callmemadam (callmemadam) wrote,
callmemadam
callmemadam

RIP

News today of the death of June Whitfield, aged 93. Most of the praise seems to be coming from the cast of AbFab who, unlike so many of the people Whitfield worked with, are still alive. She was of course brilliant in that and I always thought it very generous of Jennifer Saunders to write her the best lines and give her the last word. My memories of her go back much further, to when I was a mere child in the 1950s. I liked listening to a radio comedy programme called Take It From Here, in which Whitfield played Ethel, the long-suffering fiancée of Ron Glum. Her catchphrase was a plaintive ‘Oh, Ron!’ You can hear her say it at 1.07 into this episode.



I was also very sorry to hear that Andrew Strauss’s wife had died. I knew nothing of her except that Strauss had resigned from his job as Director of England Cricket in order to look after her and their two young sons. She was only 46. Whenever someone dies young, I ask myself, ‘What have you done in the extra years you’ve been granted and they didn’t have?’ The answer is always, ‘Not enough.’
Tags: cricket, death, june whitfield, radio
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