As lead characters go, June Buckeridge is an odd one. In the 1965 play by Frank Marcus, she is the leading light of a soft-centred radio soap opera (it is set in Applehurst but it might as well be Ambridge) and is loved by millions in the role of district nurse Sister George.
Behind the homely persona, however, lies a conflicted woman. Boozy, irascible and thin-skinned, she maintains a sado-masochistic relationship with the much younger Alice, who clings to her youth just as certainly as the older woman watches hers slip away. Lest you have any sympathy for her, George, as everyone calls her, inflicts demeaning punishments on her vulnerable companion, the cruelty sitting uncomfortably against the comic tone.
