Elizabeth Bradley

Maud Grimes, the mother-in-law from hell of television's Coronation Street, was tough, rough, domineering, embitteredly disabled and altogether not an obvious candidate for socialite of the year. The actress Elizabeth Bradley played the character for six years and 476 episodes - until she was written out in 1999 - was charming, invariably courteous, bubbly, mentally sharp and physically active to the last. Unlike the downmarket Maud, she was also the daughter of a senior civil servant, Sir John Abraham, who was deputy under-secretary at the Air Ministry from 1940 until he died in Winston Churchill's private plane when it crashed in 1945. Bradley, who successfully played so many roles unlike herself, was trained in the hard school of repertory theatre, at Bexhill, Bradford and Tunbridge Wells. Late in life, she also took her place at the National Theatre and the Royal Court. On stage, she used her father's middle name, Bradley, and it stuck. No one in her family had worked in show bus