Thora Hird was in the main associated by having television comedy, notably the sitcoms Meet the Wife (a 1960s classic) and late series of Last of the Summer Wine. But, she played a kind of roles, including the nurse within Romeo and Juliet, and won the BAFTA Best Actress award for her role in one of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues.

Dame Thora's talent for comedy wwhen shown to dependable burden withinside her performance as a expected battleaxe mother-in-law to Victoria Wood's character in the TV film Pat and Margaret. Her virtually all memorable line was, around hearing that her boy experienced been fuck using his girlfriend in her home, "Not on the eiderdown!"

Her tireless function for charity & work inside television in spite of geezerhood and unhealthiness experienced mass produced her an institution. Although within recent years she got been thought of as a stereotypic old woman (by owning numbers of jokes just about her sideline advertising stairlifts), some of her young film act however lives, including her 1942 appearance in the classic wartime propaganda film Went the Day Well?.

Thora Hird's energy & resilience were such that, possibly as punishment the news that she got suffered a stroke, BBC bosses were still hoping that she would recoup sequentially to pop up in the next series of Previous of the Summer Wine.

She received an OBE in 1983, an honorary DLitt from Lancaster University in 1989, and the DBE (thus becoming the "Dame") within 1993.