Heather Chasen
Actress
THE ACTRESS Heather Chasen, who has died at 92, was a familiar voice on the long-running radio sitcom The Navy Lark, and for four years in the early 1980s a fixture on the ITV soap, Crossroads.
In that series, fondly remembered for its wobbly sets and extreme melodrama, she played Valerie Pollard, the cheating wife of a millionaire businessman who had taken a stake in the Crossroads Motel. While he was so involved, Ms Chasen’s man-eating character worked her way through most of the rest of the male cast.
Born in July 1927 in Singapore, Heather Jean Chasen was the daughter of the British ornithologist Frederick Chasen, who had fought as a trooper with the Norfolk Yeomanry in the First World War, before leaving to work in the Far East.
He and his wife, Agnes, parted when Heather was about 11. She and her mother left Singapore on the last boat before the Japanese occupation.
However, her father travelled on a separate ship and sadly he died when the Japanese navy sunk it.
Back in Britain, Heather trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before going on tour with Frankie Howerd in Hotel Paradiso and Sybil Thorndike in Call Me Jacky. Other co-stars included Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Richard Todd and Robert Morley.
On The Navy Lark, where the assorted mishaps on board the fictitious HMS Troutbridge were somehow sustained for 18 years, she played all the female parts, elbowing her way to the microphone to make herself heard above Jon Pertwee, Leslie Phillips and Ronnie Barker.
During and after its run she also appeared in such TV series as Marked Personal, alongside Stephanie Beacham, Doctors and Family Affairs.
A flamboyant character off screen, she married John Webster in 1949 and they had a son, Rupert, before eventually divorcing. Chasen later had a 10year relationship with the former Carry On and Coronation Street actress, Amanda Barrie.