Peerless actress who starred in two beloved sitcoms
Penelope Keith, who has died aged 86, became one of the most famous faces in Britain in the 1970s, owing to her roles in two of the most beloved TV comedies of their era. In “The Good Life”, she was Margo Leadbetter, the haughty, bossy social climber who lives next door to Tom and Barbara Good (Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal). Elegantly dressed and immaculately coiffed, Margo is horrified when the Goods decide to become self-sufficient and turn their suburban garden into a smallholding. “This sort of thing simply does not go on in Surbiton,” she says, at the sight of their new pigsty. Yet Margo and her more easygoing husband Jerry (Paul Eddington) remain on good terms with their often hapless neighbours. Margo had been conceived as a supporting role, but her brilliantly delivered putdowns – “Don’t bleed in the sink, Jerry, I’ve just cleaned it” – became one of the show’s great highlights, said Gareth Roberts in The Telegraph; and it was Keith’s genius to make Margot a fully rounded personality – a crashing snob, brittle and without humour, but also pragmatic, kindly and sometimes vulnerable.
In “The Good Life”, she was one member of an impressive ensemble cast (of which Kendal is now the only survivor); from 1979, she had the lead role in “To the Manor Born”, as the aristocratic Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, who – following the death of her husband – is forced to sell her ancestral seat, and move into its gatehouse. She initially despises the estate’s new owner, self-made supermarket tycoon Richard DeVere (Peter Bowles), but gradually warms to him. In the series finale in 1981, the pair get married. It was an even bigger hit than “The Good Life”, attracting up to 24 million viewers. In 1977, Keith sent up her onscreen persona when she appeared, attempting to descend a grand staircase clad in a turban and a long gown, on Morecambe and Wise’s Christmas special. In later life, she was a regular guest on tribute shows to the comedians.
People tended to assume that Keith was herself from a smart background, which she found gratifying. As she put it, she always hoped that audiences would “believe that it’s me up there”. In fact, she grew up in fairly straitened circumstances. Her father, an Army major, walked out soon after her birth in 1940; her mother found work at a hotel in Clacton-on-Sea, running children’s events. Penny, as she was known, was sent to a convent boarding school aged six. She had always known she wanted to act, and at 16 she enrolled at the Webber Douglas drama school. After a period in rep, she spent three years at the RSC in the early 1960s. In a production of “Julius Caesar”, she was on stage in a background role when Mark Antony asks his countrymen to lend him their ears. Peter Hall was not amused when Keith’s voice was heard crying out: “’Ere you are then, ’ave an ear! ’Ave one of mine!”
In 1974, she starred (with Kendal) in the West End premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests” as the uptight Sarah. It was this that led to her being cast in “The Good Life”, which ran for four series from 1975. From the 1990s, Keith focused mainly on stage work, with roles in everything from “The Importance of Being Earnest” to Rattigan’s “The Deep Blue Sea”. A perfectionist at work, she did not suffer fools, but she loved the theatre, and was notably supportive of young actors. In 2014, she was made a dame for her services to the arts and her charity work. At home, she said she was happiest in her garden, tending to her runner beans. She married Rodney Timson, a police officer, in 1978. He survives her, with the two sons they adopted a decade later.
