Are You Being Served? star Mollie Sugden died yesterday, aged 86.

The actress, best known for playing bluerinsed, innuendo-spouting Mrs Slocombe in the classic BBC sitcom, passed away following a long illness.

Sugden, who lived in Surrey, was married to fellow actor William Moore, who died nine years ago. Her agent Joan Reddin said last night: "They were very much in love, she started to go down when he died.

"I represented her for more than 30 years and I was a very close friend. She had had a long illness but it was very quick in the end. Her twin boys were with her and she faded away. She was a lovely, lovely person. She was a great professional."

Ms Reddin added that although Are You Being Served? was her most famous show, Sugden was "too good" an actress to be remembered for comedy roles alone.

Frank Thornton, who played Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served?, said: "Mollie was an excellent comedian. If you can play comedy, you can play anything - you can play tragedy as well. She was a jolly good actress."

Born Mary Isobel Sugden in Keighley, West Yorks, in 1922, she studied drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

It was in 1956, while working for Swansea Rep at the Grand Theatre, that she met actor William, best-known for playing the longsuffering husband and father in Sorry!

They married in 1958, when she was 35 and he was 39. Their twin sons Robin and Simon were born six years later, just as Sugden was becoming a familiar face on our screens.

In the 60s and 70s she played the formidable Mrs Hutchinson in The Liver Birds and was in Hugh And I, Please Sir! and The Love Of Ada. But it was as bossy sales lady Betty Slocombe at the Grace Brothers store in Are You Being Served? that she truly won the nation's heart.

She later had her own slot on the consumer programme That's Life.

Mollie found fame in the US in the 90s after re-runs of Are You Being Served? transformed her and co-star John Inman, famous for his catchphrase "I'm free," into cult figures there.