clear that Denyer does start speaking before James buzzes. I paused the footage at the precise moment James buzzes and at that point Denyer has already said at the very least ‘zirc’.

I came on here with the intention of writing something about how the show was getting more lenient (hence the title), but the transgression isn’t as serious as I had originally thought. Denyer should still buzz of course, but crucially she starts answering before the buzz from James, which is why she was given a reprieve.

That’s enough fun (for now), let’s get on with tonight’s episode. If you want to watch it before reading the review you can do so here.

Here’s your first starter for ten.

Darwin, Cam face Edinburgh for the fourth quarter-final spot, with both sides comfortable winners in round one. In 2019, Darwin were 25 points away from facing Edinburgh in the Grand Final, losing 165–140 to St Edmund Hall, Ox in the semis.

Darwin’s Whitaker took eleven starters (the entirety of his team’s haul) in their first-round match, and he kicked things off in the same style with Paris. They took two bonuses on paintings of enslaved people before Whitaker took a second consecutive starter with the Argonauts.

This was slightly similar to the Denyer answer from the Christmas special, in that he answered after buzzing but before his name had been announced, and it looks as though he gave the answer in concert with his teammate Willis, who had buzzed a fraction later than he. Rajan lets them off but warns them against doing the same in the future.

Aiton loses five points for a guess of treason, but Whitaker can’t make it a hat-trick and the question drops. Mellor gets Edinburgh off the mark with Oxford English Dictionary next time out, and then Willis takes Darwin’s first non-Whitaker starter of the series with the Krebs Cycle on the picture starter.

A starter from Myles keeps Edinburgh in touch, but Whitaker reasserts his dominance with Mali on the following question, buzzing as soon as he heard the name of the capital city Bamako. A man who has done his revision, clearly. He takes his fourth with Ari Aster, and Edinburgh are going to need to start challenging him on the buzzer if they are to stand a chance.

The music starter, on Mussorgsky, goes to Aiton, and he corrects Saint-Saens to Satie at the last second to save five points on the bonuses. His streak continues with arc, then Edinburgh are cruelly denied the points for saying Dorothy Hodgkins rather than Hodgkin, which feels like needless pedantry.

Scourge, courtesy of Self, helps Edinburgh to close within ten points, but, perhaps predictably, Whitaker views this state of affairs as undesirable, and buzzes in with Grendel at the very next opportunity.

Aiton keeps Edinburgh in the game, but whenever things get a bit uncomfortable for Darwin, Whitaker is there to take the heat off. This time, on the second picture starter, with Elizabeth Siddal.

He ends the match with eight starters to his name, which is a slight drop-off from his first-round efforts, but remains by far the best in the match, and it is more than enough to earn his side a place in the quarter-finals.

Darwin 155–125 Edinburgh

Edinburgh can count themselves unlucky to have faced such a buzzer star in Whitaker at this stage, and performed decently in losing. Darwin look strong, but if Whiatker has an off day then they are very vulnerable.

Next week sees Wadham facing defending champions Imperial — join me for another recap. Goodbye.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

AI chips could get a sense of time with memristor that can be tuned

Artificial neural networks may soon be able to process time-dependent information, such as audio and video data, more efficiently. The first memristor with a "relaxation time" that can be tuned is reported today in Nature Electronics, in a study led by the University of Michigan. Memristors, electrical components that store information in their electrical resistance, could reduce AI's energy needs by about a factor of 90 compared to today's graphical processing units. Already, AI is projected to account for about half a percent of the world's total electricity consumption in 2027, and that has the potential to balloon as more companies sell and use AI tools. "Right now, there's a lot of interest in AI, but to process bigger and more interesting data, the approach is to increase the network size. That's not very efficient," said Wei Lu, the James R. Mellor Professor of Engineering at U-M and co-corresponding author of the study with John Heron, U-M associate professor of materials science and engineering.

Read more.

[swiftiephobe]

books read in 2024

royal assassin by robin hobb (02/01, epic fantasy) ★★★★★

assassin's quest by robin hobb (06/01, epic fantasy) ★★★★★

my sweet audrina by vc andrews (10/01, gothic horror) ★★★★★

this ragged grace by octavia bright (12/01, memoir) ★★½

nightbirds by kate j armstrong (14/01, historical fantasy) ★★★½

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon (21/01, epic fantasy) ★★★★★

a day of fallen night by samantha shannon (02/02, epic fantasy) ★★★★

nothing more to tell by karen m mcmanus (04/02, mystery thriller) ★★★

death in her hands by ottessa moshfegh (06/02, psychological fiction) ★★

a pale view of hills by kazuo ishiguro (07/02, psychological fiction) ★★★★★

before the coffee gets cold by toshikazu kawaguchi (11/02, magical realism) ★★★★

tales from the cafe by toshikazu kawaguchi (20/02, magical realism) ★★★½

before your memory fades by toshikazu kawaguchi (12/03, magical realism) ★★★

before we say goodbye by toshikazu kawaguchi (14/03, magical realism) ★★★½

dune by frank herbert (30/03, planetary romance) ★★★★

one of us is lying by karen m mcmanus (01/04, mystery thriller) ★★★★

one of us is next by karen m mcmanus (03/04, mystery thriller) ★★★

one of us is back by karen m mcmanus (08/04, mystery thriller) ★★★★

leviathan wakes by james sa corey (14/04, space opera) ★★★★

the butcher of anderson station by james sa corey (15/04, space opera) ★★★★

caliban's war by james sa corey (04/05, space opera) ★★★

drive by james sa corey (04/05, space opera) ★★★

gods of risk by james sa corey (04/05, space opera ★★★★

abaddon's gate by james sa corey (18/05, space opera) ★★★★

the last murder at the end of the world by stuart turton (18/06, supernatural mystery) ★★

the churn by james sa corey (21/06, space opera) ★★★★

piranesi by susanna clarke (31/07, magical realism) ★★★★★

the hating game by sally thorne (24/08, contemporary romance) ★★

second first impressions by sally thorne (12/09, contemporary romance) ★

cibola burn by james sa corey (14/09, space opera) ★★★

holes by louis sachar (15/09, adventure) ★★★★★

the stolen throne by david gaider (04/10, epic fantasy) ★★★

prophet song by paul lynch (08/10, dystopian) ★

nocturnal animals by austin wright (18/10, psychological thriller) ★★★★★

blue sisters by coco mellors (02/11, contemporary family drama) ★★★★

la belle sauvage by philip pullman (26/11, high fantasy) ★★★

a language of limbs by dylin hardcastle (07/12, lgbtq+ historical) ★★★

nemesis games by james sa corey (16/12, space opera) ★★★½

down sand mountain by steve watkins (28/12, historical coming-of-age) ★★★½

murmur by will eaves (31/12, psychological fiction) ★★★★

[of-fear-and-love]

[girljeremystrong]

going thru your book tag & I love your recs - are there books you've recently read that you've loved?

hiiiii 💕

YES i have been reading some great books. here's a list of my favorites from the past few months!

classics:

a streetcar named desire by tennessee williams: the very beloved play and it was incredible and the way these characters come alive so stunningly is so impressive.

david copperfield by charles dickens: a classic that i was so intimidated by but ended up absolutely loving. what a wonderful character and of course the writing was perfect.

master and commander by patrick o'brien: man do these sailors talk a lot. this was very fun and entertaining and i thoroughly enjoyed it. need to watch the movie now.

non fiction:

all the beauty in the world by patrick bringley: this guy was a guard at the metropolitan museum of art in NY and this is a really good memoir, sorta moving in parts.

the three mothers by anna malaika tubbs: it's a very well researched and very well written book about the mothers of malcom x and martin luther king and james baldwin.

black af history by michael harriot: an account of american history from the experiences of black americans. this was super interesting and eye opening and i think it was great.

how to survive a plague by david france: very important and moving book about the aids crisis written by a gay man who had just moved to NY by the time it broke out.

the transgender issue by shon faye: this is a book that mainly discusses trans rights in the UK but i think it's important that everyone reads it.

fiction published more recently:

blue sisters by coco mellors: i liked it. it is good and it's about sisters and grief.

the god of the woods by liz moore: really good thriller with multiple timelines and suspicious people and it kept me on my toes.

henry henry by allen bratton: i really enjoyed it. it is the sort of funny sort of serious story of a boy dealing with a bad father and complicated siblings and they're all rich and dysfunctional.

family meal by bryan washington: i cried my whole way through this but it's not a tragic story AT ALL. if anything it is hopeful and wonderful and it's about found families and belonging.

the trees by percival everett: just so great and masterful and fast paced and it's at its core about police brutality and race.

interesting facts about space by emily austin: i loved this book. it's about finding a place and anxiety but it has so much heart.

i think this is mostly it from the past months! but please if you have more specific requests or anything i am all ears :)

[justforbooks]

The actor Brigit Forsyth, who has died aged 83, made her name as Thelma in the BBC television series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? One critic described Thelma as so prim that she could turn the lifting of a lace curtain into an art form.

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’s creation, which ran from 1973 to 1974, was the sequel to the popular 1960s sitcom The Likely Lads, which starred Rodney Bewes and James Bolam as Bob Ferris and Terry Collier, two single north-east England factory workers who share a flat and the same interests – women, drink and football.

Thelma Chambers was brought in as a girlfriend for the upwardly mobile Bob, now in the white-collar class with a house, car and annual holiday on the Costa Brava, scoffed at by Terry, who clings on to his working-class roots. Thelma and Bob were married halfway through the two series of the show.

“Up until then, I had done a lot of drama on telly,” said Forsyth. “If I wasn’t being murdered, I was murdering somebody or I was a disturbed art teacher. I was playing quite a lot of deranged people, so comedy was a nice change.”

She created laughs again with the sitcom Sharon and Elsie (1984-85), in which she co-starred as the middle-class Elsie Beecroft alongside Janette Beverley as the more down-to-earth Sharon Wilkes, two employees in a greetings card manufacturing company.

But Forsyth’s own favourite television part was Francine Pratt in Playing the Field (1998-2002), the on- and off-pitch women’s football drama created by Kay Mellor. Her character, who hates the game, is married to the Castlefield Blues’ sponsor, played by Ricky Tomlinson, and keeps him happy in return for designer clothes and other luxuries.

“I have never played awful glamour before,” she said. “I had a blond wig, six-inch heels, makeup and my bosom hitched up high.”

Forsyth was born in Malton, North Yorkshire, to Scottish parents, Anne (nee Forsyth), an artist, and Frank Connell, an architect and town planner, and brought up in Edinburgh. She was mesmerised by Stanley Baxter’s performances as a pantomime dame at the city’s King’s theatre and, aged 18, landed her own first lead role, as Sarat Carn, on her way to the gallows, in Charlotte Hastings’s play Bonaventure with the Makars amateur drama group.

But when she left St George’s school, Edinburgh, her parents insisted she learn a skill, so she trained as a secretary. After a couple of jobs, she headed for London and Rada (1958-60), where she won the Emile Littler prize.

She began her professional career back in Edinburgh with the Gateway theatre company (1960-61) before moving on to the Theatre Royal, Lincoln (1961-62) and the Arthur Brough Players in Folkestone (1962). With other actors already named Brigit McConnell and Bridget O’Connell, she changed her professional name to Forsyth on her return to Lincoln in 1962.

At the Edinburgh festival three years later, she played one of the witches in a headline-making production of Macbeth. “That show caused an absolute uproar because they wanted the witches to have the bodies of young girls and the faces of old women, and they wanted us to have our top half naked,” Forsyth recalled. “But the Earl of Harewood, who was running the EIF at the time, said ‘No’. So they put nipple caps on us, which looked absolutely disgusting – and they used to drop off each night. It was absolutely hysterical.”

Later, in the West End, Forsyth played Annie in The Norman Conquests (Globe, now Gielgud, and Apollo theatres, 1974-76) and Dusa in the feminist play Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi (Mayfair theatre, 1976-77). She put her TV breakthrough down to cutting her hair short. “It proved a tremendously lucky omen,” she said.

That break came with Adam Smith (1972), in which she played the younger daughter of the title character, a Scottish minister (Andrew Keir). The director, Brian Mills, then worked with Forsyth on the psychological thriller Holly (1972), when she took the part of a young art teacher kidnapped by a mentally unstable student. Forsyth and Mills married in 1976.

Television roles kept on coming. She was Veronica, one of the product-promotion team, in The Glamour Girls (1980-82), Harriet in the inter-generational sitcom Tom, Dick and Harriet (1982-83), and Helen Yeldham, a hotelier, in the 1989 series of Boon.

There were also appearances in soap opera: as GP Judith Vincent in The Practice (1985-86); Babs Fanshawe, Ken Barlow’s escort agency date who dies of a heart attack, in a 1998 Coronation Street episode; Delphine LaClair, a sales rep for a French company interested in buying Rodney Blackstock’s vineyards, for two short runs in Emmerdale (2005 and 2006); Cressida, mother of the millionaire Nate Tenbury-Newent, in Hollyoaks in 2013; and three roles in Doctors between 2000 and 2012.

Forsyth also played the miserable Madge, who frustrates her sister Mavis’s attempts at a relationship with Granville, in the sitcom sequel Still Open All Hours (2013-19).

A cellist from the age of nine, Forsyth starred as the real-life virtuoso Beatrice Harrison in a 2004 tour of The Cello and the Nightingale. Also on tour, she was a remarkably believable Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution (2000) and played Marie in Calendar Girls (2008). “I’m Mrs Frosty-Knickers, the one who doesn’t approve of it all.”

In 2017, she played a terminally ill musician in the stage comedy Killing Time, written by her daughter, Zoe Mills, who acted alongside her. At the time, Forsyth revealed that her maternal grandfather, a GP in Yorkshire, had helped dying patients to end their lives. Declaring herself a supporter of euthanasia, she said: “He bumped off probably loads of people with doses of morphine.”

In 1999, Forsyth separated from her husband, but they remained friends until his death in 2006. She is survived by their children, Ben and Zoe.

🔔 Brigit Forsyth (Brigit Dorothea Connell), actor, born 28 July 1940; died 1 December 2023

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