JULY /AUGUST .....

Well its not been the greatest month…..

After the weekend at Champney’s I started to feel very unwell, at the time I was trying to get things going and sort out stuff etc ,but was failing, felt very alone although I have the greatest of friendships and kind people around me , I was slipping into a deep depression plus not feeling that well, the sad news that Dame Cleo Laine passed, Lovely to read the tributes to Dame Cleo Laine

What an amazing artist she is and her music will live on … I was fortunate to meet her in 1972 while starring in showboat through knowing Lorna Dallas and Jan Hunt …. I was star struck …. I will always hear her sing “he is just my Bill”

Small world Dougie worked with Dame Cleo on quite a few shows and directed shows for her at the Stables … in the mid 80’s. I got the chance to dance in her tv Special. She had written an album called called one more day Dougie choreographed a contemporary dance Piece to the medley of songs from the album …

It was thrilling in the rehearsal room hearing her sing it sent chills up upon on our necks and arms as she was like a musician following us dance and us following her beautiful vocals …

A lovely heartfelt memory … my love to her talented family and friends at this time in reflecting the wonderful talent of Dame Cleo x

I saw my sister Janet and my mother, also saw the lovely Emma but didnt feel myself , on the 29th i went into a terrible fever of hot and very cold ,the next day i went to dr who rushed me into hospital, well i drove myself packed a bag just in case, and i dont know how i got there but i did….to cut a long story short i was admitted and the hospital for 24 days and have only just out on 21st August. It has been a painful experience I had an infection on my leg which went from bad to worse it comes under cellulitis they tried to find out the cause possible a bite ? the leg swelled and blisters, skin just splitting away red raw and very painful…. they tried all sorts of medication to try and get this infection…. it all seems a blur at the moment…i was on a drip for the medication thank god for the pain killers and morphine …. lovely visitors that i will always be so grateful for and Paul kept a eye on the house ,lovely messages that i some times couldn’t even read …

even sadder news my sisters husband Terry passed away all at the time when i was really unwell …

she has been the most amazing carer in the world for the past 7 years 24/7 and looked after him even before that …when he first became unwell with cancer … he survived so many things like sepsis 3 times but with her love and care always brought him back .. she really has been a angel , and to look after our mother quite amazing my love for her is beyond anything she has been the kindest sister one can imagine ….I feel so guilty that I wasnt there for her .. when she needed me the most … i tried as much as I could by message and phone calls …so my thoughts are with her and all the love in the world .

I am now back at home with a lot more resting to do to heal myself and get better ….. the last two days in hospital i improved greatly and was able to walk ( although killing me ) and the leg improved amazingly although still vey sore …. paul was with me my first day back which was a great help and today i have managed on my own at home … been tough for sure .. but have rested slept a lot…

so onward with the healing ….. a lot of people want to see me which is sweet but will take my time i have no choice … the hospital staff were amazing even with some strange incidents that occurred .. they work hard but thats a book I could write on my 24days ….. there … let me hope that i recover to the full soon…

my huge thanks to Paul my bruv , Janet, Simon george ,Lsa Lee, Joan g

Golden ,Lady Emma Parker , Jane Channon ,Aly and Eva ,Trevor Willis , Belinda Batcholor Jackie Tavers Claire Anna Rosemarie Ford Fran Lucy and Martine Howard and all the Generation Family hope ive not missed anyone out BUT THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR KINDNESS XXXX

Also to remember the birthday of our heavenly sister Lynda who’s birthday was today she would of been 77 god bless her xx

CHAMPNEYS 100! THE FEST !

A fun weekend celebrating Champneys 100 years Explore !

Jackie Travers brought us along as her Dance team for dance classes for the event in the beautiful grounds of Champney's

we gave classes throughout the day, and Jackie and Rosemarie gave demonstrations with their ladies of their impressive choreography they learn at Champneys ..

shame the weather wasn't on our side , the first rain in ages !

but it did'nt stop us under our canopy ....

Big Thanks to the one and only Jackie for being Jackie !

At Champneys James Ryman and Louise Day and all the team .

JULY 12TH ALREADY !

This past month has just flown past ! have been busy trying to get some work in etc all good !

but its hard …. had my Danish nephewDavid over for a weekend with his daughter Mila (very Pretty ) so a few family gatherings , we did a charity walk for my niece Claire who was raising money for Cystic Fibrosis bless . 5 MILES around Bransberry park it was fun, mother loved it ….

took David and Mila shopping Southampton and lovely walks around Romsey and old Portsmouth .

Had another great class with the Generation family they are so speical,

Went to see the Wilkes show in Swindon, very polished great to see the talent of tomorrow , some very nice Choreography , Also went to see Birds 2nd years end of term show , again well produced

just worries me where all these gifted students will work ? most have the goals being in the WEST END !

my big challenge has been that i have started to write … memoir maybe . also I think not for anyone to read !

i would get sued …

JUNE Generation class

Generation Dance Class June ....Yesterday's class seemed for some reason to be very special ... we have now been meeting up every month for over 9 years.. and weekly on zoom throughout lockdown . Everyone had either worked for Dougie and myself and along the way other dancers have joined in on the fun and it has become a Generation family of dancers ... Old friendships rekindled and lots of new ones have been made .. The support is amazing, not only during the class but everyone looks out for each other we have a group page which at points has been a lifeline of support and help to everyone ..

I have been so humbled today with the most touching messages from all the gang ...of what it all means to each of them ...

we all do a warm up then burst into a full routine .. 2 hours of pure fun and their passion Dance ... EVERYONE IS WELCOME next class will be in July so if you love to Dance come along and join in with this amazing group people .. I will put the date once confirmed .... Much Love Ant xx

A birthday Celebration for Lesley Ann Chowen

A lovely celebration,a surprise party for the ever young Lesley Ann Chowen hosted by her beautiful family ... so much fun and love for such a special Lady .....we all go back a long way ... Lesley I have always thought the world of... In my early days of choreographing Lesley was a wonderful support to me with great encouragement ,kindness and enthusiasm... which to this day she still has bundles of it ...So lovely to see friends too ... lovely evening x ps thank you Jackie Travers for the pics x

Our dear Mum 95!

A beautiful day to celebrate our Mothers 95th Birthday .. a Lovely meal in Southsea at the Briny.. she loved it... then back to Janet's for Pimms ,Cake and Strawberries....

Thank you dearest friends for all the lovely birthday messages you kindly sent ... she loved it... as we read them out to her ... she glowed bless her ... such a special day x

The passing of a dear Friend

I am sad to write this on hearing the news of dearest Barbara Ferris passed away on friday ….

The kindest, sweetest, funny ,amusing , talented actress and one of the most beautiful person inside and out that I had the pleasure of knowing …. how lucky I was …. My loving thoughts to John her husband and her children Nick,Christopher and Catherine and her beloved Grand children ..

I hope dougie was there to waltz you around the clouds xxxx god bless dearest BarreSadly last week one of Dougie's long time closest friends and dear friend of mine the Lovely Barbara Ferris passed away ...

ADDED 1ST June

She worked for Dougie, with Una Stubbs, Amanda Barrie, Betty Laine , etc on Cool for Cats ... and remained close friends all their lives .... I was lucky enough to be able to call her a friend

she was the kindest, elegant,caring, loveable, Witty , funny generous and talented person you could meet ..... such a honour to have known her .... My deepest sympathies are with John and her children and her most cherished grand children ... my thoughts with Angie Richards xI hope Dougie was there for your first dance xxx

A lovely Obituary written by Michael Coveney

Barbara Ferris obituary

Actor who began her career in ‘dolly bird’ roles and became the star of plays by Edward Bond and David Hare

Michael Coveney

Sun 1 Jun 2025 15.02 BST

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It was once said of the actor Barbara Ferris, who has died aged 85, that she was the only one of Joan Littlewood’s girls at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in London, who started out working-class and ended up middle-class.

Her father had a milk round in Soho after the second world war. Barbara progressed from training at the Italia Conti stage school, to fashion modelling and dancing – in Cole Porter’s Can-Can and The Pajama Game, Bob Fosse’s first show as a choreographer – at the London Coliseum in 1954-55, to important roles in plays by Edward Bond and David Hare at the Royal Court. In 1966, she was in a starring role opposite Donald Sinden in Terence Frisby’s West End long-runner There’s a Girl in My Soup (her role in the subsequent film was taken by Goldie Hawn).

Along the way, she transformed herself from a blond, beehive hair-styled cockney “dolly bird” to an actor of real emotional and technical command, notably in John Boorman’s first feature film, Catch Us If You Can (1965) with the Dave Clark Five, a much-underrated movie, and in Interlude (1968), Kevin Billington’s remake of a US Douglas Sirk film, in which, as an arts reporter, she conducted a disruptive affair with a married maestro played by Oskar Werner.

Zwischenspiel Interlude Barbara Ferris, Oskar Werner *** Local Caption *** 1968 --D1Y06R Zwischenspiel Interlude Barbara Ferris, Oskar Werner *** Local Caption *** 1968 --

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Ferris with Oskar Werner in Interlude, 1968, Kevin Billington’s remake of a Douglas Sirk film. Photograph: United Archives GmbH/Alamy

The social mobility tag was applied when she married, in 1960, the film director and producer, John Quested, while appearing in cabaret at Winston’s Club, Mayfair. Her honeymoon was just one night in the Dorchester hotel, as she was about to make her professional stage debut with Littlewood in Stephen Lewis’s Sparrers Can’t Sing. The show transferred to the West End. She was up and running.

By the early 90s, Quested was both the owner and chairman of Goldcrest Films. Ferris’s career did not dry up exactly, but she retired by choice, to raise the couple’s family, and travel extensively with her husband’s work. They had houses in Ireland and Zurich and, in London, a Chelsea apartment.

The second of four children, Barbara was born in London, to Dorothy (nee Roth) and Roy Ferris. While at Italia Conti, she was already working as a teenager in TV commercials and pantomime, supplementing Roy’s income. Her younger sister, Liz, became a springboard diving champion, who won a bronze medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics, before going on to be a doctor.

Barbara’s early television work included the groundbreaking pop music show Cool for Cats (1956), alongside Amanda Barrie and Una Stubbs, and a cockney barmaid, Nona Willis, at the Rovers Return in Coronation Street (1961); Nona left the Street after 10 episodes, because she didn’t understand the Lancastrian accents.

Ferris in rehearsal for There's a Girl in My Soup with, left, Jon Pertwee and Donald Sinden.

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Ferris in rehearsal for There's a Girl in My Soup with, left, Jon Pertwee and Donald Sinden. Photograph: Beverley Goodway/ANL/Rex/Shutterstock

There was nothing cosy about her performance as Pam in Bond’s Saved (given under club conditions in 1965 – the Lord Chamberlain had censored it): an unaffectionate mother, glued to the television, of the baby stoned to death in a notorious scene; nor as the effervescent, spirited Moll, defying an “arranged marriage” in the teeming Jacobean comedy, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in 1966. Both plays were at the Royal Court and directed by William Gaskill.

After There’s a Girl in My Soup, in which she managed a sort of beady frivolity, she was one of three liberated female teachers – the others were Anna Massey and Lynn Redgrave – in Hare’s first major success, Slag (1971); Mrs Elvsted in John Osborne’s adaptation of Hedda Gabler (with Jill Bennett and Brian Cox); and the hilarious spirit of a “new broom” in a chaotic pre-internet library in Michael Frayn’s Alphabetical Order (1975), playing opposite Billie Whitelaw’s humane confusion as a much-loved resident librarian.

Ferris with Anna Massey in Slag at the Royal Court, 1971. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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Ferris with Anna Massey in Slag at the Royal Court, 1971. Photograph: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The director of the Frayn play, Michael Rudman, took her into his Lyttelton-based National Theatre company for revivals of Somerset Maugham and JB Priestley before she returned to the West End as the boozy actor sister of Penelope Keith in Stanley Price’s Moving (1981); and as a sexually treacherous sister in Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings (1982) – having sex with said sister’s obtuse novelist husband (Nigel Havers) under a Christmas tree laden with presents and thereby setting off a gift-wrapped, loudly drumming teddy bear.

Her last major London appearances were as Mavis, a dance teacher, in Richard Harris’s suburban Chorus Line-type hit, Stepping Out (1984), in which she skilfully projected an uneasy blend of personal insecurity and dull professional competence, and in Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound at the Greenwich Theatre in 1991, a rueful family comedy.

She was twice married to Richard Briers on screen: as a vicar’s wife in 18 episodes of the 1985 television sitcom All in Good Faith, and as Enid Washbrook in Michael Winner’s so-so movie based on Ayckbourn’s wonderful am-dram comedy, A Chorus of Disapproval (1989), featuring before-they-were-movie-stars super-suave Jeremy Irons and a sweaty, obsessive Anthony Hopkins.

Her last film, which she did because her old friend from Littlewood days, Victor Spinetti, was in it, was Peter Medak’s The Krays (1990). And she dabbled in fringe theatre, producing and financing two glorious little compilation shows at the King’s Head in Islington in 2002: Call Me Merman and Dorothy Fields Forever, paying tribute to the great Ethel and the unjustly forgotten lyricist Dorothy, both magically recreated by her friend Angela Richards.

Ferris, who loved playing golf, is survived by her husband and their children, Nicholas, Christopher and Catherine.

Barbara Gillian Ferris, actor, born 27 July 1939; died 23 May 2025

flowers in bloom

The cottage looks like a florist !

THE MONTHE OF MAY MEMORY DAY'S

May is such a strange time for me …. Full of celebrations and memories of loved ones

I can’t belive its two years since the passing of dear Dougie x and dearest Jamie 22 years ago ….

THE ROYAL WINDSOR HORSE SHOW

An amazing week @royalwindsorhorseshow .. huge thanks to every one involved at the “hubs from the guest presenters , the presentations, the riders the Shetland Pony Club , the Pony Club, the Royal Gardens , The Garden Presenters, the new @talkhorseofficial team and the incredible @alantitchmarshcbe @Debbiewiseman and Ensemble for their concerts … A huge special Thanks to @reece_campbell09 @dannyjonesey89of @checkevents5 the production team who effortlessly ran it so well, Matt from @henley_theatre_services for all the technical production… to all @royalwindsorhorseshow who have produced this since 1947 The HPOWER team are just incredible! First class

First trip to Leckford this year

always a treat to walk around Leckford water gardens with my brother Paul

MAY DAY CLASS

The monthly class fun as ever !!! lovely to see Cherida dancing bless xxx

April News !

As I write here the sun is shinning with this glorious moment of a amazing weather …..

a lot has happened this month, Firstly lovely news the Reece and Danny have got engaged … so romantic !!! in Paris on a roof top over looking the Eiffel Tower tres chiq..I wish them every happiness … bless … with good news there is always some sadness

We heard today the passing of the lovely Joanne Cookson, she passed peacefully in St Gemma’s hospice , she had not been well these past few months , but in true Joanne style a fighter in every way … so sad x it was only her birthday on Tuesday xxx which she had read all her loving messages xxx

We worked with Joanne for many years in shows all over the world from Cannes to Miami the daughter of the legendary Jean Pearce … I think of her with such fond affection… that fabulous makeup she did !!! We used to get her to show all the girls that’s how you do a stage makeup ! From dancing to all her work on fashion and wedding shows on the catwalk and behind the scenes directing and choreographing and working for event companies even a spell as being an agent at Trends she gave 100percent … I know the news will sadden all the amazing dancers from the Jean Pearce days …

So on behalf of all of us our thoughts are to Jo’s family and close friends at this sad time …

If I hear any more news I will pass on …

Then it was Easter … I decorated the cottage as I would, did church flowers in the font …. spent Easter with my dear Mum and Janet I cooked at Janets which was fun !!! and got easter eggs ! and beautiful flowers from Emma … The garden is starting to look really lovely and happy enjoying life here at 17 South End Cottages !… my bruv Paul has been staying which has been nice … lol its like living with my father ! happy days

can’t believe its MAY tomorrow !