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Vale: Roberta Taylor

Veteran UK actor best known for The Bill and EastEnders, has died.

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Veteran UK actor Roberta Taylor, best known for The Bill and EastEnders, has died, aged 76.

She suffered from lung disease emphysema and died on 6 July after a fall two months ago led to an infection. Her condition subsequently worsened with a bout of pneumonia.

Following stage work, Taylor started playing Irene Raymond on EastEnders in 1997, as the matriarch of the Hills family until 2000.

“Irene was a complicated lady. I never knew what was going to happen next, but that’s what life is like. We worked hard at our characters. People thought we were comical but actually there was a lot of sarcasm,” she once said.

She then went on to work on The Bill, from 2002-08, as the hard-drinking, no-nonsense Inspector Gina Gold.

Taylor also appeared on Casualty, Doctors, Sharman, Holby City, Silent Witness, and Inspector Morse, plus The Witches in 1990 and Tom & Viv in 1994.

Her last major television series was Shakespeare & Hathaway in 2022.

Source: The Independent.

6 Responses

  1. She also wrote several books.

    Remember her on ABC Radio when she was out here on a book tour and the only find the listeners wanted to know was about the Bill.

    It was just after Jeff Stewart/Reg Hollis incident in NY.
    The audience questions, “How’s Reg…”

    An interview that I can still remember all these years later, RIP

  2. Probably my favourite era of The Bill too, and I’d been watching a long time before she arrived. Fabulous character. Like I imagine many of my generation, the second time we see shoes on cobblestones to the strains of ‘Overkill’ meant Tuesday night bedtime.

    There was a rumour going around a few years back that a reboot was possibly in the works. Not sure if Covid put the kybosh on it, but I feel TV is ready for something similar in format again.

    I remember seeing her in … something Dickensian too. Was the last thing I expected to see her do, but she was great in that also.

  4. Very sad news.

    Probably better known in the UK for her stint in EastEnders during an era (now past) when soaps dominated viewing habits, but she also enjoyed a memorable run as the hard-drinking inspector in Thames TV’s The Bill.

    RIP

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