Praise Be! Dame Thora Hird statue set to be erected in Morecambe

Actress who went onto become one of Britian’s best loved stars first appeared at town’s theatre when she was just eight weeks old

Thora Hird, 1972 (Getty Images)

When she was just eight weeks old, the legendary late British actress Dame Thora Hird made her stage debut during a play at Morecambe’s Royalty Theatre.

“I was…the illegitimate child of the village maiden, who was played by my mother,” she once told The Independent. “It was the only part I’ve ever got through influence.”

Almost 110 years on, the Lancashire town – where she was born and lived until she was 28 – looks set to honour its most famous daughter.

A campaign has been launched to erect a statue to the three-time Bafta winner there.

Morecambe Heritage, a local history group, said it had been granted public land for the piece on the site of the old Royalty and that it has agreed terms with the renowned sculptor Peter Hodgkinson to create it.

Now, they are seeking to raise £92,000 for the project to go ahead.

“The statue will be a seated Thora in a deck chair with an empty one beside her for people to sit and have a photo,” said Christine Stebbing, chair of the group and the woman leading the drive.

It is something that Dame Thora – who died aged 91 in 2003 – would surely have been delighted with.

The star of A Kind Of Loving, Praise Be and Last Of The Summer Wine may have lived in London for more than 60 years but she retained her strong Lancashire accent and a deep love for the region and her background.

After an interviewer once praised her for being made a dame she told him it was “all very nice but I scrubbed my mother’s steps when I was younger”. She once dismissed Beverly Hills – where her daughter moved – because it had no corner shops.

Her on-screen presence, it was said, was only matched by her fierce off-screen wit.

Asked by an American GI during the war how much she might charge for a sexual favour, she considered for a second before replying: “I don’t know – what do your mother and sister charge?”

She would, of course, be the second showbusiness legend to get a statue in the seaside town: Eric Morecambe already stands on the promenade.