June Whitfield is a durable comedy actor whose entire career has been spent providing excellent support to virtually every major British comedian on radio and television. In the 1950s, she became a radio favorite, playing the perennially engaged Eth in the famous Jimmy Edwards comedy series Take it From Here, but her lasting stardom can be attributed to a remarkable succession    of    television    appearances supporting Britain' s best-loved comedians and to her long­ running sitcom series, Terry and June. The list of male comedians with whom Whitfield  has worked  reads like a Who's Who of British comedy talent and includes Benny Hill, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, More­cambe and Wise, and Dick Emery. However, she is most closely associated with Jimmy Edwards. with whom she co starred in a number of comedy playlets under the generic title Faces of Jim (Seven Faces of Jim, 1961: Six More Faces of Jim, 1962; and More Faces of Jim, 1963; all BBC). She also appeared in many series with Terry Scott, including Scott on ... (BBC, 1964-74) and Terry and June (BBC, 1979-87). which was a continuation of an earlier series. Happy Ever After (BBC, 1974-78).

     Whitfield made her debut on television in 1951 in The Passing Show (BBC). and later appeared as support to Bob Monkhouse and Derek Goodwin in Fast and Loose (BBC, 1954). After guest starring in various sitcoms for 12 years, she landed a starring role in Beggar My Neighbour (1968), a show about ill-matched neighbors.

     Terry and June was Whitfield's most famous vehicle, and her portrayal of a typical long-suffering wife (June Fletcher) with a perennially adolescent husband (Terry Fletcher. played by Terry Scott) did not stretch her talent as an actor. it nevertheless demonstrated her amazing consistency and willingness to bring the best out of any material. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, she also reestablished herself as a radio star. working with comedian Roy Hudd in The News Huddlines, where she demonstrated a hitherto unknown talent for impersonation, particularly with her imitation of Margaret Thatcher.

     The "new wave" of comedy that began to make serious inroads into British television in the 1980s provided Whitfield with further opportunities. Comedians Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders used the actor in their sketch show. French and Saunders (BBC, 1987- ), and Jennifer Saunders later chose her for the role of Mother in Absolutely Fabulous (BBC, 1992-96, 2001- ).

     Absolutely Fabulous was a groundbreaking British sitcom of the 1990s, with a dazzling mix of the politically incorrect, outrageousness. and savage wit. The clever casting of Whitfield as Mother allowed Saunders to utilize the actor's housewife persona in a subversive way, employing dialogue and plot to investigate areas of the character never glimpsed in Terry and June. When Absolutely Fabulous came to a premature end in 1996, writer Jennifer Saunders used the cast (including Whitfield) in a new, equally outrageous comedy, Mirrorball (BBC, 2000). which was intended as a pilot to a series but which actually just convinced Saunders that there was more mileage in the Absolutely Fabulous format, to which she returned in 2001.

     Absolutely Fabulous and similar shows written by and starring women are no longer rarities on British television. but the majority of Whitfield's career has been spent supporting male comedians who dominated the medium, with most of the programs on which she worked bearing the name of the male star (The Benny Hill Show and The Dick Emery Show, among others). She is not the only funny woman of British television to have had such a comedy-supporting career, but she is arguably one of the busiest. One can only lament that it has never been considered viable in British television to produce The June Whitfield Show.