There have been few genuine clowns in theatre and television as good as Denise Coffey, who has died aged 85. She was a key TV presence in British comedy over its most redefining postwar period, and to see her on stage, always puckish and delightful, was to invest in two or three hours of an invaluable spiritual tonic.
She was a crucial member of the ebullient Young Vic company formed in 1970 under the aegis of the National Theatre at the Old Vic to deliver classics and new plays with regard to a younger audience. She had already, in the 1960s, played a series of classical and low-life roles at Bernard Miles’s Mermaid theatre in Puddle Dock.
