From Carry On to EastEnders, we pay tribute to national treasure and showbiz royalty, Barbara Windsor.
11 December 2020
Sparrows Can't Sing (1963)
Barbara Windsor, who has died at the age of 83, had a long reign. She changed her surname from Deeks around the time of Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 and withdrew from public gaze on leaving the Queen Vic for the last time in 2016. In between times, ‘Babs’ became a national treasure, although she is bound to be remembered for the wrong reasons, as there was much more to her than that pinging green bikini in Carry On Camping (1969).
As part of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, Windsor had announced herself in Lionel Bart’s Cockney musical, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be (1959), and she went on to earn a Tony nomination for the Broadway transfer of Oh, What a Lovely War! (1965). Littlewood had urged her to drop out of the Carry Ons, and Windsor took 2 wilderness decades to emerge from their shadow. The talent was always there, but too few had the gumption to know how to use it. Wisely, she steered clear of softcore romps in the 1970s and made periodic returns to the stage. But Windsor finally got to show what she could do in EastEnders, where she demonstrated that she had been showbiz royalty all along.