Pauline Yates, aka Mrs Reggie Perrin, dies at 85

Also starred in Keep It In The Family

Pauline Yates, who played the long-suffering Elizabeth Perrin in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, has died at the age of 85.

She passed away yesterday in Denville nursing home in Northwood, Middlesex, home of many retired actors.

Yates was born in St Helens, Lancashire on 16 June 1929, and joined Oldham Rep straight after leaving school.

In 1957 she became a familiar face on British TV when she as cast as Estelle Waterman in Emergency Ward 10, and her TV credits of the 1970s include Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, and The Ronnie Barker Playhouse.

In 1976 she was cast as the wife of Reggie Perrin, playing the sober counterpoint to her on-screen husband’s increasingly erratic ways as the travails of the rat race became too much for him.

She then went on to appear in four out of the five series of 1980s ITV sitcom Keep It In The Family, where Yates played the wife to another eccentric character, comic-strip artist Dudley Rush.

Her husband, the actor Donald Churchill, died in 1991 on set the set of Granda's TV's EL CID, just after recording his final scene. They had two daughters, Jemma, also an actress who appeared in the recent revival of Upstairs Downstairs, and Polly, a writer of children’s TV shows including Teacup Travels and Topsy And Tim.