Sunny suburban gardens, good neighbours, good laughs, a good life… it’s no surprise The Good Life, which charts the exploits of the self-sufficient Goods and their snobby neighbours, is consistently voted a favourite British sitcom.
It was clearly decided you can have too much of a Good thing, and fans lamented its end after just four series.
But one of its stars, Dame Penelope Keith, might have brought it to an even earlier and more tragic halt.
The actress, 83, who played insufferably loveable Margo Leadbetter, admits she once nearly poisoned her castmates Paul Eddington (on-screen husband Jerry) and Richard Briers (neighbour Tom Good) with her homespun cooking.
“At the end of each series we used to go to one of the four of us’s houses for lunch on the last day of rehearsal. It was my turn,” she recalled.
“We had chilli con carne, and I forget what else for pudding.
“And I followed the recipe,” she insists, her well-honed comic timing still razor sharp.
“Then we did the next series, and I said ‘Where are we going to have lunch? You can come back to me’.
“‘No!’,” she screams, imitating the response she got, mainly from Richard.
“Paul then took me to one side...”
He had been nominated to break the news that her cooking would not rival Delia Smith’s, to say the least.
She added: “Dickie and Paul had ended up in hospital because I hadn’t soaked the beans and they’ve got arsenic in them!”
Dame Penelope recalled the near-fatal blunder deadpan during a one-off one-woman show at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, South West London. She was clearly in her element.
The octogenarian BAFTA-winning star of screen and stage, an imposing 5ft10in in flats, has lost none of her theatrical presence.
Her career has embraced so many esteemed playwrights and TV industry greats, the weighty names she reeled off became mind-boggling.
But her bottom line remains humour.
Her diction is every bit as clipped as Margo’s, but she seems great fun.
The Good Life, also starring Felicity Kendal as Barbara Good, ran between 1975 and 1977, winning Penelope a Best Comedy Performer BAFTA.
Her next major role was in another sitcom, To the Manor Born.
From 1979-1981 she played widowed aristocrat Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton.
The two sitcoms remain her biggest hits. They propelled her to the kind of national superstardom TV audiences of some 20million-plus could, back then.
Not, she says, that she ever truly felt famous. She explains it was a different time.
“I remember the last episode and the figures came out and it was something like 25 or 26 million and I was walking up the end of Oxford Street and I thought ‘Gosh, that’s a lot of people, that’s about every other person in this country’,” she recalled.
“And I looked round, and not one person looked at me! So that was fame.
“It wasn’t as intrusive as it probably is today, we are talking about the Seventies, it was different.”
But while she’s matter-of-fact about it, she adores the “craft” of acting, and the fun behind the scenes.
She recalled once filming The Good Life in front of the late Queen Elizabeth, rumoured to be a fan. “All the technicians were in black tie!” she roared.
While on To the Manor Born she remembers with particular hilarity the scenes with the hefty Rolls-Royce.
“It had a gate gear change and you had to double-declutch.
“Darling John [Rudling, who played Audrey’s butler Brabinger] was supposed to be my chauffeur, he was supposed to get into the Rolls-Royce and drive it away.
“He looked a bit perplexed. He said ‘I haven’t driven anything since I was driving a tank on the Normandy beaches’,” she recalled at the Orange Tree’s fundraising talk.
“So someone had to sit in the well.”
Who would be her favourite character of the two sitcoms?
“I would have Audrey as a friend,” she said, instantly. “I wouldn’t have Margo, she doesn’t have a sense of humour. She must have been a pain in the whatsit.”
Born in Sutton, south London, but sent to boarding school in East Sussex aged just six, Dame Penelope’s career began on stage.
She worked in rep theatre, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 1960s.
It was in theatre she met her husband of 45-years, although not on stage.
Policeman Rodney Timson was on duty at a Chichester theatre when she was performing in 1978.
The couple, who adopted two sons, now live the Good Life themselves in Surrey. But it was TV that made her a household name. Some of her heartiest laughs are reserved for her appearance on the 1977 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show.
She memorably had to walk down a staircase... that wasn’t finished.
She recalled during her talk: “I really didn’t know until I got into my beautiful green dress and got to the stop at the top of the stairs and I was surprised.
“Well, I just went ahead and did it because it was Morecambe and Wise”
Penelope, who was recognised in the 2014 New Year Honours list for her contribution to the arts and charity, didn’t come from a theatrical family, but they were musical at home.
Her mother and grandmother played the piano and everyone was encouraged to join in with living room entertainment.
Though she set her heart on an acting career at a young age, Penelope did not get in to London’s Central School of Speech and Drama.
“I was told I was too tall,” she said. “To have been told I was no good – I could have tried to get better.
“But when you’re told you’re too tall there’s not much you can do except bend your knees and wear flat shoes!”
- To visit or donate to the theatre see orangetreetheatre.co.uk
