Why much loved actress Dame Thora Hird has a special place in the memories of a Blackpool generation

Today's lady of letters has been waiting in the wings as the vocalists had their chapter in the letter H section of our A to Z of stars who topped the bill in Blackpool. The wait has been worthwhile, for Thora Hird now has the entire page.

Dame Thora (1911-2003) has a special place in the memories of we oldies, both for her film and television work and her Blackpool Grand Theatre seasons.

I was only 21 when I first had a cuppa with Thora in her Grand Theatre dressing room in 1959. She was starring with Peter Sinclair and Pat Phoenix in Walter Greenwood's Blackpool comedy Happy Days. It was about a Manchester works party on a trip to the seaside.

At the time, Thora also had a role in John Osborne's The Entertainer, being filmed with Laurence Olivier in her home town, Morecambe.

She explained to me that she had to rise at 4am to prepare for her scenes, was then driven by her husband, Jimmy, to Blackpool for her two evening shows at the Grand, and then back to Morecambe for just four hours sleep.

What a trooper, as the pros used to say!

Thora was well known for her northern character cameos in British films before her five Grand summer seasons began in 1953, when she was teamed with Arthur Askey in a football farce called The Love Match, by Glenn Melvyn.

Her second season was in 1956 in Walter Greenwood's pub comedy Saturday Night at the Crown, playing the local gossip, Ada Thorpe.

Gazette reviewer Brian Hargreaves (later to be editor) wrote: "In this sort of part no-one can touch her. She is gloriously garrulous."

It was said in the business that Ada was the model for Violet Carson's Ena Sharples in Coronation Street.

Grand Theatre audiences saw Thora Hird for a week in March, 1958, playing a seaside landlady, tart of tongue and warm of heart, in Gerald Savory's Come Rain, Come Shine.

Thora's third Grand summer season was in 1959's Happy Days (see above).

After a notable cameo role in the film A Kind of Loving, the actress starred in two Grand Theatre summer season plays with Freddie Frinton, her co-star in the BBC TV series Meet the Wife.

In the first, Thora was back on familiar ground in 1962's The Best Laid Schemes, playing Blackpool guesthouse keeper Victoria Pugh, who had a gift for hypnotism.

In 1965, Thora and Freddie's Grand season was in My Perfect Husband, in which she tried to win a magazine prize by substituting a toy boy for her slob of a hubby.

Both plays were written by Thora's real life brother Neville, under the pen name Henry J. Meyer.

Created Dame in 1993, at the age of 82, Thora was back at the Grand, recalling highlights of her seasons there for Melvyn Bragg's The South Bank Show.