Liz Edmiston

Elizabeth 'Liz' Edmiston was an English actress.

=History= Affectionately known as the Gnome to her close friends, she would have achieved a wider success had she had the stamina that comes with good health. From the age of 13 she suffered with type 1 diabetes.

She was born in Gosport, Hampshire, and her father was an excise officer in Southampton. Showing early promise as a dancer, she was presented with the All-England Sunshine Dancing competition junior cup, at the age of 11, by Dame Alicia Markova. From 1956 to 1963 she attended the Royal Ballet school at White Lodge in Richmond Park. Although she was a gifted dancer, she was not taken into the Royal Ballet company because of the difficulties she had with touring and coping with her diabetes.

By 1964 she was travelling in South America with Ralph Richardson in the British Council's Shakespeare quatercentenary tour. She then played supporting parts in West End productions of Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand; Little Me with Bruce Forsyth; and a revival of The Boy Friend. In the 1970s she scored a major success in the musical Mr and Mrs - starring John Neville and Honor Blackman.

She played Sheila Hancock's daughter in the TV series Now Take My Wife (1971), and parts followed in productions such as Rising Damp (1974), Within These Walls (1975), Juliet Bravo (1984) and Keeping Up Appearances (1993). She worked extensively in South Africa, in theatre productions of Gigi and Peter Pan - boyish and ethereal, she was one of the great Pans. She appeared with John Nettles in a lauded tour of Butley, and with Raymond Burr in Underground at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

With ill health dogging her, she latterly worked nearer to home at Sonning Dinner Theatre in Sonning Eye, Oxfordshire. There, as always, she brought the house down. She was totally indomitable, but all her doctors and her many friends also appreciated that, despite her sweet face, she could turn the air blue with her swearing when it came to pain or inconvenience. She masked her disability with witty, camp and sharp humour. In 2002 she had a successful transplant operation for which her brother Billy donated a kidney. =Sources=