Mollie Sugden

A look back at Come Back Mrs. Noah

Come Back Mrs. Noah may be emblematic of all the worst excesses that 1970s comedies are chastised for, but it's not beyond reproach. The series revels so vigorously in the ridiculous and the corny that it feels like an absurdist exercise in what's possible in a 7pm sitcom.

Sugden never discussed Mrs Slocombe's 'pussy' at home

While many households up and down the country would discuss the innuendo as they chuckled at the show, it was never mentioned in the actress' own home.

Ten comics who donned blackface

Keith Lemon creator Leigh Francis last week apologised for mimicking black celebrities including Michael Jackson and Craig David on Bo' Selecta! 'I've been talking to some people,' he said in a tearful statement in the wake of the intensifying Black Lives Matter campaign. 'I didn't realise how offensive it was back then.' But he's far from the only comedian to flirt with blackface, long after its racism became apparent.

Sons remember comedy legend Mollie Sugden

She could give a withering look, had impeccable pink hair - and as the woman behind the most shameless ­double ­entendre on TV, she never missed a stroke.

"Before we go any further, Mr Rumbold, Miss Brahms and I would like to complain about the state of our drawers. They're a positive disgrace." This was about as sophisticated as Are You Being Served? got, yet it ran for 69 episodes from 1972 to 1985, becoming one of Britain's best-loved sitcoms. Despite its reliance on tame innuendo and catchphrases, it showcased impeccable comic acting from Wendy Richard and Mollie Sugden, who both died last year. The show also made a star of the late John Inman. His character, the mincing menswear fitter Mr Humphries, was criticised by gay rights groups, but Inman was later hailed as a gay icon (especially in San Francisco, after the series became a cult hit on US TV in the 1980s). This documentary tells the sitcom's story. It's preceded by profiles of Sugden and Inman, and 1975's Christmas special; afterwards there's a colourisation of the original black and white pilot episode. Wonder what colour they'll make Mrs Slocombe's... hair?

A programme of tributes by friends, colleagues and family to the actress Mollie Sugden, who died earlier this month and was best known for her portrayal of Mrs Betty Slocombe in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? In the 1970s Sugden also appeared as Mrs Hutchinson in The Liver Birds, but it was through her incarnation of the socially aspiring Mrs Slocombe, with her garish hair rinses and eternal references to her cat as "my pussy", that the Yorkshire actress achieved something close to comic immortality.

Mollie Sugden: a fearsome screen battleaxe

Mollie Sugden was one of Britain's top television sitcom actresses, renowned for her portrayal of fearsome battleaxes.

Mollie Sugden: Her career in clips

Best known for her portrayal of Mrs Slocombe in Are You Being Served?, Mollie Sugden's comic talent lives on in these YouTube clips...

Five years! This ITV sitcom tortured us for five years and it barely raised a titter, let alone a laugh. Mollie Sugden played a women who ends up with the son she'd given up for adoption and promptly proceeds to smother him with her love week after week after week... That was it! That was the single, solitary joke stretched over five years until the end in 1986.