Hattie still an enigma

Stephen Russell's TV play about the love life of Carry On and Sykes star Hattie Jacques was beautifully acted but, as Caitlin Moran cogently pointed out in her column in yesterday's Times, the relationships didn't really make sense.

The same issue was there in the source material, Andy Merriman's biography, also called Hattie. We hear all about what happened, and that Hattie was a warm and loving woman, but this only makes the way she treated John Le Mesurier (and, by extension, her own children) all the more baffling. Maybe in future years someone else will come along and write another biography of Ms Jacques that throws more light on what, after 45 years, is still a mystery.

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