The life of TV’s magnificently snobby ‘Hyacinth Bucket’ | UK News

Dame Patricia Routledge, who has died at the age of 96, imprinted herself on the national consciousness as the snobby Hyacinth Bucket.

Insisting it was “pronounced Bouquet,” Hyacinth ran roughshod over her long-suffering husband and bewildered neighbours in Keeping Up Appearances, one of Britain’s most successful sitcoms in the 1990s.

Behaving like an duchess while living in a suburb, Bucket’s monstrous social-climbing schemes were ultimately doomed to failure – while she battled to maintain her dignity.

It was Dame Patricia’s most famous role in a career that saw her win theatrical awards on both sides of the Atlantic, become the star of Alan Bennett’s famous TV monologues, and become One’s crime-busting Hetty Wainthropp.

Katherine Patricia Routledge was born in Birkenhead on 17 February 1929.

Her father was a haberdasher and she later recalled sheltering from German bombs in the basement of his shop during the war.

She studied English at the nearby Liverpool University and intended to teach. Instead, she joined the Liverpool Playhouse before training at the Bristol Old Vic.

Her successful stage career took her from the provinces to the West End, and eventually to Broadway, where Leonard Bernstein chose her to star in his musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1976.

She had already won a Tony award for her performance in Darling of the Day.

She could move effortlessly from comedies to classics.

She went from Stratford-upon-Avon, appearing with the Royal Shakespeare Company and then to the National Theatre in London.

There, her starring role in the stage musical Carousel involved her singing the rousing You’ll Never Walk Alone.

There were also various minor film roles, notably in the 1967’s, To Sir, With Love, and the Jerry Lewis comedy outing, Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River.

Her stage and radio work proved her versatility and won her awards, but it was television that provided Routledge with her most high profile roles.

Early small-screen work included popular programmes like Z Cars and Steptoe and Son.

And later, one of Britain’s most respected playwrights, Alan Bennett, wrote a set of outstanding Talking Heads TV monologues for her.

Routledge overcame her initial reluctance to perform his scripts and excelled as A Woman of No Importance and A Lady of Letters.

She went onto play a lonely, middle-aged department store clerk tipped into a relationship with a kinky podiatrist in Bennett’s Miss Fozzard Finds Her Feet.

A comic turn as the larger-than-life Kitty on The Victoria Wood Show led to the creation of Hyacinth Bucket.

Routledge recalled being sent the scripts by the writer, Roy Clarke – who had also done Last of the Summer Wine and Open All Hours.

“I had opened the script for a moment at one o’clock in the morning,” she said, “I read straight through and Hyacinth leapt off the page. I knew that woman, I knew several of that woman.”

Keeping Up Appearances ran for five series and included four Christmas specials.

In a documentary, she later claimed that fans had included Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother and Pope Benedict XVI.

It became Worldwide’s most exported programme ever and meant Routledge was recognised as far away as Botswana.

For her work on the sitcom, she was voted Britain’s all-time favourite actress in 1996, but after five years in the role, she felt it was time for a change.

“I brought it to an end,” she said, “which, of course, the didn’t care for very much.”

She thought that Roy Clarke was beginning to recycle ideas and recalled a piece of advice from the comedian, Ronnie Barker.

“He always left with people saying, ‘Oh, aren’t you doing any more?’ she said, rather than people saying, ‘Is that still on?’”

Playing the homely but astute detective in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates brought her continued success on television, but she always called the stage “the test”.

Long after she stopped appearing regularly on screen, Routledge made theatre tours both in the UK and abroad.

Whenever interviewers asked the inevitable question, she asked them to spell out the word retirement because, she explained: “It’s not in my vocabulary.”

She never married or had children, but told interviewers of two great affairs in her youth, one with a married man.

“I felt guilt and an acute sense that there had to be loss,” she confessed.

“I suppose I convinced myself that it was all right for the time being because his marriage was not a living thing.”

Instead, she dedicated herself to her craft, serving it with the talent, discipline and commitment that were always admired by her colleagues.

She was scathing about the ‘s decision in 2016 to bring back Keeping Up Appearances, but this time set in the 1950s and featuring a younger version of her character.

Questioning the Corporation’s policy of resurrecting old sitcoms, she said: “Why are they doing this sort of thing, they must be desperate.”

She had already clashed with the over its decision not to commission a documentary she had written about the author Beatrix Potter (Routledge was a Patron of the Beatrix Potter Society), which eventually aired on Channel 4.

On turning 90, she continued to live quietly in Chichester, where she busied herself raising money for the cathedral roof.

In 2017, she became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire but – unlike Hyacinth – honours did not go to her head.

Dame Patricia always said she thanked her Northern roots and solid family for giving her good sense with her time and her money.

Nonetheless, she admitted that, should any extra cash come her way, she’d definitely spend it on “a case of champagne” – an appreciation of the finer things in life that she shared with her most famous character.

“I was never stage-struck,” she said. “I’m not stage-struck now. Nobody’s more surprised than I am that I have, in fact, spent my life doing this.”