{"id":202871,"date":"2026-06-29T11:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/06\/29\/dame-penelope-keith-the-good-lifes-funny-and-formidable-star\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T11:18:08","slug":"dame-penelope-keith-the-good-lifes-funny-and-formidable-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tahrir2day.com\/news\/2026\/06\/29\/dame-penelope-keith-the-good-lifes-funny-and-formidable-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Dame Penelope Keith: The Good Life’s funny and formidable star"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Dame Penelope Keith was one of Britain’s best-loved comedy actresses thanks to her inimitable portrayal of Margo Leadbeatter in 1970s sitcom The Good Life, among other roles.<\/b><\/p>\n

As Margo, the formidable social-climbing snob with a cut-glass voice but a soft interior, Keith ensured her place in the nation’s hearts.<\/p>\n

And her transition to her next comedy hit To the Manor Born, playing true-blue aristocrat Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, felt seamless.<\/p>\n

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    \n
  • \n

    The Good Life actress Dame Penelope Keith dies aged 86<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    Keith starred in several other sitcoms before later fronting shows about her passion for the British countryside.<\/p>\n

    Over a career that began in the late 1950s, Keith also remained devoted to her theatre roots, performing up and down the UK.<\/p>\n

    For her contribution to entertainment, and charity, Keith was rewarded with TV Baftas, an Olivier, an OBE, a CBE and ultimately a damehood in 2014 – not forgetting the rose named in her honour.<\/p>\n

    In an interview with the Daily Mail,, external<\/span> she summed up her love of making people smile.<\/p>\n

    “Humour is power and a force for good because if you can laugh, particularly at yourself, you are some way to being able to make sense of things,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    While Keith’s voice contributed to her success, it also gave a false impression of her background.<\/p>\n

    Keith (nee Hatfield) was from relatively humble stock. Born in Sutton, Surrey, in 1940, she grew up in Clapham, south London, in the thick of World War Two. <\/p>\n

    Her mother Connie worked as a hotel child entertainment organiser and was often away, so the young Penelope spent a lot of time with her grandparents.<\/p>\n

    Her father had left when she was very young and Connie later remarried, but although she took his surname, Keith wouldn’t talk about him.<\/p>\n

    Aged six, she went to a boarding school run by nuns, where the performing arts and elocution lessons were encouraged.<\/p>\n

    It became the happiest of times for the would-be actress.<\/p>\n

    “I apparently came home from school one day and sat in the bath and said to my mother that when I grow older I was going to be either a nun or an actress,” she told chat show host Michael Parkinson in 1977.<\/p>\n

    “She was a bit taken aback and said, ‘Darling, nuns can’t wear pretty clothes’. So I said, ‘Well, I’ll be an actress then.'”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    But out in the “real” world, the 5’10” stature that had landed her lead roles at school became an issue.<\/p>\n

    Top drama school Rada rejected her for being too tall, and although she found a place at the Webber-Douglas acting school, tutors made clear her perceived limitations.<\/p>\n

    “I was very tall and very plain; I think this is where the comedy came from because I wasn’t going to get very far on my looks. So I thought I’d better be the ‘gag girl’,” she told Parkinson.<\/p>\n

    Jobs in repertory theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company followed, with her height again leading to mainly supporting roles.<\/p>\n

    But in retrospect, Keith said, it was a great way to learn.<\/p>\n

    “It meant I had a good bash at all the character parts from 19 to 90, so one broadened one’s range,” she recalled in the 2000 TV tribute Lady of the Manor., external<\/span><\/p>\n

    Roles in radio plays and popular TV shows such as The Avengers came her way before she was “spotted” in Thames TV’s Hadley.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    It led to her own series Kate (1970-72), playing a ruthless magazine editor, which prompted tongue-in-cheek headlines including “Penelope, the woman you love to hate” in the TV Times.<\/p>\n

    But the real break came three years later in 1975 with The Good Life,, external<\/span> the sitcom about suburban neighbours who end up poles apart when one couple ditch their bourgeois lifestyle to become self-sufficient.<\/p>\n

    Initially the Goods, played by Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal, were the stars. Margo, wife to Jerry Leadbeatter (Paul Eddington), was a peripheral character. Only her voice was heard in the first episode.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    But, said then head of BBC comedy John Howard Davies in Lady of the Manor, , external<\/span>Keith’s part “grew and grew because she took a very firm grip on the character from the outset”.<\/p>\n

    And the more exasperating Margo became, the more the audience wanted.<\/p>\n

    Asked by Parkinson if Margo was a “bitch”, Keith said: “She has a heart of gold but says a lot of the things we’d like to say ourselves.”<\/p>\n

    The actress said she believed Margo spoke for the “silent majority” – as the character said in the episode Just My Bill.<\/p>\n

    In 1977, Keith enjoyed what turned out to be a stand-out year. <\/p>\n

    She won her first Bafta for The Good Life, was invited onto the coveted Morecambe and Wise Christmas special – and met her husband, policeman Rodney Timson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    Timson was twice divorced and eight years younger than Keith. They met when she was in a play in Chichester. After the wedding, Timson left the police to become Keith’s manager.<\/p>\n

    There was speculation about how long they would last, and the motives for the union, but the couple rode the wave.<\/p>\n

    “Lots of people who said I was making a mistake have divorced in the time we’ve been married, and we are still very happy,” declared Keith in the Daily Mail in 2007., external<\/span><\/p>\n

    “I don’t think I was desperate to find somebody. I certainly hope not. I was frightfully busy with work.”<\/p>\n

    Ten years after they married, they adopted twin brothers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    In 1978, Keith won her second Bafta for a TV adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s three-part comedy The Norman Conquests (the play in which Keith was performing with Kendal when Briers thought they’d be great for Margo and Barbara).<\/p>\n

    The suggested mismatch in Keith’s personal life was followed by that between Audrey and nouveau-riche supermarket tycoon Richard DeVere (Peter Bowles) in 1979’s To The Manor Born.<\/p>\n

    In the sitcom, Audrey had to give up her country pile to DeVere when the death of her husband left her in debt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    The “will they, won’t they” scenario kept viewers hooked. The final episode in 1981, in which they married, drew nearly 25 million viewers.<\/p>\n

    The show, which ran for three series, was later adapted for radio and there was a 25th anniversary Christmas special in 2007.<\/p>\n

    Following To The Manor Born, Keith continued in theatre, in such plays as Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, before venturing back into TV sitcoms.<\/p>\n

    Six shows followed, providing a variety of roles. They included a Labour MP (No Job For A Lady), the wife in a work colleague couple hiding the fact they are married (Executive Stress, again with Peter Bowles) and a no-nonsense barrister in Law And Disorder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    Each had various degrees of success but two of them ruffled feathers. Sweet Sixteen in 1983 saw Keith’s character becoming pregnant by a much younger man.<\/p>\n

    The public didn’t take to it and it was dropped. John Howard Davies said the series was too “ahead of its time”.<\/p>\n

    In 1995, Keith starred in Next Of Kin as Maggie Prentice, a grandmother who made no secret of disliking her orphaned grandchildren when taking them in after the death of her estranged son.<\/p>\n

    When the second season began, The Independent was unimpressed, saying: “Had the critical antennae been on full beam, [it] would never have made it to a first.” The show lasted for another series before being dropped.<\/p>\n

    With the exception of the one-off comedy drama Margery and Gladys in 2003 (co-starring EastEnders’ June Brown), Keith’s TV comedy career went into hiatus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    She concentrated on her theatre work, which Keith had continued to nurture alongside TV – particularly comedy classics from the likes of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde.<\/p>\n

    And in 2010 she told The Telegraph, external<\/span> that being reunited with Peter Bowles in The Rivals was like “putting on an old glove”.<\/p>\n

    Away from the limelight, Keith had long devoted time to public causes and her OBE was upgraded to a CBE in 2007 in recognition of her charity work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    \n

    Penelope Keith was a keen supporter of the British armed forces, and sat on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for six years from its foundation in 1990, giving her a key role in some controversial decisions about fertility.<\/p>\n

    Involvement in the National Trust and a stint as High Sheriff of Surrey (where she lived) allowed her to focus on her interest in the British countryside.<\/p>\n

    In 2014, she took this back onto TV, presenting three series of Penelope Keith’s Hidden Villages.<\/p>\n

    She presented a guide to coastal villages and a search for Village of the Year. <\/p>\n

    Well into her 80s, she made several appearances alongside Alan Titchmarsh, on the gardener’s Love Your Weekend series, and fronted a series about saving country houses for Channel Four.<\/p>\n

    She had served as president of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund from 1990 until 2022, having taken over after the death of Lord Olivier.<\/p>\n

    But Keith’s time as president ended bitterly, when she – and her supporters – were replaced by a rival group, a move that prompted years of legal action.<\/p>\n

    Looking back over her career, her former Good Life co-star Richard Briers perhaps best nailed Keith’s enduring appeal: saying that – as Margo – she “would go down in the hall of fame, in fact I think she will be remembered forever”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Dame Penelope Keith was one of Britain’s best-loved comedy actresses thanks to her inimitable portrayal of Margo Leadbeatter in 1970s sitcom The Good Life, among other roles. As Margo, the formidable social-climbing snob with a cut-glass voice but a soft interior, Keith ensured her place in the nation’s hearts. 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