The former EastEnder died in the Harley Street Clinic in London with her husband John Burns by her side. She was 65.

Her agent Kevin Francis said: "She was incredibly brave and retained her sense of humour right to the end."

Richard starred in the BBC soap for more than 20 years, but became a household name before that in department store sitcom Are You Being Served?.

She endured two battles with breast cancer in the mid-1990s and then in 2002. The cancer went into remission after years of treatment, but last year it was discovered that the disease had returned in an aggressive form, attacking her kidneys, bones and spine.

Last October, she disclosed in a newspaper interview that the cancer was terminal and that she was dying.


She was born Wendy Emerton on July 20 1943 in Middlesbrough. She was educated at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, Herts, and then at the Italia Conti Academy stage school in London.

She first became familiar to TV audiences playing Joyce Harker, a regular in the BBC's 1960s soap The Newcomers. She also had roles in Dad's Army, Up Pompeii! and The Likely Lads.

But she became famous in the 1970s sitcom Are You Being Served?. She played a Cockney shop assistant, Shirley Brahms, a role she continued to play in the sequel, Grace And Favour, in 1992 and 1993.

She joined EastEnders as matriarch Pauline Fowler when the programme began in 1985 and remained in it until 2006, when her character died.