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Despite the fact the it is with the Carry On
series that Barbara Windsor is most associated, she only appeared
in 9 of the 30 films. Ms Windsor was born Barbara-Ann Deeks on 6
August 1936 in Shoreditch, the only child of a London bus driver
and a dressmaker.
Barbara's mother was her driving force, sending
her child to elocution lesson as she had ambitions for Barbara as
a telephone operator. But Barbara chose showbiz and never looked
back.
However disappointed Mrs Deeks may have been, she
was generous enough to finance young Barbara's place at the Ada
Foster acting school. There, Barbara excelled and won her first
acting role at 12 where she played on of the babes in a pantomime.
She was spotted by producer Joan Littlewood who, anxious to maintain
the use of working class actors, gave her the part of Rosie in Fings
Ain't What They Used To Be.
Her film career started with The Belles Of St
Trinian's in 1954 and it was while she had the starring role
in her eighth film, the 1963 Sparrows Can't Sing, that Peter
Rogers saw her and offered her the part of Daphne Honeybutt in Carry
On Spying.
National recognition followed along with TV and
stage roles galore. Barbara made use of her curvaceous figure to
emphasise her Carry On characters; she lost her nightgown
and, later, her bikini top in Camping; was stripped practically
naked by a nervous Sid James in Abroad and gave a full frontal
view of her bosom in her last Carry On film, Dick.
In the late 1970s she was tabloid fodder because
of her relationship with gangster Ronnie Knight and various younger
lovers, but in 1994 she finally achieved a lifelong ambition when
she joined the cast of TV soap opera Eastenders as Peggy Butcher
(the mother of the Mitchell brothers), a role she still plays today.
Barbara Windsor lives in Marylebone.
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