From today’s Daily Telegraph:
Carmen Silvera, the actress who died on Saturday aged 80, played Edith Artois, the long-suffering wife of the cafe owner René, in the BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo, which ran for nine series between 1984 and 1992. The programme won great loyalty from British viewers, and subsequently acquired cult status in America and elsewhere, but it was not well received on the Continent, where its stock gags were thought out of date and racially offensive. Mme Artois’s readiness to sing on any occasion, an enthusiasm matched only by her disregard for pitch, rhythm and melody, provided many of the jokes. “Your wife has a very good voice,” declared the hapless German Lieutenant Gruber. “Was it trained?” René replied: “It was once, but it has escaped and returned to the wild.”
On television, she first made her mark in Compact, a soap about a women’s magazine in which she played Camilla Hope. It ran from 1962 until 1965. The following year, she played three parts in the Doctor Who story The Celestial Toymaker—roles which have since attracted detailed criticism on numerous internet sites. She was especially good as Mrs Gray in Dad’s Army—in the episode Mum’s Army—during a brief encounter with Captain Mainwaring.
She spent her last months at Denville Hall, the actors’ retirement home in Northwood, west London. After being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, she preferred not to undergo chemotherapy, but remained cheerful, expressing her gratitude for “a very happy life and some wonderful holidays.”
