11/08/2026
“She looked as though she was crying” — Kenneth Williams was deeply affected by Yootha Joyce’s final recorded television appearance, and remarkably, he was still thinking about it almost eight years later, just days before his own death.
By the end of the 1970s, Yootha Joyce was one of the most recognisable comedy actresses in Britain. After making Mildred Roper such a memorable part of Man About the House, she and Brian Murphy were given their own hugely successful spin-off, George and Mildred.
Behind the success, however, Joyce was struggling badly with alcohol. By the summer of 1980, concerns about her health had grown and she was admitted to hospital. She died on 24 August 1980, just four days after her 53rd birthday. Brian Murphy, who had played her long-suffering screen husband George, was reportedly at her bedside.
But before her death, Joyce had recorded what would become an incredibly poignant final television appearance.
She appeared alongside Max Bygraves on his ITV variety programme Max, where the pair performed the song For All We Know. The programme wasn’t actually broadcast until 14 January 1981 — nearly five months after Joyce had died.
Kenneth Williams watched the performance, and something about Joyce’s appearance clearly stayed with him.
Writing in his diary, Williams observed that “she looked as though she was crying” and, as Joyce got up and left the set, wrote that “one had the feeling she never intended to return.”
Knowing what happened shortly afterwards makes his reaction particularly sad.
And it wasn’t something Williams simply forgot about.
Almost eight years later, on 9 April 1988, Joyce suddenly returned to his thoughts. Williams himself would die just six days later.
He wrote in his diary: “Can’t get Yootha Joyce out of my head”, remembering her singing For All We Know. He recalled that there was “almost a break in the voice” as she reached the song’s reference to tomorrow perhaps never coming, but that she carried on with the performance.
Williams finished his recollection with a lovely description of the woman he remembered:
“A lady who made so many people happy and a lady who never complained.”
Joyce’s death also brought George and Mildred to an abrupt end. A sixth series had been planned, but it could not continue without her.
Her final recorded performance therefore feels very different when watched with the knowledge of what followed. This wasn’t Mildred Roper trading insults with George. It was Yootha Joyce herself, performing a reflective song shortly before her death.
And judging by those diary entries, Kenneth Williams saw something in that performance that he simply couldn’t shake.
Eight years later, with his own life nearing its end, he was still thinking about Yootha.
