Actress June Spencer – most well-known for her position within the long-running BBC Radio 4 drama The Archers – has died on the age of 105, her household has mentioned.
She performed Peggy Woolley within the programme’s first episode in 1951 and, barring a break from the present, performed the position till her retirement in 2022, aged 103.
An announcement launched by the BBC mentioned: “June Spencer, aged 105, best known for playing Peggy in BBC Radio 4 The Archers, died peacefully in her sleep in the early hours of this morning.
“Her household wish to pay specific tribute and because of the employees group at Liberham Lodge, who so lovingly cared for her within the final two years.”
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Spencer as a younger actress. Pic: PA
The character of Peggy, who was a matriarch on the present, started as a left-wing firebrand, however because the years went on was typically seen as a traditionalist and conservative.
Her on-air storylines noticed her character cope with alcoholism, playing and bereavement.
The agricultural drama, with its well-known jaunty theme tune, charts the ups and downs of farming life in fictional Ambridge.
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Pic: PA
Jeremy Howe, editor of The Archers, mentioned working together with her was “one of the great privileges of my time at the BBC”, and added that apart from performing as “the ultimate matriarch of Ambridge”, she was a “brilliant actress”.
He additionally mentioned: “One of many solid as soon as remarked that in all her time within the present he had solely ever heard her fluff her strains the as soon as.
“She was an actress who revelled in her craft, someone who could score a bullseye with a gently insulting cough as if it were a bon mot from Oscar Wilde.
“She was additionally an excellent firm member – humorous, sharp, heat, by no means gossipy, however with fantastic tales of the early days of radio drama, self-deprecating and an excellent companion.”
Mr Howe also hailed her as “the queen” of the soap, and said with “her loss of life The Archers has misplaced its hyperlink with the delivery of the present over 70 years in the past”.
“It’s a humbling second for us all,” he added.
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The Queen (left) with Spencer in 2021. Pic: PA
Spencer was one of many authentic solid, however left in 1953 and was changed by Thelma Rogers.
She returned to the present to play different characters at occasions through the Fifties, earlier than reprising her position as Peggy in 1961 -continuing till her retirement in 2022.
The late Queen Elizabeth was one of many actress’s many followers, inviting Spencer and her Archers co-stars to Clarence Home for a reception marking the present’s seventieth anniversary in 2021.
Queen Camilla additionally made a cameo look as herself in a particular Sixtieth-anniversary episode of the present in 2011.
