Dame Patricia Routledge has wished the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre good luck for its refurbishment project Play Your Part.

She visited the theatre last week and was filmed being shown around by theatre director Joanna Read and inspecting progress.

Please see the video produced by the theatre here:

Dame Patricia, 95, is best known for her comedy role as Hyacinth Bucket in the popular BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances (1990–1995), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Light Entertainment Performance in 1992 and 1993.

But she has also had a distinguished stage career including musical theatre, making her professional debut at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1952 and her Broadway debut in How’s the World Treating You in 1966. She won the 1968 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in Darling of the Day, and the 1988 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Candide. She has been a long-standing member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Her film appearances include To Sir, with Love (1967) and Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968).

On television, in addition to Keeping Up Appearances, she came to prominence during the 1980s in monologues written by Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood, appearing in Bennett’s A Woman of No Importance (1982), and in Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985–1986). She was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for Bennett’s Talking Heads: A Lady of Letters (1988).

She also starred as Hetty Wainthropp in the British television series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1990, 1996–1998).

In 2017, she was made a dame by the Queen for her services to entertainment and charity.