Barbara Lott

Phyllis in 'Sorry!' and tireless worker for actors' charities

Barbara Dulcie Lott, actress: born Richmond, Surrey 15 May 1920; married 1940 Stuart Latham (died 1993); died London 19 December 2002.

Although she acted on the screen from childhood and enjoyed many character parts on television, Barbara Lott became a household face, if not name, only at an age when most people would be thinking of retirement.

First, aged 58, she took the part of Mrs Bennett in the sitcom Rings on Their Fingers (1978-80), which found its humour in the attempts of her daughter Sandy (Diane Keen) to persuade her boyfriend, Oliver (Martin Jarvis), to marry her after years of living together. Feminists criticised the programme, written by Richard Waring, but failed to stop it becoming an overwhelming hit with viewers, attracting as many as 21 million during its three series.

Then, Lott was more central to the action in Sorry! (1981-88) as Phyllis, the mother of a middle-aged chief librarian, Timothy Lumsden (Ronnie Corbett), who could not pull himself away from her apron-strings. She would not accept that he was a grown man and insisted on ruling over him as if he were still a child.

For Phyllis, no woman was good enough for her son and he was always tongue-tied in the presence of the opposite sex, despite being otherwise confident and well-read, with a sense of humour and an enjoyment of taking part in amateur dramatics. Phyllis's husband Sydney (William Moore) also had to face her wrath in Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent's sitcom, as he tramped muddy boots through the squeaky-clean kitchen in their Thames Valley home after pottering around in the garden.

Born in Richmond, Surrey, in 1920, Barbara Dulcie Lott was the daughter of William Lott, who managed Ealing Studios before the Second World War, and she made small appearances in pictures as a child. After training at Rada, she took the traditional acting route into repertory theatre, appearing in Harrogate, Barnsley and Brighton, before making her London stage début with John Gielgud's company in Love for Love (Haymarket Theatre, 1944). She followed it with dozens of stage roles around Britain and on tour, in plays such as Habeas Corpus, Lady Windermere's Fan, Boeing-Boeing and When We Are Married.

She broke into television as Viola in a BBC production of Twelfth Night (1950) and was seen on the small screen over the next three decades playing dozens of one-off character parts, in series such as Danger Man (1965), The Duchess of Duke Street (1977) and Z Cars (1977).

Following the success of Rings on Their Fingers and Sorry!, Lott had an occasional role in 2point4 Children (1992-96) as Auntie Pearl, whose niece Rona (Julia Hills) was the unmarried, man-mad friend of Bill and Ben Porter (Belinda Lang and Gary Olsen), around whose chaotic family life the writer Andrew Marshall's sitcom revolved.

Among her films as an adult, Lott appeared in the crime drama Three Silent Men (1940), the "Swinging London" picture The Party's Over (starring Oliver Reed, 1962), the chiller Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971), the family drama Ballet Shoes (1975) and the director Peter Greenaway's mystical romance The Pillow Book (as Ewan McGregor's mother, 1996).

Lott was married to Stuart (known as "Harry")Latham, who was the first producer of Coronation Street. She herself had two bit- parts in that serial, as a hospital ward sister (1968) and Eithne Willoughby (1972).

She was a tireless worker for charity, serving both on the board and as a vice-president of the Actors' Benevolent Fund, on the council of the actors' union Equity and as a member of the Actors Charitable Trust (Tact), which runs Denville Hall, the actors' retirement home in Northwood, Middlesex, and helps the children of actors at times of crisis.

Anthony Hayward