Jean Alexander

Jean Alexander became famous for playing Hilda Ogden, one of the best-loved soap characters in British TV history.

Resplendent in curlers and headscarf she was the put-upon housewife with a piercing voice who was always short of luck and money.

She played the role for more than two decades and it came to define her career.

But, she was already an accomplished actress long before she came into the Street

She was born Jean Alexander Hodgkinson on 24 Feb 1926 in the Toxteth area of Liverpool and, after leaving school, found a job as a library assistant.

It was a mundane life and she was in danger of turning into the type of person that epitomised her most famous character

She had a love of Shakespeare, fostered by sitting in the gods in Liverpool theatres in her youth, and it provided her escape.

She made her stage debut in Macclesfield in 1949, the start of twelve grinding years in rep, performing in a different play each week as she toured the theatres of the North of England.

She became a stage all-rounder, including taking jobs as a stage manager and a wardrobe mistress.

She made her TV debut in Z Cars, the BBC's gritty police drama set in a fictitious new town near Liverpool.

In 1960 Granada Television launched Coronation Street, which within six months had become Britain's most watched TV programme.

Poignant

Alexander joined the cast in 1962 with a brief appearance as a landlady who rents a room to a disturbed young woman, Joan Akers, who kidnaps a baby to replace her own dead child.

Eighteen months later Alexander was back, this time as Hilda Ogden

As the perpetual underdog, whose best-laid plans always ended in disappointment or humiliation, she was at the centre of many of the show's comic moments.

But she was also involved in some of the soap's most poignant scenes. The day she sobbed as she opened her husband Stan's glasses case after he died in 1984 proved that soaps do not need over-the-top explosions or fights to grip the nation.

Producer Bill Podmore once described Stan and Hilda as a great TV comedy double act to rival Morecambe and Wise.

"Universities wanted to make her their rector," he said. "A Welsh rugby team hailed her as their mascot. Even the Falklands fleet urgently called for a picture of their pin-up, complete with curlers, to inspire the troops for battle."

In 1982, Hilda came fourth behind the Queen, Queen Mother and Princess Diana in a poll of the most recognisable women in Britain.

Distinctive look

Three years later, she won the best performance prize at the Royal Television Society Awards. Three years after that, she became the first soap opera performer to be nominated for a Bafta award.

Sir Laurence Olivier was a fan. He once requested a cameo appearance as a tramp who would be encountered by Hilda - but a scheduling conflict meant he could not play the part.

However, a signed photograph from the acting legend took pride of place in her home in Southport, Merseyside.

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HILDA OGDEN'S GREATEST SCENES

The muriel In 1976, a proud Hilda acquired her "muriel" - the wallpaper with a mural of a mountain range to which she pinned her famous flying ducks.

Woman, Stanley Hilda won a night in a luxury hotel for a second honeymoon in 1977. After kissing Hilda, Stan asked what her lipstick tasted of. The reply came: "Woman, Stanley. Woman."

Stan's death After actor Bernard Youens died in 1984, his character Stan was written out. Hilda was seen silently unwrapping a parcel of his belongings and breaking down when she opened his glasses case.

Hilda's departure Hilda decided it was time to move in 1987, and half the nation tuned in to watch as her neighbours finally showed some affection for her by throwing a surprise party in the Rovers Return.

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The character's distinctive look was inspired by real-life Hilda Ogdens in Liverpool during World War II.

Women working in munitions factories would tie up their hair to keep it out of the machinery and put it in curlers so they were ready in case they happened to be invited out in the evening.

"And that was Hilda too," Alexander explained. "She always had her hair tied up ready - in case. All she had to do was whip the curlers out and give it a flick up with the comb.

"She never did go anywhere that was worth going to - but that's where I got the idea from."

Absolute favourite

After Stan's death, Hilda carried on for a few more years before moving away to become a doctor's housekeeper in Derbyshire; finally getting the respectability she craved.

When she said farewell to the cobbles with a rendition of Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye in the Rovers Return pub on Christmas Day 1987, 26.6 million people tuned in.

Alexander did take other roles after leaving Hilda behind - notably as Auntie Wainwright in Last of the Summer Wine.

Image captionShe described her role as Auntie Wainwright as her absolute favourite part

The wizened junk-shop owner she played her for 22 years was the "absolute favourite part" of her television career, she once said.

She also played Christine Keeler's mother in the 1989 film Scandal and appeared in the TV shows Boon, Woof!, Rich Tea and Sympathy, Cluedo and Barbara.

But she will forever be remembered for playing Hilda Ogden, the busybody with the curlers.

In 2005, 18 years after she left the show, there was still enough affection to put Hilda at the top of a TV Times poll to find the nation's favourite soap character.

"I don't know why she was so popular," Alexander told the BBC in 2010. "I think probably because she was a downtrodden, poor little soul. I think people were sorry for Hilda.

"She went plodding away, doing her best all the time, always aspiring to better things."

King Bhumibol of Thailand

Image copyrightAFP

He was viewed by his subjects as a stabilising influence in a country that saw numerous military coups during his reign.King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand was the world's longest reigning monarch.

Despite being seen as a benign father figure who remained above politics, he also intervened at times of heightened political tension.

And although he was a constitutional monarch with limited powers, most Thais regarded him as semi-divine.

Bhumibol Adulyadej was born in Cambridge in the US state of Massachusetts on 5 December 1927.

His father, Prince Mahidol Adulyadej, was studying at Harvard when his son was born.

The family later returned to Thailand, where his father died when he was just two years old.

Image copyright

Image captionHe became engaged to Sirikit in 1948

His mother then moved to Switzerland, where the young prince was educated.

As a young man he enjoyed cultured pursuits, including photography, playing and composing songs for the saxophone, painting and writing.

The status of the Thai monarchy had been in decline since the abolition of its absolute rule in 1932, and there was a further blow when his uncle, King Prajadhipok, abdicated in 1935.

The throne passed to Bhumibol's brother, Ananda, who was just nine years old.

Figurehead

In 1946, King Ananda died in what remains an unexplained shooting accident at his palace in Bangkok. Bhumibol acceded to the throne when he was 18 years old.

His early years as king saw Thailand ruled by a regent, as he returned to his studies in Switzerland. While on a visit to Paris he met his future wife, Sirikit, daughter of the Thai ambassador to France.

The couple married on 28 April 1950, just a week before the new monarch was crowned in Bangkok.

Image copyright

Image captionHe was a keen musician, here playing with bandleader Benny Goodman

For the first seven years of his reign, Thailand was ruled as a military dictatorship and the monarch was little more than a figurehead.

In September 1957, Gen Sarit Dhanarajata seized power. The king issued a proclamation naming Sarit, military defender of the capital.

Under Sarit's dictatorship, Bhumibol set about revitalising the monarchy. He embarked on a series of tours in the provinces, and lent his name to a number of developments, particularly in agriculture.

For his part, Sarit reinstated the custom that people crawled on their hands and knees in front of the monarch. and restored a number of royal ceremonial occasions that had fallen into disuse.

Overthrow

Bhumibol dramatically intervened in Thai politics in 1973 when pro-democracy demonstrators were fired on by soldiers.

The protesters were allowed to shelter in the palace, a move which led to the collapse of the administration of then-prime minister, Gen Thanom Kittikachorn.

But the king failed to prevent the lynching of left-wing students by paramilitary vigilantes three years later, at a time when the monarchy feared the growth of communist sympathies after the end of the Vietnam War.

Image copyright

Image captionQueen Elizabeth made a state visit to Thailand in 1972

There were to be further attempts to overthrow the government. In 1981, the king stood up to a group of army officers who had staged a coup against then prime minister, Prem Tinsulanond.

The rebels succeeded in occupying Bangkok until units loyal to the king retook it.

However, the tendency of the king to side with the government in power caused some Thais to question his impartiality.

Bhumibol intervened again in 1992, when dozens of demonstrators were shot after protesting against an attempt by a former coup leader, Gen Suchinda Kraprayoon, to become prime minister.

The king called Suchinda, and the pro-democracy leader, Chamlong Srimuang, to appear in front of him, both on their knees as demanded by royal protocol.

Suchinda resigned and subsequent elections saw the return of a democratic, civilian government.

During the crisis that erupted over the leadership of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006, the king was frequently asked to intervene but insisted this would be inappropriate.

Image copyright

Image captionHe was a keen supporter of agriculture

However, his influence was still viewed as pivotal when the election Mr Thaksin had won that April, was annulled by the courts.

Mr Thaksin was eventually deposed in a bloodless coup, in which the military pledged their allegiance to the king.

In the years that followed, the king's name and image were invoked by factions both for and against Mr Thaksin, as they jostled for power.

The entire country joined lavish celebrations to mark King Bhumibol's 80th birthday in 2008, reflecting his unique status in Thai society.

Reverence

Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha seized power in a coup in May 2014 and was made prime minister by the military-appointed parliament a few months later.

He promised far-reaching political reforms to prevent a return to the instability of recent years.

But critics suspected his real priority was to destroy the party of Mr Thaksin and to ensure that the royal succession took place smoothly.

Image copyright

Image captionThe standing of the monarchy was strengthened during his reign

The public reverence for King Bhumibol was genuine but it was also carefully nurtured by a formidable public relations machine at the palace.

There were harsh "lese-majeste" laws that punished any criticism of the monarchy and which restricted the ability of foreign and domestic media to fully report on the king.

During his long reign, King Bhumibol Adulyadej was faced with a country continually racked by political upheaval.

It said much for his skills as a diplomat, and his ability to reach out to ordinary people in Thailand, that his death leaves the country's monarchy far stronger than it was at his accession.

Shimon Peres, Israeli statesman

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Shimon Peres, one of Israel’s leading statesmen, who has died aged 93, had a long and distinguished political career in the course of which he served twice as prime minister and as the nation’s ninth president.

Regarded as the architect of the Oslo Peace Accords with the Palestinians, Peres was awarded, in 1994, the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to create peace in the Middle East.

Peres, centre, with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister, in 1994CREDIT: RIK JOHANSENERIK JOHANSEN/AFP/GETTY

He brought fresh ideas and brisk energies to every office he held. But in Israel where, particularly in the 1970s, military generals were seen as gods and Israelis liked their leaders rough-cut and earthy, Peres, with his foreign accent and lack of military experience, was often regarded as an outsider.

He never won general elections and his premierships were not the result of outright victory but rather political circumstances. “Nobody likes me,” he once complained. “Even my good actions and positive qualities are distorted.”

On another occasion, at a Labor pre-elections rally, he addressed the crowd: “They say I am a loser. Am I a loser?” His fellow party members roared back, “YES!”

Shimon Peres was born Shimon Perski at Vishneva, Poland, on August 2 1923, one of two children of Yitzhak Perski, a timber merchant, and Sara Meltzer, a librarian and a Russian teacher. His grandfather, a rabbi, had a strong influence on young Shimon’s world view.

In a later interview Peres recalled: “As a child I grew up in my grandfather’s home… he taught me Talmud [the source from which the code of Jewish law is derived]… My home was not an observant one… once, I heard my parents listening to the radio on the Sabbath and I smashed it.”

A pre-World War II undated photo shows a young Peres, (third right, rear), whose family name at the time was Perski, in this circa-1932 family photo in Wiszniewo, Poland (now Belarus) CREDIT: HO/AFP/GETTY

When Shimon was 10 the family emigrated to Palestine, then under British Mandate, and settled in Tel Aviv. During the Second World War Shimon’s father served in the British Army; all relatives who remained in Poland, including Shimon’s beloved grandfather, were killed in the Holocaust.

Young Shimon attended the Balfour Elementary School and the Geulah School for Commerce in Tel Aviv. At 15 he joined the Ben Shemen Agricultural School and was one of the founders of Kibbutz Alumot, in northern Palestine, where he spent some time as a dairy farmer and shepherd.

In Israel in the 1970s military generals were seen as gods and Israelis liked their leaders rough-cut. Peres, with his foreign accent and lack of military experience, was often regarded as an outsider

In 1941 Peres was elected secretary of Ha’noar Ha’oved, the youth wing of the Labor Party, where he proved himself to be a superb organiser. He was soon noticed by Israel’s future prime minister David Ben Gurion, who on one occasion gave Peres a lift to Haifa so that he could see for himself how impressive this young activist was.

It was the beginning of what would subsequently become a  productive working relationship between the “Old Man”, as Ben Gurion came to be known, and young Peres.

In 1950 Ben Gurion made Peres head of the Israeli purchasing mission in Washington; his task was to buy arms for the Israeli army. This was not an easy task, as Washington had placed an embargo on the sale of arms to the Middle East.

Peres had by then already developed the talents which enabled him to find ways round the regulations and achieve his goals. While in the US, he enrolled at the New York University, where he studied English, Economics and Philosophy; he also studied Advanced Management at Harvard University.

Peres with President Ronald Reagan in Washington  CREDIT: BETTMANN

In 1953 Ben Gurion appointed Peres director general of the Ministry of Defence; at 30, he was the youngest person to hold this key position.

In July 1956 President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal. Keen to regain control of the waterway, the British and French governments worked closely with the Israelis on a secret military plan whereby the Israelis would invade the Sinai, followed by a British-French intervention aimed at “separating” Israelis and Egyptians, in the course of which the British and French would regain physical control of the canal.

Peres, as Ben Gurion’s envoy, was intimately involved in the negotiations, particularly with the French, who had to accept his demand to provide Israel with a nuclear reactor in return for Israeli participation – an agreement thought to have marked the beginning of the Israeli nuclear weapons programme (though the country has never officially admitted to having such weapons).

The secrecy which surrounded the whole affair, the conspiracies, the intrigues, were by then second nature to Peres and he was in his element.

In 1959, at the behest of Ben Gurion, Peres was elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament; he was also appointed deputy defence minister, a post which he kept until 1965. In subsequent years he held a variety of offices – at Transport, Absorption, Communications and Information – none of which excited him, but on all of which he left his mark.

In October 1973, Egyptian and Syrian troops invaded, catching Israel off guard. In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war, which shocked Israel to the core, Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned and was replaced by Yitzhak Rabin; Moshe Dayan also resigned and was replaced by Peres as defence minister. It was a job Peres had always wanted and he set about reorganising the army, whose morale had been badly shaken by the war.

Peres, October 1974 CREDIT: ISRAEL SUN/REX

Peres’s greatest moment as defence minister came on June 27 1976, when an Air France plane en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, with 248 passengers on board, was hijacked by Palestinian militants and diverted to Entebbe, Uganda. The hijackers demanded that Israel release from jail 40 Palestinian militants in exchange for the hostages, many of whom were Jews and Israelis.

In Israel, Prime Minister Rabin and his chief of staff felt that they had to negotiate with the hijackers, but Peres kept his nerve and urged them to play for time and plan a military operation to rescue the hostages.

Then Israeli defence minister, Peres addresses Israeli paratroops after the completion of Operation Entebbe, July 1976 CREDIT: GETTY

On July 3, in a daring raid, Israeli commandos landed in Entebbe, freed the hostages and brought them to Israel. When the operation was successfully concluded the chief of staff praised Peres by saying that he deserved “all the credit” for pushing for a military solution.

The Entebbe operation, however, led to growing tensions between Rabin and Peres. Peres felt that Rabin was trying to marginalise him and take credit for the successful rescue,  while Rabin found Peres unscrupulous and untrustworthy. The rivalry that developed between the pair did little to enhance the electoral prospects of the Labor Party.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (second right) with Peres (second left)  CREDIT: GETTY

On the eve of the 1977 general elections, Rabin was found guilty of infringing Israel’s foreign currency laws. It was a minor infringement, but it added to the impression that the Labor movement, which had been in power for 30 years, was no longer fit to rule.

Rabin felt compelled to resign, but as he could not legally resign from a transitional government, he officially remained prime minister, while Peres became the unofficial acting prime minister. He led the Labor Party into the elections – and lost. Menachem Begin at the head of the Likud would be prime minister for seven years, leaving a frustrated Peres to lead the opposition.

In the 1984 general elections neither the Peres-led Labor, nor Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud, could muster the 61 necessary Knesset seats to form a coalition, thus forcing the two parties to form a unified government in which, it was agreed, Peres would serve as prime minister for two years before stepping down and handing over to Shamir.

In his short tenure as prime minister, however, Peres managed to tackle some of Israel’s thorniest problems, most notably the economy which, when he entered office, was on the verge of collapse.

Peres checked the outflow of foreign currency and reduced inflation to manageable figures. He also withdrew Israeli troops from most of Lebanon where they had been ever since the Israeli invasion of 1982.  Yet his performance was not enough to win him the confidence of the nation and, in the 1988 general elections, he was defeated.

By 1992 Labor was, once again, led by Peres’s political rival Yitzhak Rabin, who pledged that if elected prime minister he would, within 15 months, strike peace deals with the Palestinians. After his election, Rabin tried but failed to fulfil this pledge to the Israeli people.

Instead it was his foreign minister, the ever imaginative Peres, working behind the scenes, who managed, in a series of secret talks in Norway, to broker the signing, in September 1993, of the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat. Israel, it was agreed, would gradually withdraw from occupied territories, granting the Palestinians self-determination

There was strong opposition to the peace deal in Right-wing circles in Israel, and on November 4 1995 Peres and Rabin, the former political rivals, appeared together at a rally in Tel Aviv in support of peace process.

In a later interview with Ahron Bregman, Peres described what turned out to be the most traumatic event in his entire political career: “When we came to the rally Rabin could not believe his eyes. It was an immense rally attended by tens of thousands of people. And he was overjoyed. I had never, in my life, seen him so happy. We had known each other for 50 years and he had never, never hugged me. At the rally, for the first time in his life, he hugged me.”

He was a neat, dapper figure, and although he loved gourmet meals, he ate sparingly to keep himself trim

When the rally was over, Peres left first, walking past a Jewish assassin who was waiting for Rabin to emerge.  “I got into my car, closed the door and then suddenly heard three shots,” he recalled. “ 'Stop,’ I said to my driver. I wanted to get out. But my security men said, 'absolutely not’. And, sounding the sirens, they drove away wildly. We didn’t know yet what had happened.

“We only knew that Yitzhak was being taken to hospital. I demanded to be taken there immediately. The head of the hospital came to me and said that Yitzhak was no longer alive. We walked into the room where he was lying on the bed. His body was covered with a sheet up to his shoulders. On his face was an expression of peace – and an ironical sort of smile; a special smile. I kissed his forehead and said: 'Goodbye’. I was very shocked.”

Peres succeeded Rabin as prime minister and defence minister, and he tried to revive the peace process. Realising, however, that for a big breakthrough he would need a fresh mandate from the Israeli people, he called for new elections which, on May 29 1995, he lost to Benjamin Netanyahu.

In June 2007 Peres was elected President of Israel – a ceremonial position which he kept until his final retirement in 2014. Following his election Peres resigned from the Knesset, of which he had been a member since 1959, a record term in Israeli political history.

Peres was a popular president and it seemed that, at last, the Israelis  had warmed to him.

He was a neat, dapper figure, and although he loved gourmet meals, he ate sparingly to keep himself trim. His elegance and wit made him a favourite with foreign dignitaries and he managed to charm Margaret Thatcher, whom he once led in a “hora” (circle dance) after an official banquet. 

In 2008, Peres was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George; and in June 2012 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama.

Always the optimist, he used to say that “optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.” 

Shimon Peres married Sonya Gelman in 1945, just after she finished her military service as a truck driver in the British Army during the Second World War; she died in 2011. They had two sons and one daughter.

Shimon Peres, born August 2 1923, died September 28 2016