Gay Soper

Gay Soper:

Multi-talented actress and singer Gay Soper is a doyenne of the musical theatre, but has a few interesting points of contact with British TV and film. Her stage career includes the original London production of 'Godspell' with David Essex, Julie Covington, Marti Webb and Jeremy Irons, and playing Mme Thenardier in 'Les Miserables' on the West End.

As Janice, the short-sighted barmaid in 'Bless This House'

Eee, it's 'The Flumps'. Oh Pootle, you are silly.

On TV, she can be seen in the later series of 'Romany Jones', when the writers brought in a posh neighbour couple in place of the late James Beck. Played by Gay Soper and Jonathan Cecil, they provided the comic contrast to rough-and-ready Arthur Mullard and Queenie Watts, with city clerk Cecil bringing in a measly £22 a week and Mullard on five times as much as a manual labourer with a few scams on the side.

Jonathan Cecil seems less keen on leaving his mother's house
for the romantic caravan lifestyle, in 'Romany Jones'.

She also appears in several sitcoms: 'Bless This House', 'Never The Twain', and she co-starred in 'Rude Health' as the wife of put-upon GP John Wells. But perhaps her most lasting claim to television fame came with her narration and singing for the tiny tot series 'The Flumps', about a family of fuzzy Yorkshire gonks living in a desolate moorland cottage.

With John Wells in Channel 4's 'Rude Health'

Movie-wise, there's not too much to report, although she does get to do a striptease for Dickie Attenborough and get spanked by Bob Todd in 'The Ups and Downs of a Handyman' (1976) which starred her then-husband, Barry Stokes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, neither it, nor the X-rated 'Love is a Splendid Illusion' (1970), gets a mention on her website.  

Gay Soper-imdb