My how they’ve changed! Cream of Carla’s sitcoms bid farewell to genius who ‘wrote about real people – and made you love them’
SHE made them into household names in TV shows loved by millions.
Yesterday the stars of Carla Lane’s hit comedies joined family and friends to pay tribute to the acclaimed writer at her funeral.
Miss Lane – awarded the OBE in 1989 – died aged 87 at a Liverpool nursing home last week.
Foremost among mourners at Liverpool Cathedral were some of the leading ladies from the TV shows that established her as one of the nation’s best-loved comedy writers.
They included Jean Boht, 84, who played matriarch Nellie Boswell in the smash hit Bread in the 1980s, and Nerys Hughes, 74, who starred as Sandra in The Liver Birds in the 70s. Miss Boht said Miss Lane had changed her life: ‘She had the greatest humanity and care when she wrote about real people, and made you love them. People related to her.’
Wendy Craig, 81, who starred as Ria Parkinson in the show Butterflies in the early 80s, said her fondest memory of Miss Lane was working with her: ‘She gave me the best part of my life.’
Miss Hughes added: ‘She gave me the most wonderful scripts you could hope for. She was one of those strong independent women who was also very gentle and caring.’ Miss Lane – who was born Romana Barrack and leaves two sons, Nigel and Colin – was a Thanksgiving: Order of Service keen animal rights activist. She received the OBE for services to writing in 1989 but returned it to Tony Blair in 2002 in disgust at animal cruelty. She was friends and a fellow campaigner on animal rights with Sir Paul McCartney’s late wife Linda.
In 1995, she was given a Royal Television Society award for her Outstanding Contribution to British Television.
A warm tribute was delivered to the congregation by Miss Lane’s former daughter-in-law, Dr Martine Anne Fleming. She said the writer ‘described herself paradoxically as a miserable person with a sense of humour who wrote situation tragedies about marriage, infidelity and separation, with wafer-thin distances between tragedy and comedy.
To laughter, she quipped: ‘In fact I reckon she is in here right now, willing something to go comically wrong.’
‘Gave me the best part of my life’