Claire Neilson
Born: April 8, 1937;
Died: April 29, 2026
Claire Neilson, who has died aged 89, was an extremely well-known face on television, particularly Scottish television and particularly Scottish comedy – she regularly starred in Scotch and Wry with Rikki Fulton. But she was most recognised for her role in a sit-com that’s often voted the best of all time: Fawlty Towers, and she was in what is arguably one of its best episodes: Waldorf Salad.
The episode centred, as they all did, on Basil Fawlty getting everything wrong, in this case his reaction to an American guest Mr Hamilton played by Bruce Boa and his wife played by Neilson. They’ve arrived late and the kitchen’s closed and have asked for a Waldorf salad to which Basil, played by John Cleese, replies “I think we just ran out of Waldorfs.” Mr Hamilton hits the roof leaving Neilson as the wife to try to calm things down. “This place is the crummiest, shoddiest, worst-run hotel in the whole of Western Europe!” says Mr Hamilton. “Oh no,” says the Major, “I won't have that! There's a place in Eastbourne.”
By the time Neilson came to film the episode of Fawlty Towers for its second series in 1979, she had already appeared in a succession of TV dramas – most notably a suffragette who is force fed in prison in Upstairs Downstairs – and her agent was concerned about her appearing in too much comedy.
“My agent was furious with me for doing Fawlty Towers and warned I’d ruin my career,” she said. “Back then, pretty young women who did light entertainment stopped being offered dramatic parts but I’d always preferred comedy, so I didn’t care.” And her CV proves it: not only was she a regular on Scotch and Wry, her other credits included Rab C Nesbitt, The Dick Emery Show and lots of supporting roles in The Two Ronnies.
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She was born Claire Elizabeth Isbister in Glasgow, the daughter of John Isbister, a doctor, and his wife Peggy, and remembers thinking she would like to be on the stage after seeing a production of Swan Lake in the 1940s. “It introduced me to this other world that was beautiful and glamorous and I remember thinking: ‘That’s where I belong, not in this sooty city.”
She won a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Dramatic Art in Glasgow (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and did what a lot of young actors did then, which was go into weekly rep, in Glasgow, Perth, Birmingham and London. She then settled in London where she joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, the revolutionary theatre co-operative best known for Oh What a Lovely War and A Taste of Honey. She helped support herself by working as a nanny for her friend, fellow actor Adrienne Corri.
Television work started to come along in the 60s and a supporting role as Barbara Grant in the 1971 film version of Kidnapped starring Michael Caine and Trevor Howard. She also had a central role in the long-running drama 1960s drama Ghost Squad, about an elite police squad who investigates cases outside the normal, and appeared in several episodes of the popular 1970s soap opera The Brothers and was in three episodes of Take the High Road in the early 80s. Later there were appearances in Taggart and Monarch of the Glen.
She then did something of a switch in her late forties when she won a place at King’s College, Cambridge to study English literature, enrolling at the same time as her daughter Peggy. She continued to act though and said studying the works of Shakespeare as part of her degree had given her a deeper understanding of plays she had been appearing in for years.
In later life, she wrote books, including The House at Strone, a Swallows and Amazon-style adventure set after the Second World War; she also illustrated the book herself, having become an accomplished painter. Another of her books was a guide to grandparenting, Your First Grandchild, written with her husband, actor Paul Greenwood, who was the star of Roy Clarke’s lesser known sitcom about a rookie copper, Rosie.
She was married twice, first to the actor and producer Dennis Vance, father of Peggy. The marriage was dissolved in 1966 and she married Paul Greenwood in 1994. Latterly, she lived in Stratford-upon-Avon where she ran acting workshops in schools.
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