Wendy Richard aged 65.

Sandie Seward · Wendy Richard aged 65.

Wendy Richard, the actress who appeared in some of Britain's best-loved and most long-running television programmes, has died today, her agent Kevin Francis said. She was 65 and had been suffering from cancer.

Ms Richard's career spanned five decades of British television and film, since her first appearance in 1961 in the series Stranger on the Shore.

She went on to play Joyce Harker in the BBC's 1960s soap opera, The Newcomers, and became a household name as the impressionable Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? from 1972 to 1985.

She is perhaps best known for her 21 years playing the redoubtable, sad-faced matriarch Pauline Fowler, from the first episode of the BBC1 soap opera EastEnders in 1985 to her character's death in 2006. Gossip columns said she insisted on being written out of the plot as she did not like the turn her character's storyline was taking, with the show's writers plotting that she should remarry.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2251337.stm

JoJo

I liked Wendy Richards,she played a good part, but I have not watched East Enders for years it just got so depressing Sad

Sandie Seward

Being a regular Soap Watcher, I always try to watch Emmerdale, Corrie, and Eastenders.

Wendy's character, Pauline, became very grumpy and very miserable towards the end, and when the Writers wrote her out of the programme, it was a "happy release."

However, I was sorry to hear about Wendy's own demise. Sad

Sandie Seward

Some lovely tributes here from the people who knew, and worked with her over the years.

http://www.express.co.uk/features.../86671/Glamour-girl-to-soap-queen

JoJo

That was lovely Sandie.