Happiness is a choice, Una Stubbs believed. The actress, beloved for generations — from starring in Summer Holiday with Cliff Richard in the Sixties to her role as Sherlock's Mrs Hudson — was determined to be cheerful.
Una, who has died at her home in Edinburgh, aged 84, admitted her childhood in the Blitz and her mother's debilitating bouts of depression left her with a melancholy streak.
But she refused to give in to low spirits, saying: 'You realise you can either go on and on feeling sad and it affects everybody, or you think: 'Right, I'm going to start trying to pull myself together.' You have a choice to go up or down.'
That streak of no-nonsense jollity ran through almost every appearance she made across seven decades. She was unfailingly sweet but usually with a hint of toughness, like a violet cream with a chip of granite in the middle.
The actress, beloved for generations — from starring in Summer Holiday with Cliff Richard in the Sixties to her role as Sherlock 's Mrs Hudson — was determined to be cheerful. Una Stubbs is pictured above with Cliff Richard and Jacquie Daryl
She showed it as Alf Garnett's rebellious daughter Rita in Till Death Us Do Part, as Aunt Sally in Worzel Gummidge, as Miss Bat in The Worst Witch and most recently as the psychic medium Mrs Haddock in The Durrells.
One of her first TV appearances, in 1957, was advertising chocolates. She was the winsome Rowntree's Dairy Box girl, with a sweet tooth and a pixie hairdo.
Many years later, on the BBC1 ancestry show Who Do You Think You Are?, she was delighted to learn that her grandfather Arthur, whom she never knew, had been a trades union activist at the Rowntree's factory before World War II.
When she was growing up in Hinckley, Leicestershire, her father Clarry also worked on a production line, in a nylon factory. Una was the middle child of three, 'bossed around and not quite sure of myself', she later said.
She showed it as Alf Garnett's rebellious daughter Rita in Till Death Us Do Part, as Aunt Sally in Worzel Gummidge, above, as Miss Bat in The Worst Witch and most recently as the psychic medium Mrs Haddock in The Durrells
Two years old at the outbreak of war, she rarely saw her father. Home Guard duties in London kept him away, and to get back to his family he had to walk and hitch-hike, sometimes sleeping rough on the way.
She remembered he was at home one night in autumn 1940 when the bombs were falling on Coventry, 15 miles away.
With her parents, older sister and baby brother, she sheltered under the dining room table.
'I recall saying to my mother that if war came again, please could we live in the country.'
Her mother, Angela, was stricken with depression and sometimes lay in bed for days. Unable to understand, as a girl Una believed she must somehow be the cause.
'I did everything I could to try to please her,' she said. As she got older, she realised her parents' marriage was not a happy one.
Tensions were made worse because Angela felt ashamed that her husband and his mother had both been born out of wedlock.
Angela's lineage was far grander. Her grandfather was Sir Ebenezer Howard, the philanthropist who raised millions to build the Utopian town of Welwyn Garden City.
Never sure of her place in the world, Una struggled at school. But she loved dancing, and at the age of 14 was sent to the La Roche dance school in Slough. After a debut at the London Palladium, her first television appearance was on a Fifties ITV music show for teenagers, Cool For Cats.
Una jived with the Dougie Squires Dancers to pop and rock'n'roll records, while Tony Hart doodled cartoons to illustrate the songs.
A brief career in modelling followed before she joined Lionel Blair's dance troupe, first in the chorus line and later as a featured performer. She married actor Peter Gilmore
