player worthy of popular farces, became a dedicated activist handicap

The

acting career Elspet Gray, who has died aged 83, was dimmed, but not extinguished by being so closely linked to his marriage with Brian Rix joker. In 1951, Gray gave birth to a daughter, Shelley, who had Down syndrome. In later life, she was active with her husband, actor and director after leaving the scene in 1977 to work for people with learning disabilities - primarily through the presentation of a series of BBC television and then as Secretary General of Mencap. However, because of the periodic returns to the stage and has maintained a presence on the screen., In 1979, for example, was invited pediatrician at Fawlty Towers, and in 1994, the mother of the first wife Four Weddings and a Funeral

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raising three children later, Shelley visited each week on a dwelling house which was after the family had done everything possible to "get by" for five years. Both Gray and Rix had the guilt of sending their children away, even if they believe it would improve residential care home, and it would be cruel to expose it to the attention would have received if he had been with his famous parents.

Rix, the chief representative of the comedy drama, British television and film at the time, became an ardent supporter and fundraiser, gray and a staunch defender of their cause. The current Director General of Mencap, Mark Goldring, said Lord and Lady Rix more "made a formidable team in their determination to change the lives of people with intellectual disabilities."

The couple returned to the stage in a revival of the popular comedy dry rot in 1988 and five years later in a presentation titled Tour de Farce, describing the trials and tribulations of the players who make at different stages of history. Some of the material in the Tour de Farce could be considered risqu? side for Gray dignified and beautiful, including the story of a warning notice in a chorus of theater squatting on the toilet to relieve themselves could cause a serious accident. "The women were seriously injured"

But Gray and her husband had always been an unconventional pair. Rix, who came from a wealthy family, ran his own theater company when, aged 25, he hears. Recalled after a day was miserably cold and wet and not have a hangover, but he was obsessed immediately when she came in and lit the scene. Years later I still remember exactly what I used - a green suit, red hair tweedish improve. He gave her a job in the company directory Bridlington where he worked, and asked him to marry her. As she was only 19 years old, she refused.

He did, however, live with it - a little fat comedians over at the time. It was while they were together in the bathroom which was proposed for the umpteenth time, and this time she accepted. Rix visited his production Reluctant Heroes John Chapman and took him to the theater Whitehall - was the first of many jokes there, which made his reputation, and ran from 1950 to 1954. Gray was in the same production, and was followed by a film version. They settled in the capital and began their family.

Gray was born in Inverness, Scotland, and was educated at St Margaret Hastings, and the Presentation Convent Srinagar, in the Kashmir valley, before making her theatrical training at Rada. His first professional appearance in 1947, in the work of Edward, my son, the Grand Theatre, Leeds, who transferred to Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End next month, we give her London debut.

Gray made his first film in 1949, and later appeared in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969). Her television roles include Lady Montague in many Catweazle (1971), Chancellor Thalia in the Doctor Who story Arc of Infinity (1973), and Phyllis Bristow in eight episodes of the Second World War drama Tenko (1984 ).

in Black Adder (1982), the first series in which Rowan Atkinson began to overthrow British history, who played the legendary Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, and the gray of his mother, Queen Gertrude of Flanders, wife of Brian Blessed as Richard IV. Your final television appearance occurred on an episode of the sitcom Dinnerladies Victoria Wood (1998).

Shelley died in 2005. Gray is survived by her husband, two son and a daughter.
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