British stage, television, radio, and film actress, Stephanie Cole died on September 18 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. She was 84. Born in Solihull, Warwickshire, England on October 5, 1941, Cole trained at the famous Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and made her stage debut playing the eccentric Madame Arcati in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, which she later revived. Her big break came in 1980 playing Dr Beatrice Mason in ‘Tenko’, a BBC drama that chronicled the lives of British women in Singapore after the Japanese invasion. She was then cast in Roy Clarke and Ronnie Barker’s hit sitcom ‘Open All Hours’, in which she played Mrs. Featherstone for 10 episodes. The show about a grumpy, penny-pinching shopkeeper, played by Barker, is one of the best-known BBC sitcoms of all time and was revived in 2013 as ‘Still Open All Hours’, for which Cole returned. Cole’s other TV credits down the years included ‘Talking Heads’, ‘A Bit of a Do’, ‘Keeping Mum’, ‘Doc Martin’ and ‘Coronation Street’. Cole appeared in one Euro-western as Ada Belaney in 1999’s “Grey Owl” with Pierce Brosnan.
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