Скачать или смотреть Margaret John God Bless Her Soul

Margaret sings with Only Men Aloud.

I was staying with one of the choir whilst working on Calendar Girls with the late great Maggie. I recorded this and played it to Margaret and the cast. She was aghast. I'm sorry Margaret, if we still had you we wouldn't have to resort to youtube snippets, but as it is, every glimpse is a joy. As were you. Thank you so much for sharing your story of your love for Ben over a sandwich between shows. God Bless. xx

Margaret John, the Welsh-born actress who died on February 2 aged 84, was a stalwart of television serials over 50 years; in the early 1980s she enjoyed a long stint on Crossroads as doctors' receptionist Marian Owen; in her 80s she won a new legion of fans as the salty neighbour Doris in the BBC's Gavin and Stacey (2007-10).

The character enabled Margaret John to display her gift for comedy. Cannabis-smoking, raunchy and much given to toy boys, Doris propositions Gavin, promising to be "discreet", and gained a cult following for her colourful one-liners: "A kiss, a cuddle, a cheeky finger," she advises Stacey before she goes on a date. "Just don't go selling him the whole farm!"

Margaret John as "Mam" in the BBC Wales comedy High Hopes
The role brought invitations to play similarly uninhibited characters on screen and on stage. She played Kinky Granny in the comedy spoof A Bit Of Tom Jones? (2009), a Welsh-made film about a couple of chancers hoping to make a fortune out of the severed "manhood" of Wales's greatest vocal entertainer.
In 2009, aged 82, she faked orgasms in a Wales Millennium Centre production of The Vagina Monologues and, last year, appeared as the judge of the WI cake competition in a stage adaptation of the film Calendar Girls.
In real life Margaret John was as different as it is possible to be from the characters she depicted in later life.
A fan of jigsaws and solitaire, she worked tirelessly for charities, including Sport Relief; Children in Need; Comic Relief and, in Wales, the PDSA and the George Thomas Hospice. She was, for a time, the face of the Big Lottery Fund AdvantAGE campaign, set up to create opportunities for older people.
Yet she enjoyed her late-flowering notoriety: "The number of times women say to me 'Wait 'til I tell my husband I've seen you'," she told an interviewer. "It's nice to be a sex goddess at my age."
Margaret John was born in Swansea on December 14 1926. As a child she wanted to be a nurse or a vet but, since she could not stand the sight of blood, enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art instead.
She started her career in radio and theatre before making her television debut in 1956 in a Welsh language drama.
In a career lasting more than 50 years she appeared in some of Britain's most successful television shows, including Coronation Street, Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars and Doctor Who, in which she played Megan Jones, the sceptical director of Euro Sea Gas in the episode "Fury From The Deep" (1968).
She returned to the series in 2006 for "The Idiot's Lantern" as Granny Connolly, the woman who, rightly as it transpires, believes that television rots the brain.
Her other credits included Emmerdale Farm, Angels, Softly, Softly, Last of the Summer Wine, Crossroads and Little Britain. She also starred in the medical drama The District Nurse as Gwen Harris alongside Nerys Hughes.
Between 2002 and 2008 she played the part of Elsie "Mam" Hepplewhite in the BBC Wales comedy High Hopes. In 2005 she was Nanatoo, the demon who kills people using a bus pass and knitting needles in The Mighty Boosh.
On radio Margaret John appeared in Linda Smith's A Brief History of Timewasting (2008) and played Mrs Stone, the school secretary, in the original King Street Junior series on Radio 4 (1985). On stage she appeared in a Young Vic production of Medea (1986) opposite Dame Eileen Atkins.
In recent years she was Libby's grandmother in David Schwimmer's film comedy Run Fatboy Run (2007) and enjoyed appearances on Casualty, Doctors, and the Welsh BBC drama Framed, with Trevor Eve. Her last appearance on screen was in the new S4C drama Alys.
In 2009 Margaret John received a Bafta Cymru Lifetime Achievement award.
Margaret John was a widow who had no children. She married at the age of 48, but her husband, Ben, a first violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra, died three years later.