Ruth Madoc: A life lived with charm, humour and abundant talent
She couldn't watch herself on screen at the height of her fame and reinvented herself by appearing in possibly the rudest show on TV at the time
When you think of Ruth Madoc it's her Bafta-nominated portrayal of lovelorn chief yellowcoat Gladys Pugh in the classic holiday camp sitcom Hi-De-Hi! which probably springs to mind. However, as she admitted in 2017, she was never able to summon the nerve to watch it the entire time it ran on the BBC between 1980 and 1988.
"I didn’t used to watch it at the time because I was so scared I would hate seeing myself so much I wouldn’t be able to do it anymore," she said. "I watched it quite recently though and it’s really stood the test of time.
"That’s down to the writing, of course. We buried writer Jimmy Perry (who wrote the show alongside David Croft) recently and we were all there. It’s sad. Another page turned."
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She also revealed that her children - Lowri and Rhys - weren't massive fans of her character either.
"The kids were young when I was filming the role of Gladys and they’d say, ‘Are you going to be that Gladys Puke again?’ So I'd replied, ‘Listen, that Gladys Puke is paying for your school education'."
Despite her children's dislike of her character Gladys, Madoc often spoke warmly of her and the people she had based her portrayal on, describing the role as "a wonderful, unexpected thing to happen".
"I knew Gladys so well because I’d met women like her while growing up in South Wales. She was a woman of her time – like two tonnes of nutty slack rolling down the Welsh valleys. Viewers loved Hi-de-Hi! because it had great writing. The lines were so spot-on nothing was ever changed," she said.
She told one interviewer she had helped shape the character: "It was written for me, I had known [writer] Jimmy Perry since I was about 19... She's a vamp from the Valleys but she's a virgin underneath it all and if someone had tried it on with her I think she would have run a mile, god love her, underneath all the false eyelashes and everything. I asked Jimmy Perry if I could base her on a wonderful woman of the 1950s called Zizi Jeanmaire. She was a very beautiful French ballerina and she was the first one to do that gamine hairstyle."
Lowri and Rhys were never far from Madoc as they grew up, even when she went off on tour as a budding actress. Her own parents had gone away to work in the NHS in England when she was young, leaving her to be brought up by her grandmother, Etta Williams, in Llansamlet.
As a result she'd take them with her to rehearsals and performances in carry cots from the age of six weeks. These were the pre-fame days, after she'd learned her trade at RADA in London, to which she won a place and a bursary aged 16. "My grandmother taught me elocution and because I’d always had to say a verse in chapel from the age of three I was used to it and to projecting my voice," she once revealed.
"Gran knew nothing about the business but would always say, 'Never mumble, enunciate'." Other actors in Madoc's Ruth’s year at Rada included John Alderton, Roy Marsden, Lynda Le Plante, Ian McShane and June Ritchie.
Her first role came as Fruma Sarah in the film version of musical Fiddler on the Roof in 1971 - opposite Israeli star Topol - but she'd go on to triumph in everything from musicals to serious theatre. She played alongside Harry Secombe in Pickwick, did stage and film versions of Under Milkwood, before later returning to comedy in the role of a dog trainer in Big Top, a 2010 BBC circus sitcom starring Amanda Holden and John Thompson.
But the show that reintroduced her to a new generation of fans was, without doubt, Little Britain. Although Madoc admitted to having been "horrified"” when she read the part of Dafydd 'The only gay in the village' Thomas' mother in the Matt Lucas/David Walliams hit.
Unsure whether to take the role, she rang her son for advice. "I was so shocked by the script that I ran it by Rhys," she said. "He laughed and said, ‘Do it. You’ll get street cred’.
"Little Britain opened doors I probably would have forgotten existed. I was just doing bits and bobs at that time."
Since then she'd cropped up in popular shows like Doctors and Benidorm, as well as continuing to tour in shows like Calendar Girls and The Wedding Singer.
But, living in the beautiful Neath Valley with her husband John, she kept in touch with the stars of Hi-de-Hi and had occasional reunions with them.
Madoc even spent her 70th birthday deep in rehearsals, portraying one of the biggest Welsh stars of the 20th century – singing sensation Dorothy Squires. The drama, Say It With Flowers, opened at Cardiff’s Sherman Cymru theatre before heading out on tour.
"I can’t believe I’ve survived to 70 in this business," she told WalesOnline at the time. Madoc's agent today said she had died in hospital on Friday afternoon after surgery for a fall she'd earlier sustained - she was 79. See tributes to her here.
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