Dame Patricia Routledge says ‘I’m an actress, not an actor’ as she reveals she is just as much a stickler for proper pronunciation as her Keeping Up Appearances alter ego Hyacinth Bucket

Her sit-com char­ac­ter Hyacinth Buck­et was famous­ly strict about pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Now Dame Patri­cia Rout­ledge her­self has revealed she has no time for slop­py speech. She said she ‘can’t stand&…

Her sit-com char­ac­ter Hyacinth Buck­et was famous­ly strict about pro­nun­ci­a­tion.

Now Dame Patri­cia Rout­ledge her­self has revealed she has no time for slop­py speech.

She said she ‘can’t stand’ how peo­ple drop their aitch­es and ‘now the “ks” and “gs” are going the same way,’ she added.

And the the­atri­cal grande dame, now 95, also revealed she is a tra­di­tion­al­ist when it comes to gen­dered lan­guage.

‘I’m an actress, not an actor, by the way,’ she said.

And although it’s almost three decades since the last series of Keep­ing Up Appear­ances, the star revealed she still receives let­ters from fans of the show.

She said: ‘I get let­ters still from all over the world even though we made the last series in 1995.

‘I had a let­ter from a lad of nine or 10 a few weeks ago say­ing how much the fam­i­ly enjoy it and watch it togeth­er.

‘He said “my dad’s been laugh­ing at a woman like you across the road for years”. Won­der­ful.

‘Fans in Amer­i­ca still hold can­dle­light sup­pers (infa­mous­ly organ­ised by Hyacinth in the TV series) and invite me.

‘Peo­ple like it because there’s no smut.’

Refer­ring to snob­bish house­wife Hyacinth’s var­ied wardrobe of out­landish out­fits, from rid­ing breech­es to nau­ti­cal-themed dress­es and hats, she said: ‘It won’t date because the clothes don’t date.’

Dame Patri­cia told how her char­ac­ter had ‘leapt off the page’ when she was sent the script – but said late co-star Clive Swift had lit­tle to go on for how to por­tray put-upon hus­band Richard.

She said: ‘He made bricks out of straw to cre­ate Richard.

‘Peo­ple ask how did the mar­riage work? We decid­ed he’d been an orphan. He was looked after (by Hyacinth), his shirts were ironed, his food was on the table.’

Although she has fond mem­o­ries of the char­ac­ter – one of her two best-known tele­vi­sion roles along with detec­tive Het­ty Wainthrop, and for which she did ‘all but two’ of her own stunts – she stressed: ‘I’m not like her, of course.’

Dame Patri­cia, speak­ing in a talk about her career at Der­by The­atre, told she began in show­busi­ness as an assis­tant stage man­ag­er at Liv­er­pool Play­house, so ‘I know all about being a dogs­body’.

As well as sweep­ing the stage, the actress said her work led to her inter­rupt­ing per­form­ers in their dress­ing rooms.

‘I was­n’t much cared for, dis­turb­ing the lit­tle liaisons going on. I knew about the affairs,’ she recalled.But after receiv­ing clas­si­cal train­ing for her singing, a career in musi­cal the­atre took off, tak­ing her to Broad­way in New York where she impressed leg­endary fig­ures.

Com­pos­er Richard Rodgers – who with Oscar Ham­mer­stein and Lorenz Hart cre­at­ed some of the most icon­ic musi­cals – came unan­nounced to see her in a show.

Dame Patri­cia said: ‘At the inter­val, I found a note in my dress­ing room from Richard Rodgers say­ing, ‘I’m here to see the show, would you please call my office on Mon­day. I did the sec­ond half half-paral­ysed.

‘I rang the office and arranged to go and see him. He was very com­pli­men­ta­ry and said, I want to write a musi­cal for you. Who does that hap­pen to?

‘We tried to find the right sub­ject and char­ac­ter but could­n’t hit on the right one. (Fel­low actress) Katharine Cor­nell made a sug­ges­tion which I did­n’t pass on, Joan of Arc. I did­n’t do it but I should have. I did per­form in a musi­cal writ­ten by him, though, as Net­tie Fowler in Carousel.’

She also recalled how Leonard Bern­stein trav­elled from the US to Lon­don espe­cial­ly to audi­tion her for a role in in 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue, a musi­cal about the his­to­ry of the White House which ran briefly on Broad­way in 1976.

Dame Patri­cia per­formed Duet for One, a musi­cal about ‘two prospec­tive First Ladies’ – play­ing them both.

‘One was a dizzy, high-pitched wife, the oth­er a grow­ly Ger­man,’ she said. Dame Patri­cia put on a dif­fer­ent wig for each char­ac­ter, and ‘became good friends’ with Bern­stein, keep­ing in touch with him and going to his 70th birth­day in 1988, two years before his death.

She called for music to be giv­en more impor­tance in schools, reveal­ing that when she was at pri­ma­ry school in Birken­head, Mersey­side, a piano was wheeled into each class ‘for 20 min­utes a day’.

‘Music mat­ters. We need to shout to the gov­ern­ment.

‘I spon­sor one or two young musi­cians at the acad­e­mies — young singers main­ly, because this mir­a­cle of what we can do with two pieces of gris­tle