Sheila Burnett obituary | TV comedy

Sheila Burnett, who has died aged 94, had a long acting and singing career that began when she was a child. She embraced the West End, regional theater and summer seasons, as well as television, appearing in light entertainment shows as a foil to comedy stars such as Leslie Crowther, Tommy Cooper, Dick Emery and Morecambe Wise.

With her love of variety, she also continued to return to the Players Theater Club in London to entertain at the Victorian Music Hall for five decades. Standing just 5 feet tall, she quickly became known for her lively personality and became one of a small troupe of Players chosen to stage their work at New York’s Strollers Theater Club (1961-62), enchanting American audiences with a touch of Old England.

One critic, who noted that “the ladies on stage frequently wink” at the “lesbian and raunchy show,” wrote, “Sheila Burnett’s timing is impeccable. She sings Daddy Won’t Buy Me a Bow F, which is, Mr. Stone.” [the “chairman” – master of ceremonies] He tells us that he was whistled at by dukes and butcher boys.

Another of her early successes was, in 1957, taking on the role of Dulcie in the Players’ West End production of The Boy Friend, Sandy Wilson’s ode to 1920s musicals, which ran at Wyndham’s Theater until 1959. She had previously played a smaller role in it after joining the Players’ troupe in 1955.

On and off for 15 years (1968-1983), Burnett, along with Players Theater artists and others, took the same kind of music hall nostalgia to The Good Old Days, a BBC television program presented by Leonard Sachs at the City Varieties Theater in Leeds.

Although she had performed live acting roles on television since the mid-1950s, it would be another 10 years before Burnett had her on-screen comedic breakthrough. Crowther was a champion of her talents and displayed her all-round skills alongside him on his sketch show Crowther Takes a Look… (1965), the black-and-white minstrel show (from 1967 to 1969), which he hosted, Saturday Crowd (1969), Crowther’s Back in Town (1970) and The Leslie Crowther Show (1971).

She also joined him for the summer seasons and the Royal Variety Performance of 1970, when Crowther cast her as Natalia Nokmova, a Russian maverick ballerina who partnered ballerina and cricketer Freddie Trumanoff in the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, from The Nutcracker.

Burnett is also remembered for her appearance as one of the illusionists playing tricks on the audience in the 1974 revival of Candid Camera. A sequence titled Sheila’s Broom featured her as an elderly woman sweeping the sidewalk and hitting men on the backside with her brush. “That was such a successful character that I went to New York to do it for her [the US version of] “Candid camera,” she said.

Burnett was born in London, the daughter of Frieda (née Morris) and Charles Boncini, a restaurant waiter of Italian descent. She trained in ballet at the Italia Conti Stage Academy from the age of two, leaving after five years to focus on acting, and enrolled in the Aida Foster Theater School.

She performed in pantomime at the London Palladium at the age of 12, and three years later began acting with acting companies and in touring shows. Her West End debut came in the musical Over the Moon (Piccadilly Theatre, 1953).

One of her early dramatic screen roles was in the 1960 film version of Sons and Lovers, where she played Polly, the co-worker of the affection-seeking son of miner Paul Morrell (Dean Stockwell). She turned to sitcoms with guest roles on Hancock (in 1963), as a cafeteria worker alongside Tony Hancock; Hugh and Me (1963 to 1966), with Hugh Lloyd and Terry Scott; “My Beggar Neighbor” (1967), with Reg Varney; Oh no no! (in 1968) with Patrick Cargill; The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (in 1977), with Leonard Rossiter; Butterflies (in 1979), with Wendy Craig; And Torment Again (in 1995) with Maureen Lipman.

She appeared in light entertainment with some of the biggest stars of the time: Morecambe and Wise in Two of a Kind and The Morecambe & Wise Show (both 1968); Emery on The Dick Emery Show (in 1972 and 1973); Jimmy Tarbuck in Tarbuck’s Luck (in 1972); Larry Grayson in Close That Door! (in 1973); Cooper in Cooper – just like that! (in 1978); Ted Rogers in 3-2-1 (in 1979); and Sid Little and Eddie Large on the show Little and Big (in 1990). On BBC Radio she was a regular on The Roy Hudd Show (1969).

Burnett briefly turned to soap operas in 1973, and was in six episodes of Coronation Street as Sister Delaney, a hospital nurse who cares for Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix), who has been hit by a taxi. Her last role on television was in the children’s sitcom Hotel Trubble (2008–11) as Mrs. Pushington, a demanding long-term guest who becomes a cleaner at the establishment after losing her fortune. A new generation of viewers saw her as a character with a library of tall tales, and as a stuffed cat who believed she was real, revealing that she had eight husbands who all died under mysterious circumstances.

Burnett’s final film credit came as a pickpocket and shoplifter among a group of Athens tourists in the romance film My Life in Ruins (2009, released as Driving Aphrodite in the UK).

On stage she was a regular in Players’ Theater’s annual pantomime, including the title character in Puss in Boots in 1991. She last appeared with the company on tour in 1994 and 1995.