Very sad news. One of my all-time favourite all-round entertainers, the actress and comedienne Sheila Steafel has departed to join the merry throng in the the eternal Variety show of Fabulon.
Miss Steafel was, quite simply, "always there" - I remember her mischievous, almost-but-not-quite-giggling personality from way back when I was quite young. She emerged into the spotlight [from a long career as a jobbing actor, an émigré from South Africa] as one of the stalwarts of The Frost Report (Mr F's successor show to the legendary That Was The Week That Was) alongside John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett - and she was a regular on The Two Ronnies Show over many years. She popped up as a comic "foil" for just about every comedian on British TV - including Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Bernard Cribbins, Eric Sykes, Jimmy Tarbuck, Arthur English, Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Kenny Everett and Spike Milligan - starred in an adaptation of Diary of a Nobody, and had a lengthy stint in the children's show The Ghosts of Motley Hall, as well as a long and varied stage career. Along the way, she was married to Harry H Corbett ("Harold Steptoe") for six years.
It was, however, for her stupendous regular appearances on The Good Old Days we loved her the most! I need no excuse to play these two gems, both of which are embedded in the very fabric of our being here at Dolores Delargo Towers:
We went to see the great lady in her one-woman show Victoria Plums back in 2005, in which she featured many of her favourite (and mostly obscure) Victorian Music Hall songs - as collected in a CD of the same name, which forms a treasured part of our collection to this day. It was on this occasion that we were fortunate to meet her after the show, and she signed a photo for us, which has pride of place among our gallery of the great and the good...
I am wearing a black armband as we speak.
RIP, Sheila Frances Steafel (26th May 1935 - 23rd August 2019)
No more 'Popsy Wopsy'
ReplyDeleteSad news indeed.
Black arm bands all round. A great loss to us all.
R.I.P. Sheila
A great loss, indeed. Bless 'er. Jx
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