June Spencer, the long-time star of the BBC radio drama The Archers, has died at 105.
A statement said she died peacefully in her sleep in the early hours of Friday. “Her family would like to pay particular tribute and thanks to the staff team at Liberham Lodge, who so lovingly cared for her in the last two years,” it said.
Spencer was one of the programme’s original cast members, joining for the pilot episodes in 1950 to play multiple characters: an Irish baker’s assistant called Rita Flynn, a Scottish maid and Peggy Woolley, whom she would make her own. The show was such a success that she soon became a household name.
“We Archers stars were extremely in demand for opening fetes. We rarely had a free weekend,” she told the BBC in 2012. “I can remember on one occasion being flown down to Cornwall in a rather ancient Dakota that had been very loosely adapted to civilian use. When we got there, I found that it was a very large gathering of Women’s Institutes. Such was the popularity of the programme that I was literally mobbed. Crowds came in and the organisers started shouting: ‘Don’t come any closer! Do you want to kill her?’ It was quite frightening.”
Spencer left the show in the mid 1950s, with the actor Thelma Rogers taking over as Peggy. She returned to the role in the 1960s – a period during which her character became a landlord of the Bull pub, accidentally provided the venue for a riot and ended up being charged with breach of the peace.
One of Spencer’s most famous storylines featured Peggy’s husband, Jack Woolley, dying from Alzheimer’s. Spencer recorded it after the death of her husband, Roger, who died of the same disease and had been cared for by Spencer.
When the Archers turned 70 in 2021, the show celebrated by having Spencer join Queen Camilla to cut an Archers-themed tractor cake. She retired from the drama in August 2022, at 103, having resorted to recording episodes in a custom studio built by the producers in her home in Surrey, rather than travelling to Birmingham, where the show is created.
Spencer received an OBE in 1991 and a CBE in 2017. She was awarded the freedom of the City of London in 2010.