Carmel McSharry obituary

The actor Carmel McSharry, who has died aged 91, was happy with her career of well-drawn character parts on TV alongside stars such as Warren Mitchell, Ian Holm, Derek Jacobi, Wendy Hiller and Jane Asher. But her name shot to the top of the cast list when she landed the title role in Beryl’s Lot (1973-77) as a Battersea cleaner, milkman’s wife and mother of three broadening her horizons by signing up for an evening course in philosophy as she approaches her 40th birthday. Over three series and 52 episodes on ITV, the programme followed Beryl Humphries and the effect on those around her when she refused to accept her position in life.

Kevin Laffan, who had recently created the rural soap Emmerdale Farm (later Emmerdale), was inspired to write the comedy drama after hearing the real-life story of Margaret Powell who, as she approached 60, left domestic service to marry a milkman and go back into education, eventually writing her memoirs and finding success as a novelist.

Once Beryl’s Lot had finished, McSharry went back to supporting roles. Between 1977 and 1979 she was in the Liverpool sitcom The Liver Birds playing Mrs Boswell, the larger-than-life Catholic mother of the feisty Carol (Elizabeth Estensen), a young woman sharing a flat with her friend Sandra (Nerys Hughes). In a less successful revival of the sitcom in 1996, McSharry played Mrs Hennessey, the mother of Beryl (Polly James), who had appeared alongside Hughes in earlier series.

In 1986 she took a co-starring role alongside Warren Mitchell in the second series of In Sickness and in Health, the writer Johnny Speight’s sequel to Till Death Us Do Part. Following the death of Dandy Nichols, who had played Else, wife of Alf Garnett, the loud-mouthed bigot played by Mitchell, she was cast as his landlady, Mrs Hollingbery, from the flat above. Attracted by the Catholic widow’s cooking and her pension, Alf encouraged Mrs Hollingbery – her forename, Camille, was rarely used – to move in with him and they became engaged. Although she jilted him at the altar after he objected to her removing the “I obey” clause from her wedding vows, they remained together until the series finished in 1992.

View image in fullscreen

McSharry’s Irish parents, John McSharry, a carpenter from Dublin, and Christina (nee Harvey), from County Louth, lived in Kensington, London, but her mother travelled to Dublin to give birth so that her daughter could be born in the Irish Free State. Brought back immediately to England, Carmel was evacuated to Surrey during the second world war and, on leaving school, worked as a secretary for Unilever in London. The acting talent she displayed in the company’s drama group led her to gain a scholarship to Rada, and she won its silver medal on leaving in 1947.

She was a prolific stage actor, making her West End debut in the JB Priestley play The Linden Tree (Duchess theatre, 1947). Her later roles included Nicholas Lyndhurst’s mother in Straight & Narrow (Wyndham’s and Aldwych theatres, 1992) and Mrs Bedwin in the Oliver! revival at the London Palladium (1994).

She was on TV from 1957 and, in between many bit parts in her early years, had a regular role as Biddy, cleaner of Mike’s flat in the sitcom The Love of Mike (1960), written by Gerald Kelsey and Dick Sharples, and starring Michael Medwin as a woman-chasing danceband trumpeter.

McSharry showed her dramatic credentials as Nancy in a 13-part 1962 adaptation of Oliver Twist and had three different roles in the hospital serial Emergency – Ward 10, between 1957 and 1962, and four in Z Cars, from 1962 to 1972.

Alongside later comedy performances such as Olive in Sharon and Elsie (1984-85), McSharry enjoyed meaty dramatic parts. They included Ruby Branch, in the Ruth Rendell Mysteries story Wolf to the Slaughter (1987), and Annette, who pays the ultimate price for being an informer, in the second series (1989) of the wartime female undercover agents drama Wish Me Luck.

Mitchell and McSharry reprised their In Sickness and in Health roles for the 1997 cable TV series A Word with Alf, 10-minute snatches of him holding court in his local pub.

McSharry’s marriage in 1949 to the actor Derek Briggs ended in divorce. She is survived by their three children, Desna, Theresa (the actor Tessa Bell-Briggs) and Sean.