Annie Walker

She was queening it in the first episode, and she was still queening it twenty-three years later, when the actress who portrayed her collapsed with a stroke on hearing that her secret was out: she was not sixty-nine, but eighty-four.

If this had been part of the storyline, it would have been very much in Annie's own character, which had apparently been conceived with Doris Speed in mind - a rare case of reverse casting. For keeping up appearances was Annie all over. Here is the true face of small-town snobbery and pretension - easy to sneer-at from above, yet clearly an endemic part of life, where opportunities are limited and horizons narrow. At those levels, you need your Annie Walkers.

It was endlessly confirmed that the people she patronised still liked her, perhaps loved her. And the snobbery drove the plot, through one feud after another, right up to her dispute with the local dustmen that almost turned into a national strike (the kinship with Margaret Thatcher being impossible to miss). Yet the lines she spoke seldom carried conviction with me. All those long sentences, full of dependent clauses, sounded a bit unreal, though it may be that Speed wasn't actually a particularly good actress, just a strong presence and personality. She still broke records for fan-mail, right to the end.

A well-chosen Judy Finnigan presents the tribute with charm and authority.