Yootha Joyce’s co-star Brian Murphy was at her bedside when she died (Image: Getty)
George and Mildred star Yootha Joyce’s was incredibly tragic – and it took place just weeks after wrapping her final film project.
Yootha played Mildred Roper for years on the Man About the House and its subsequent spin-off George and Mildred. She started in 1973 and wrapped in 1980 with the feature film.
But tragically, the same year as the movie’s release, Yootha was rushed to hospital as her health declined, suffering from liver failure.
She had been a long-term alcoholic, with an inquest revealing she’d battled alcohol addiction for 10 years.
It was revealed she had been drinking up to half a bottle of brandy per day for a decade as she feared being typecast as her sitcom character, along with struggling after failed romances and enduring a lack of privacy from the press and from fans.
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Yootha Joyce died aged just 53 (Image: Getty)
At the inquest, the pathologist revealed Yootha’s liver was twice the size of a normal organ, and her drinking also affected her heart and lungs.
Her official cause of death was portal cirrhosis of the liver.
Her late co-star Brian Murphy was at Yootha’s bedside as she died in August 1980, and she was later cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, with her ashes scattered on the venue’s crocus lawns.
Yootha was a long-term alcoholic and her liver swelled to twice the usual size (Image: Getty)
In a tragic twist of fate, comedy star Kenneth Williams wrote Yootha might have predicted her own death, writing in his diary from her last TV performance: “She looked as though she was crying… as she got up [and left the set] one had the feeling she never intended to return.
“There was a break in her voice when she got to [the line] tomorrow may never come… she was a lady who made so many people happy and a lady who never complained.”