Scotsman Obituaries: Brigit Forsyth, Scot who starred as Thelma in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

Brigit Forsyth, actress. Born: 28 July 1940 in Malton, Yorkshire. Died: 1 December 2023, aged 83

Despite her Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? fame, Brigit Forsyth got more fan mail for a bit part in Doctor Who

Brigit Forsyth was part of that memorable triangle with Rodney Bewes and James Bolam that made the Geordie sitcom Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? so popular that it eclipsed the earlier series The Likely Lads, to which it was a direct sequel.

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? was firmly set on Tyneside with Forsyth as the prim, snobbish Thelma, Bolam as easy-going, beer-guzzling layabout Terry, and Bewes as Bob, caught between the two of them, with his fiancée and childhood friend battling for his time and affection.

But Forsyth herself was Scottish, the daughter of an Edinburgh town planner.

Brigit Forsyth as Thelma and Rodney Bewes as Bob in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (Picture: BBC)

She was actually born in Yorkshire, but spent her early years in Edinburgh, made her professional debut with the Gateway Theatre Company on Leith Walk and created quite a stir as a topless witch in Macbeth at the Edinburgh Festival in 1965.

“They put nipple caps on us, which looked absolutely disgusting and they used to drop off each night,” she recalled.

“It was absolutely hysterical.”

After Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? she went on to starring roles in sitcoms The Glamour Girls, Tom, Dick and Harriet, and Sharon and Elsie.

Her favourite later role, however, was as Francine Pratt, the blousy, football-hating wife of Ricky Tomlinson’s soccer club boss in drama series Playing the Field in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In recent years she was caught up in another triangular relationship in Still Open All Hours, forever coming between her sister and her sister’s suitor the hapless Granville, with David Jason reprising his role from the earlier sitcom Open All Hours.

One of five children, she was born Brigit Dorothea Connell in 1940.

Her father was an architect and town planner in Edinburgh and three elder siblings were all born in Edinburgh, but Forsyth was born in Malton, in Yorkshire, delivered by her grandfather, who was a general practitioner. Her mother was a painter.

She had a comfortable, middle-class childhood, complete with nannies, and attended St George’s fee-paying girls school.

She always wanted to be an actress and acted with the Makars amateur drama company in her teens. Her parents persuaded her to train as a secretary, as a fallback.

She went to RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, then had spells at the Gateway in Edinburgh and companies in Lincoln and Folkestone.

She took her mother’s maiden name Forsyth as her professional name to avoid confusion with other actresses.

In the mid-1960s she made brief early television appearances in the popular Scottish drama series Dr Finlay’s Casebook, in several different roles, and in Doctor Who story The Evil of the Daleks.

Her original scene was dropped before shooting, but she had an expensive Victorian costume, so the producers thought they had better give her something to do.

“I spent my four episodes wandering on saying ‘Where is Father?’ and occasionally they would say ‘We don’t know’ and I would wander off again,” she said.

In 1972 she landed a major recurring role in the drama series Adam Smith, as the daughter of a Scottish minister, played by Andrew Keir.

Some episodes were directed by Brian Mills, with whom she worked again on the 1972 film Holly, playing an art teacher who is kidnapped by a student. Forsyth and Mills married a few years later and had two children. They separated in the late 1990s.

Meanwhile the original Likely Lads sitcom ran for three series in the mid-1960s.

In the final episode Bob goes off to join the Army. Terry belatedly decides to sign up too and duly enlists only to discover that Bob has been turned down because of flat feet.

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? debuted in 1973, picking up on the story several years later.

Terry has been stationed in Germany and had married a German woman, but has now returned to an uncertain future in Newcastle. Bob is working in a steady, white-collar job and is engaged to librarian Thelma Chalmers.

They get married at the end of the first series, with Terry as best man, much to Thelma’s disgust, and only after the first-choice best man cannot make it.

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? ran for two series on BBC 1 and there was a subsequent feature film, which reverted to the original title of The Likely Lads.

But the show found a new audience on DVD and cable and satellite channels in later years.

Forsyth went on to star in several sitcoms, but none attained the classic status of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

In the 1980s she had a regular role as a doctor on the soap opera The Practice and in 1998 she made a single memorable appearance on Coronation Street, dying of a heart attack halfway through a date with Ken Barlow, a short life even by soap opera standards.

But while many viewers will remember Forsyth most readily as Thelma on Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? it seems others might remember her best for her extremely brief appearance on Doctor Who.

It was thought only sound recordings of The Evil of the Daleks survived, but a home video recording of one episode turned up at a car boot sale in 1987.

“I’ve had more fan mail for that part than for anything else I’ve ever done,” said Forsyth, who is survived by two children.

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