She’s a monster but very good-hearted,” was Patricia Routledge’s summing up of her most celebrated TV character Hyacinth Bucket, indomitable social climber and resident of 22 Blossom Avenue – “the Bou-quet residence”. Keeping Up Appearances drew audiences of up to 15 million during its five-year run, which finished in 1995. The following year, when viewers voted Routledge their favourite TV actress at the BBC’s 60th anniversary awards, she spoke to Radio Times about the enduring appeal of Hyacinth and her aspirations: “We’re always pretending to be what we’re not. But Hyacinth does care. She cares about standards. Whether they’re the right standards is another matter.”
It was Routledge’s most famous role in a long, versatile career that also saw her triumph in theatre here and America. Following her training at Bristol’s Old Vic Theatre, she moved from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the National in London and, in 1976, she was picked by Leonard Bernstein to star in his Broadway musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She had previously won a Tony Award for Darling of the Day.
But it was on British television that she really made her mark. As well as Keeping Up Appearances, she was an important collaborator with Alan Bennett and, for four series in the late 1990s, she starred in the hit mystery drama Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. Of her genteel retired crimebuster, Routledge told Radio Times: “There’s more to life in your 60s than some people bargain for, and I’m very fond of Hetty Wainthropp because she refuses to be put on the shelf. She has a great sense of adventure, she’s practical, down to earth and honest. I like her.”
She was twice a memorable monologist for Alan Bennett. In 1982’s A Woman of No Importance, Routledge played Peggy Schofield, an office stalwart who slowly, poignantly, comes to understand how little her colleagues need her. Six years later, her performance in A Lady of Letters (part of the Talking Heads series) as Irene Ruddock, who finds surprising peace in prison after one poison pen missive too many, brought Routledge a Bafta nomination. Born in Birkenhead, she explained to RT why she admired her fellow Northerner Bennett so deeply – “for his observation, his humour and his immense humanity”.
It was also Bennett who persuaded Routledge to accept the role of “the absolutely grotesque Kitty” on Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV. Routledge remembered: “I thought Kitty might seem a little close to some of the characters I’d played for Alan. I rang him for advice and he said, ‘Is it funny?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Then do it.’”
The result was a scene-stealing woman who becomes a celebrity overnight, a larger-than-life figure sharing many traits with Routledge’s later creation Hyacinth Bucket – and what an extraordinary creation she was. In the sitcom by Roy Clarke, who also created Last of the Summer Wine and Open All Hours, Hyacinth never tired in her crusade for social superiority, from hosting candlelit dinners to simply owning “a white slimline telephone with automatic redial”.
The lady of the house struck terror into the hearts of everyone, from long-suffering husband “Richard!” to the neighbours, and could only be stopped, albeit briefly, by two things. The first was that, when she got flustered, she lost purchase on her adopted RP tones and reverted to her northern accent; the second was her working-class relatives, including her sister Daisy (Judy Cornwell) and brother-in-law Onslow (Geoffrey Hughes), who had none of Hyacinth’s pretensions and were fated to show her up on the most delicate of occasions.
With such a simple premise, what made Hyacinth, and the show as a whole, such a magical piece of comedy, loved by fans both in the UK and across the world?
“One of the show’s great gifts was in the casting,” Judy Cornwell tells RT. “Our producer, Harold Snoad, knew how to put together people who would get on and, from the moment we began, we all felt at home.”
For Cornwell, the first indicator of the show’s quality was how the live studio audience responded. “The first time Onslow and Daisy had to get into bed together, we climbed in and the bed collapsed, accidentally. The audience completely lost it. The studio manager had to calm them down. Pat absolutely loved it when that happened.”
In contrast to Hyacinth’s sometimes misplaced confidence, Routledge once reflected to RT: “I’m always nervous about yearning for things because I’m afraid they’ll be a disaster. At heart I’m an artistic coward. I just want to do good work with good people.”
Cornwell remembers how hard Routledge worked, both on Hyacinth’s many lines and also her physical comedy. She remembers: “Often we’d be enjoying a coffee between scenes, but Pat would be going through another scene, always working to make it even better. Everything she did was thorough. She was well-read, she understood every reference. If you did a scene with her, you knew that she’d learnt every line backwards. She was a brilliant person, and a lovely one.”
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