Actress who played British soap’s first unmarried mother

Born: August 22, 1929

Died: February 18, 2018

SONIA Graham, who has died aged 88, was a character actress who provoked controversy – including an outcry from an archbishop – when she played secretary Maggie Clifford in the television drama Compact. Maggie fell pregnant and became the first unmarried mother in British soap. Hazel Adair, who created Compact with Peter Ling, had to fight with the BBC to keep her on screen.

Graham, an original cast member, eventually left after the first year (1962-3) and played another secretary, by-the-book Irinka in the 1966 sitcom Foreign Affairs, with Ronnie Barker as one of her bosses at the Soviet embassy in London.

She also had a leading role as Mrs Austen, mother of a bedridden girl whose drawings come to life in her sleep, in the spooky 1972 children’s television serial Escape into Night, adapted from the Catherine Storr novel Marianne Dreams. Its nightmarish quality, enhanced by moody lighting, sent many young viewers scurrying behind the sofa.

Graham was then back in peak time to play uptight, intolerant wing assistant governor Martha Parrish in the first three series of the prison drama Within These Walls (1974-8).

She was also in two popular BBC vet dramas – popping up in All Creatures Great and Small as cat-obsessed Mrs Bond in 1978 and again 11 years later, and more prominently in all three runs of One by One (1984-7) as receptionist-cum-nurse Ethel Ledbetter. Later, in London’s Burning between 1995 and 1998, she played Evgenia Estafis, whose daughter Ariadne died of a heart attack while pregnant.

Graham was born Sonia Mary Biddlecombe in Croydon, Surrey, to Clement, a timber merchant, and Elsie (nee Walker). With a talent for ballet, she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dance at the age of nine and, four years later, made her professional debut with the Carl Rosa Opera Company.

While studying at the Old Palace of John Whitgift School, Croydon, she also gained acting experience at the Rosslyn School of Dance and Drama, London.

She won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama aged 16, then acted in repertory theatre all over England after starting in Preston.

Shortly after adopting the stage name to Sonia Graham, she spent two seasons (1951-3) with the Old Vic Theatre company. Then came her breakthrough role as Mary Ellen in the original 1957 cast of Meet Me by Moonlight, Tony Whitby’s Victorian musical comedy (written under the pseudonym Anthony Lesser) starring Jeremy Brett, at London’s Aldwych Theatre, from where the BBC broadcast a performance.

After acting in a couple of episodes of the legendary TV hospital soap Emergency – Ward 10 in 1959, Graham starred as Mary Bewick in the BBC afternoon serial A House Called Bell Tower (1960), adapted from Sydney Carter’s novel, and television work flowed her way for four decades.

She made a one-off appearance in a 1975 episode of Crossroads – Hazel Adair and Peter Ling’s best-known creation – as Alma Furness, whose sister, Paula Randall, tried to kill herself when husband Doug (played by future Emmerdale star Richard Thorp) had an affair with Vera Downend.

She also played Mrs Simkins, neighbour of Harry Worth’s widower bringing up teenage children, in the sitcom How’s Your Father? (1979-80) and Beryl Doyle, the commander’s secretary, in the 1994 detective agency drama Anna Lee.

Graham, whose sister Peggy died last November, is survived by her nephew, John Hodgson, and nieces Sarah Donoghue and Ellen Houghton.

ANTHONY HAYWARD