Hyacinth Bucket became Britain’s favorite snob. “Bouquet residence, the lady of the house speaking,” she would chirp into the phone—always pronouncing it ‘bouquet’, never ‘bucket’.
If the regal matron of Waney Elm on Blossom Avenue, Fuddleton had been aware of how much admiration she garnered from the elite, her neighbors would have never heard the end of it.
At its height in the 1990s, Keeping Up Appearances was not just ‘appointment viewing’ but viewing By Royal Appointment.
Dame Patricia Routledge, who played Hyacinth throughout its six-year run, was quietly delighted.
‘We were one of the Queen Mother’s favourite sitcoms,’ said Dame Patricia, who has died aged 96.
“She was aware that we replicated a couple of her hats for Hyacinth and found it quite amusing. The Queen enjoyed it as well. Hyacinth would have been utterly flattered. And why not?”
The late Pope Benedict was said to be a fan too, a testament to the show’s international popularity.
Sold to 42 countries, it was the BBC’s most successful export in its entire back-catalogue.
Dame Patricia Routledge portrayed Hyacinth throughout the six-year run of Keeping Up Appearances. Pictured here with Clive Swift, who played her on-screen husband.
Made a dame in 2017, she kept working into her 90s, presenting evenings of conversation and show tunes called Face The Music
Such was the prestige of Keeping Up Appearances that when Hyacinth and her husband Richard (played by Clive Swift) embarked on a cruise in a Christmas special, Cunard provided the QE2 as a setting.
Every one of the 45 episodes followed the same pattern.
Hyacinth boasted, acted superior, distanced herself from neighbors and family for being ‘common’, and made a wonderful fool of herself before those she most wanted to impress.
The series began airing on Mondays in October 1990 on BBC1, but was such a hit that all subsequent series were made the centrepiece on Sunday evenings.
Dame Patricia was tickled by how quickly public warmed to her character but not surprised.
She too found Hyacinth’s desperate attempts at social climbing hilarious, from the moment she first saw Roy Clarke’s script.
‘The character was so clear on the page that I knew her, I knew many of her,’ she said.
‘She’s a monster, really, but when someone is pretending to be something better than they are, to see them slip on a banana skin makes for good comedy.’
Dame Patricia was known mostly for her stage work.
A trained singer, she had won a Tony award for her triumph on Broadway in Darling Of The Day, in 1968.
But she made regular forays on to television, and caused a minor sensation as the stuck-up Kitty, a character created by Victoria Wood for her sketch show As Seen On TV in 1985.
Her performance in an Alan Bennett ‘Talking Heads’ playlet, as a writer of poison-pen letters, sealed her snobbish image in the public imagination.
Ms Routledge was twice nominated for BAFTA awards in her role of Hyacinth Bucket
Keeping Up Appearances director Harold Snoad was delighted when she agreed to play Hyacinth at 61, and surprised by how readily this grand lady of the theatre literally threw herself into the role – tumbling into flowerbeds and frequently spattered with mud.
She even liked to do her own stunts… though the sequence where her horse bolted did require a double.
‘A lot of instinct comes into the playing of comedy,’ she explained.
‘In other words, you don’t have to think about it. The character takes over.’
She was born in Birkenhead in 1929, a tailor’s daughter.
At school she was a show-off, telling jokes in class.
Patricia stayed at home while reading English at Liverpool University and then when she became an assistant stage manager at the Liverpool Playhouse – the usual route into acting for young women in the 1950s.
She never did have children, or even wed. Her parents’ marriage, she said, was so ideal that for years she didn’t dare think of emulating them.
Instead, she hinted at a long affair with a married man, and later a relationship with a theatre director.
Keeping Up Appearances led to another television success, as an amateur sleuth in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates.
Made a dame in 2017, she kept working into her 90s, presenting evenings of conversation and show tunes called Face The Music.
Perhaps many were more interested in seeing Hyacinth Bucket than in hearing the recordings.
Dame Patricia didn’t mind. She always felt affection for the show and its fans, declaring: ‘Hyacinth’s always being made a fool of and yet she comes back with the flag flying. That’s what I like about her.’
