THERE will be thousands of tributes for that British institution Dame Barbara Windsor, who died last week from Alzheimer’s at a London care home. She was 83.

Most will concentrate on her many starring roles in the Carry On series of films or as publican Peggy Mitchell in TV soap EastEnders. 

Some will deal with her close relationships with criminals and others will patronise much of her work.

Although she was known for her Conservative sympathies, her talent won admiration from across the political spectrum, and I think we should look back on the long career of a working-class actor who, long before her stardom, had been in the 1950s an enthusiastic and much-valued member of one of Britain’s most significant and influential left-wing theatre groups, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop.

This put her right at the centre of a group involved in political working-class theatre. 

The Workshop had been established in London’s Stratford East by Littlewood to create inventive, politically engaged popular theatre. 

It was here that Windsor started a long-time close friendship with communist and gay songwriter and playwright Lionel Bart. 

She became an integral part of many of Bart’s shows, including most notably Fings Ain’t What They Used To Be. 

Barbara Ann Deeks was born in Shoreditch in August 1937. Dad was a barrow boy, Mum a dressmaker who traced her family back to Irish immigrants who had fled to London to escape the great potato famine.

Barbara took the stage name Windsor in 1953, inspired by the coronation.

She passed her 11-plus with the highest score in all of north London. Mum had also paid for lessons at the Aida Foster Stage School and aged just 13 Barbara won her first paid part in the Ealing comedy The Belles of St Trinian’s.

Her diverse performances resulted in both recognition and awards. A number of Tony and Bafta nominations are testimony to her talent. 

She won critical acclaim in a 1981 revival of Joe Orton’s dark comedy, Entertaining Mr Sloane, directed by Kenneth Williams. She became a dame in 2016 and in many pantomimes before that.

There were always artistic contrasts in her life. Between 1964 and 1974, she appeared in nine Carry On films as well as, in 1972, playing opposite Vanessa Redgrave in Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. She sang in jazz clubs and acted in Shakespeare.

Her Carry Ons were just one part of a huge film output that ranged from A Study in Scarlet (1965) to Alice through the Looking Glass (2016).

Notable was her portrayal of her lifelong hero, social activist and music hall star Marie Lloyd. Sing a Rude Song with lyrics by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin opened at the Greenwich Theatre in February 1970 before moving to the West End for a long run.

On TV she played one of the militant female trade unionists in the TV sitcom The Rag Trade, so when the BBC launched EastEnders in 1985, many, including Windsor herself, saw it as an ideal vehicle for her as cockney showbiz royalty. 

However the BBC creators considered her too famous and too linked to comedy to suit their grimy realism. 

Finally a decade later in 1994 a new producer asked her to play Peggy Mitchell, the mother of Albert Square’s gangster siblings, Grant and Phil. It was almost too perfect casting as gangster’s moll. 

The Mitchell brothers were modelled on the notorious London crime twins the Krays. Windsor had actually had brief relationships with two of the Kray brothers, and was married for two decades to a Kray hanger-on, armed robber Ronnie Knight. 

In her remarkably honest autobiography she revealed she had terminated five pregnancies, believing she was not fit to be a mother. 

She also revealed many short and long relationships with men. They ranged from a liaison in a salt-beef bar with Jazz Club owner Ronnie Scott to long nights of intellectual and cultural discussion with Hello Dolly composer Shepard Coleman while she was starring in Oh What a Lovely War in New York.

Her autobiography records scores of other relationships — enough to make her admired and respected if she had been a male star, but as a woman at the time this behaviour was frowned upon. 

She herself declared she was never very good at picking men. That certainly seemed to be true, at least until her last husband Scott Mitchell.    

In April 2014, Windsor was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and in May 2018, she and her husband publicly revealed her condition.

On her 82nd birthday in August 2019, she became an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society. 

She appealed to the public to sign an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanding he urgently address the challenges of Alzheimer’s and dementia. 

PM Johnson has paid tribute to Windsor but has done nothing to meet those demands.

If queens were elected, there is no doubt Barbara Windsor would have got the job. As it is she will long be remembered as the working-class Cockney Queen who won all of our hearts.  

Yellow peril!

PERHAPS I might be allowed a personal memory of how I nearly killed Barbara Windsor. 

Many decades ago driving home through Stanmore, north London, a tiny woman tottering on very high heels was pulled out from between parked cars by three excited miniature bright yellow poodles.
 
I managed to brake with only inches to spare. I leapt out of my car ready to confront this stupid pedestrian when I realised I was face to face with Barbara Windsor. 

She was apologising to me as hard and fast as she could. My anger melted.

Amazingly she was wearing a frothy mini-dress that exactly matched the bright yellow hue of the poodles and her hair and shoes too were exactly the same bright yellow. 

She was so apologetic, so friendly and so just so nice. We parted on good terms and I dined out on our meeting for years. 

I would never have forgiven myself if I had become the man who ran over Barbara Windsor.