Dame Barbara Windsor dies aged 83

Actress Dame Barbara Windsor noted for her roles in EastEnders and the Carry On films has died aged 83.

Scott Mitchell said she had died peacefully from Alzheimer’s at a London care home on Thursday evening. He said she would be remembered for the “love, fun, friendship and brightness she brought to all our lives”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson led the tributes, tweeted “ So sad a but Barbara Windsor, so much more than a great pub landlady and Carry on Star. She campaigned for the lonely and the vulnerable- and cheered the world up with her own British brand of harmless sauciness and innocent scandal”.

Dame Barbara was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2014 and had moved to a care home earlier this year.

She featured in nine Carry On comedy series, plus Sparrow Can’t Sing for which she was nominated for a Bafta, as well as parts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and On the Fiddle with Sir Sean Connery.

Dame Barbara Ann Deeks Windsor, born in Shoreditch, east London, on 6 August 1937, the daughter of a fruit and veg street seller and a dressmaker, became the nation’s favourite pin-up, the bubbly blonde who packed a lot of personality into her 4ft 10in frame. Although Dame Barbara sailed through her 11-plus exams, her mother wanted her to go to university but she persuaded her otherwise by her performance in a school show.

Barbara got a place at the Aida Foster School in Golders Green where teachers tried to iron out her cockney accent but all failed. Barbara made her stage debut at the age of 13.

Her father John walked out when she was 15 and her mother forced her to give evidence at the divorce hearing.

Her mother Rose had great ambitions for her, paying for elocution lessons in an attempt to lose her cockney accent and move her up the social ladder.

Her teenage life was troubled as she was rejected by her father, something that drove her into a string of stormy personal relationships.  She carved out a successful career on both stage and screen.

 

She had changed her name to Windsor when she appeared in her first film in 1954, as one of the schoolgirls in The Belles of St. Trinian’s.

Her first big break came when she joined Joan Littlewood’s company at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, east London, appearing in the musical Fings Ain’t Wot They Used To Be. Her role as Maggie Gooding, in 1963 Littlewood’s film Sparrers Can’t Sing gained her a Bafta nomination. She also starred in TV sitcoms including the BBC’s The Rag Trade, which ran for two years from 1961.

East End Social life saw showbusiness intermingling with local gang culture and Windsor became friends with the Kray twins and their entourage when she dated Charlie Kray for six months and had a brief relationship with his brother Reggie.

In 1964, she married a small-time criminal Ronnie Knight which lasted for 20 years which came to an end, after he fled to Spain following his involvement in a multi-million-pound robbery from a security company.

During her Carry On career, she had a 10-year affair with co-star Sid James, which ended in 1976 when the actor died.

She did get the part of the raunchy landlady in a stage production of Joe Orton’s black comedy Entertaining Mr. Sloane, which was directed by her Carry On co-star Kenneth Williams.

Her career received a major lift in 1994 when she was chosen to play brassy landlady Peggy Mitchell in the BBC soap EastEnders.

She was forced out of the soap for two years after contracting the Epstein-Barr Virus at the end of 2002, which left her bedridden. There was a brief return in 2004, but she was not well enough to resume the role full-time until the following year. She picked up a lifetime achievement award at the British Soap Awards, then she announced she was quitting EastEnders to spend more time with her third husband Scott Mitchell.

Even at the age of 70,  she still got a thrill from being wolf-whistled in the street and made sure she put an extra wiggle in her walk when it happened.

In 2019, she put her name to an open letter with her husband calling on the prime minister for a  “long-term funding solution to end the social care crisis”, and coincided with the couple’s appointment as ambassadors for the Alzheimer’s Society.