Mollie Sugden, has died aged 86. Born Mary Isobel Sugden in Keighley, Yorkshire Sugden started acting aged four after hearing a lady reading a poem. When Sugden read this poem, she brought the house down with laughter and so her comedy was born. Of course, it’s for her role in Are You Being Served? that she is best remembered for, making pussy jokes as the brilliant Mrs Slocombe, with her shock of felt-tip coloured hair.

Sugden was one of the finest comedic actors of her generation, able to support just about anyone and saw her working with Benny Hill, Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii!, Steptoe and Son and The Goodies.

Mollie Sugden’s first regular sitcom role was in the mid-’60s, playing Mrs. Crispin in Hugh and I, which introduced Sugden to John Chapman who wrote the series. It was he who involved Sugden in The Liver Birds, where she nailed the role of Sandra’s mother, Mrs Hutchinson.

Of course, it’s the double entendres of the department store that immediately springs to mind when talking about Sugden, who played the role of Mrs Slocombe from 1972 to 1985, not to mention the spin-off series Grace & Favour.

Her most notable recent turn came in Little Britain, where a character continually claimed to have been Sugden’s bridesmaid, and barely talks about anything else, only for Sugden to appear, cool as ice to show everyone she still had it.

Sugden sadly passed away at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford of unspecified natural causes.