Penelope Keith, who has died aged 86, became justly famous for displaying a classy hauteur laced with mischief in TV sitcoms such as The Good Life and To the Manor Born. But I can vouch for the fact that something of that quality, honed by a sophisticated comic technique, lay within Penny herself. I first met her when I worked at Lincoln Theatre Royal, where she was a member of the company, in the early 1960s. I vividly recall her surveying a voluminous exhibition of paintings by a local artist in the theatre foyer, magisterially commenting: “Busy lady!” and sweeping out. Such style and assurance in a 23-year-old was rare.
The mischief was also there from the start. A year or so later I found Penny doing small parts at the RSC where she gained a certain notoriety even as one of the crowd in Julius Caesar: when Mark Antony had urged the citizens to lend him their ears, her voice had been heard to pierce that of the throng with a cry of “Ave an ear then.” She was clearly destined for bigger things and indeed starred as an acid-tongued murderee in the first play I ever reviewed for the Guardian, Francis Durbridge’s Suddenly at Home, in 1971.
