She was one of the most recognisable of British character actresses, and was seemingly in just about every classic comedy series on our screens - including Steptoe and Son, Beggar My Neighbour, The Liver Birds, Doctor At Large, On The Buses, And Mother Makes Three, Love Thy Neighbour, Hancock, Mind Your Language, Happy Ever After, Duty Free, One Foot In The Grave and even the saucy film Confessions Of A Driving Instructor! - from 1962 to the mid-90s. Yet how many people would even know her name?
Miss Dolores Hayman (for it is she), who has departed for Fabulon just short of her 92nd birthday, was described by the aptly-named Familiar Unknown blog thus:
The epitome of the eminently respectable horsey lady, Ms Hayman was cast strictly to type, having been born in Kensington and educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College. She was memorably eccentric in the classic Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who story The Daemons [watch a snippet of an interview with her about that], and had a number of appearances on TV, in The Sweeney, The Double Deckers, Wodehouse Playhouse and, perhaps less predictably, The Young Ones and Filthy Rich & Catflap.Apparently, she was a close friend of the redoubtable Margaret Rutherford. Can you imagine a pair of eccentrics like that in a room together?
RIP, Damaris Hayman (16th June 1929 – 3rd June 2021)
