Veteran performer Elisabeth Kirkby, best known for Number 96, has died, having reached an amazing 105 years of age.

Veteran performer Elisabeth Kirkby OAM, best known for Number 96, has died, having reached an amazing 105 years of age.

She was born in Bolton, United Kingdom in 1921, and passed away on Monday.

Kirkby served in the British Army during the Second World War.

“It was distressing for my father and the family because they were cotton manufacturers and of course the cotton industry took a terrible slump during that period. We didn’t have the same big country house that we’d had before and I think my brother and I felt, ‘Oh, dear, this isn’t very nice,’” she once said.

An actress, script writer and radio public affairs commentator her early performing included Manchester Repertory Theatre 1939 – 1942, Birmingham Repertory Theatre 1946 – 1947, Liverpool Repertory Theatre 1947 – 1948, Radio Malaya / Malaysia 1951 – 1965

Kirkby moved from Malaysia to Sydney in 1965, working with ABC until 1972.

She played Lucy Sutcliffe in Number 96 from 1972 – 1975 alongside James Elliott as husband Alf, for a whopping 886 episodes.

Her other credits include The Rovers, Homicide, RIptide, Hunter, The Outsiders, Glenview High.

She was heavily involved in the industry with executive roles in the Society for Australian Film and Television Arts and Sciences, Australian Actors Equity and the International Association of Women in Radio and Television.

She served in the NSW Legislative Council from 1981 to 1998.

In 2014, aged 93, Kirkby became Australia’s oldest university graduate completing a PhD at the University of Sydney.

“It’s been extremely interesting working with students so much younger than I am,” she said at the time. “When you do get to retirement, have a holiday by all means, relax, but then find something interesting to do, something you’ve always wanted to do and maybe never have the opportunity because too many other things happened in your life.

“I think that that is what is really important.”

In 2012 she was awarded the national Medal of the Order of Australia, for “…service to the Parliament of New South Wales, to the community of Temora, and to the performing arts.”