Actor Dame Penelope Keith, best known for sitcoms The Good Life and To The Manor Born, has died aged 86.
A statement on behalf of her family said: “We are deeply saddened to announce that Dame Penelope Keith died peacefully whilst living with cancer at her home in Surrey where she had lived for more than 50 years.”
Keith started her career on the stage and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963 but became a household name for her work in sitcoms‚ notably as Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life.
When in 2020, the British Comedy Guide published their poll of the greatest comedy characters, Margo was placed at No. 17 — higher than Mr Bean, Ali G, Father Ted or Nessa Jenkins. Not only that, but Keith’s character was the only one from that show to be featured, not bad at all for a character that didn’t even appear in its first episode.
“Penny was brilliant,” the late Richard Briers told the author Richard Webber about his Good Life co-star Keith. “Her input was vital to the success of the show. I reckon we would have had several million less viewers if we’d just had an adequate actress, rather than a marvellous actress like Penny.”
Yet at the time of her first appearance in The Good Life, in its second episode on 11 April, 1975, Penelope Keith was the least known name in the sitcom’s cast. So much so that when the show’s writers John Esmonde and Bob Larbey suggested her for the part of Margo, all they could tell their casting director was they wanted “the actress in the Benson & Hedges commercial”.
Though she was an established stage performer, at that point in her career Penelope Keith had done little television. The Good Life, however, would turn her into an overnight star.
Actors Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington in a 1976 episode of The Good Life.
(Radio Times via Getty Images)
Of course, there was a lot for the actor to get her teeth into with Margo. She was a snob who was ultra-fastidious. She was also the worst neighbour to have if — like the show’s lead characters Tom and Barbara Good — you were thinking of jacking in your job and becoming entirely self-sufficient.
In the hands of a lesser actor, Margo could have been insufferable, but Keith brought a warmth and vulnerability that softened the character’s sharper edges. Whether it was falling over in the Goods’ garden (“If one of you so much as as sniggers, I’m going straight back indoors!”) or refusing to wear a party hat made out of The Daily Mirror (“Please,” offers her long-suffering husband Jerry, “have The Telegraph”) or drunkenly flirting with Tom (“You’re very manful at times,” she slurs), her scenes almost always got the biggest laughs.
Her impact was so huge that within two years of being cast the actor had won a BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Performance, as well as a Variety Club of Great Britain Award for Showbiz Personality of the Year.
The Good Life continues to be repeated, and part of the reason for its relatability is that Margo remains an archetype that still exists today.
“Margo passed into legend as the champion of ‘the silent majority’,” Bob Larbey recalled in the book A Celebration Of The Good Life.
“But we wanted her to be liked in spite of all this. Beneath Margo’s iron facade was a woman who was a loyal, if critical friend, and one who was painfully aware she was the butt of many jokes she didn’t even understand.”
Actress Penelope Keith, left, as Audrey Forbes-Hamilton, with Peter Bowles, who plays her wealthy would-be suitor, Richard DeVere, in their popular TV series, To The Manor Born.
(PA Images via Getty Images)’She’s dynamite’
Esmonde and Larbey had little idea how popular Margo would become. But energised by Keith’s performance and the public’s reaction to the character, they began building up her part, so much so that they even asked Richard Briers if he was okay with them giving Margo more screen time. “Yes, write her up,” their lead actor responded. “She’s dynamite!”
Manor Born, this time playing someone with a genuine aristocratic pedigree, Audrey Forbes-Hamilton. But though To The Manor Born was another hit for the actor (the season one finale was one of the most-watched British programmes of the 1970s), it’s Margo that remains Keith’s most enduring creation.
Her popularity was so great that even in 2003, the BBC broadcast a one-off mockumentary based around the character. Life Beyond The Box explored Margo’s background, showing how she met Jerry and became the champion of Middle England.
However well-received that special was, it was missing a crucial ingredient: Penelope Keith. It’s because of her performance that the character is still a byword for suburban snobbery.
“If you think about Margo on paper,” Charlotte McDougall wrote in The Guardian in 2015, “it’s not pretty. She’s a snob, a bully and a social climber; she’s imperious, she’s rude. Why do we love her?” Even the character’s clothes were still being celebrated in 2024, with one fashion house designing an entire collection based around Margo’s distinctive style.
“Perhaps the hardest thing Penny Keith had to do,” recalled Bob Larbey of the late actor, “was to play an essentially humourless character when she herself was great fun to work with. I believe it’s called acting!”