Avril Angers

Life

Angers was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, in 1918. Her father, Harry Angers, was a music hall comedian who also appeared in films in the 1930s and 1940s.She was a dancer with the Tiller Girls before joining ENSA during the Second World War. She never married or had children. Angers lived in Covent Garden, London, where she died from pneumonia, aged 87.

Career

She made her West End theatre debut at the Palace Theatre in a 1944 revue titled Keep Going. One of the first female stand-up comedians, she was capable of playing a straight man role as a foil to established male comics such as Frankie Howerd and Arthur Askey.

Along with Terry-Thomas, she was one of the original cast of British television's first ever comedy series, How Do You View? in 1949.

In 1961, she played Norah Dawson in Coronation Street, who was Arnold Tanner's new fiancee ('Madame Toffee Shop' as Elsie Tanner called her).

After five years' service with ENSA, she returned to civilian life and took on many and various roles in television (including Dad's Army, All Creatures Great and Small, Are You Being Served? and Odd Man Out), as well as in film and theatre. These included playing Miss Marple in Agatha Christie's Murder At the Vicarage at the Savoy Theatre in 1976 in the West End.

One of her best remembered roles was that of Hayley Mills's shrewish mother in the film version of Bill Naughton's play The Family Way (1966). A still from the film featuring Angers features as the cover of The Smiths' single I Started Something I Couldn't Finish.