Upstairs, Downstairs star Nicola Pagett dies suddenly from a brain tumour at 75
ACTRESS Nicola Pagett who starred in the TV drama Upstairs, Downstairs has died suddenly at the age of 75.
She was diagnosed with a brain tumour less than three weeks ago.
Friends spoke of her “stoically dealing with her illness” and daughter Eve Swannell said her mother passed away “very peacefully”.
She added: “It was extremely sudden. I was by her side.”
Nicola, described by critics as having a “glacial, beautiful presence” also appeared in a string of sitcoms.
She starred alongside Sir David Jason in A Bit Of A Do, Peter Davison in Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Anton Rodgers in Up Rising.
But Nicola, born in Cairo, was best known for her role as Elizabeth Bellamy, the spoilt daughter of Richard and Lady Marjorie, in the award-winning Upstairs, Downstairs.
The 1970s ITV series followed the lives of the masters and servants living in a townhouse in Belgravia during the early-1900s.
Mother-of-one Nicola once said of the role: “There weren’t any stars really, that was the beauty of it. Everyone had an equal importance in the thing.
“The product was more important than the people in it in those days.
“So, if it was a success, it was a success because everyone in it was good rather than because the actor in it was well known.”
She left the show after two seasons so that she would not be typecast and moved to New York.
Nicola bravely detailed her diagnosis of manic depression, which led to a period of increasingly erratic behaviour, in her 1997 autobiography Diamonds Behind My Eyes.
She once became obsessed with Alastair Campbell after seeing him, when he was then former prime minister Tony Blair’s press secretary.
She began to send hundreds of love letters to him and referred to him as man she called The Stranger.
Nicola also had a successful career on the small screen, starring as Elizabeth Fanshawe in Frankenstein: The True Story (1973).
She played the lead role in a TV version of Anna Karenina in 1977 alongside Eric Porter as Karenin and Stuart Wilson as Vronsky.
She also appeared in movies, including There’s a Girl In My Soup,
Shining star...Nicola in Upstairs, Downstairs with John Alderton, left, and with co-star Jean Marsh, below
Operation: Daybreak and director Mike Newell’s An Awfully Big Adventure, alongside Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.
Nicola was married to Graham Swannell from 1975 until they divorced in 1997. She is survived by Eve and sister Angela. She had lived alone in south-west London with her two Persian cats.
A FARMER on a quad bike plunged 60ft down a sinkhole when the earth opened up beneath him.
Fire and mountain rescue teams took 2½ hours to reach the man after he dialled 999 from his muddy prison – and was still sitting on his bike when they found him.
He was winched to safety then airlifted to hospital, inset, where he was recovering from chest injuries.
Ian Westall, of Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service, said: “The ground just fell away with the weight of the bike on that particular spot and he was swallowed up into the sinkhole.
“We peered down and could see the farmer sat up, and we could just make out the outline of his bike under a mound of earth.
“I’m sure he was in deep shock.” The drama happened on Thursday lunchtime when the farmer, in his fifties, was riding across a field at Bowesfield farm in Stank, Cumbria. He fell into an old iron-ore mine sinkhole, a known local hazard.
The rescue team managed to get a winch down and pull him to safety despite the threat of more land collapsing. This was because the hole was 8ft wide at the top but widened below “like a wine carafe”.
Ian said: “You have got a lip at the top which went down into a narrow throat. Then there was a large bulbous bottom which opened up 33ft in one direction and 13ft in the other.
“With unstable ground and people on the surface, there was an inherent risk.We had to make sure the rescuers weren’t going to be involved in any further movement of the ground.”