Oh, dear - it's been a bad year in ladies' wear; first Wendy Richard and now Mollie Sugden have gone and left their counter at Grace Bros. for the last time.Sugden's Mrs. Slocombe made the world safe for pussy jokes, if nothing else; but there was so much else. She was a kind of crystallization of her kind, the randy widow who has her roots in The Canterbury Tales and Juliet's nurse and who today seems as distant a caricature as ... well, all the caricatures of vanished types that populate, so delightfully, Are You Being Served?
I don't know about you, but I miss old ladies. Today's septuagenarians and octogenarians (and beyond) are all very well, with their tracksuits and "active senior lifestyles," but they're hardly cosy. As I age, I like to think I'll keep Mrs. Slocombe and her ilk in mind and become one with them, a contented male old lady with a blue rinse and imperturbable calm...
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