Always a big fan of Wanda Ventham - you are probably aware she is the mother of Benedict Cumberbatch.
I tend to think, what's-his-name is Wanda Ventham's SON (heehee).
I'm pretty sure the first thing I saw her in was
THE PRISONER epsode "
It's Your Funeral", which also featured Annette Andre, who in the 80s became my FAVORITE "Saint" girl for her 5 different episodes on Roger Moore's series.
Ventham played a computer tech. When that week's Number Two (Derren Nesbitt) asked for an accuracy report on the computer's previous report, it refused.
"It refused? HOW?" "It simply failed to answer the question." "They'll be wanting their own TRADE UNIONS next!"It's funny, because on "
UFO", in a few different episodes, Colonel Lake spends a lot of time using SHADO's computers to try and figure some things out, often with disappointing results because of limited data to begin with.
But the first time I really noticed her, oddly enough, was the Tom Baker-Louise Jameson
DOCTOR WHO story, "
Image of the Fendahl". She played a mature-yet-very beautiful scientist, and it was shocking when her character got KILLED in horrible fashion. (It was one of the last of the "gothic horror" stories, left over from before the previous producer had been REMOVED from the show due to complaints about violence on what was still stupidly perceived as a "children's show".)
The funniest story I ran across about her was when
DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE did an interview of her and her good friend Donald Pickering. They were married to other people, but were such good friends, that every time they got together, they couldn't stop laughing. Which caused directors a lot of problems whenever they wound up working on the same show together ("
Time and the Rani" with Sylvester McCoy). Pickering is so typecast as deadly-serious, stuffy characters, the image of HIM laughing uncontrollably just amused me no end.
Adding to my own amusement... these days, I have a pharmacist who reminds me of this. Every time I see her, she winds up breaking into laughter at the slightest thing, and it's contagious. (Physically, she actually reminds me a bit of Kaley Cuoco.)
By the late 80s, I saw Ventham in reruns of
THE AVENGERS,
THE SAINT and
SECRET AGENT, all from the early 60s, where she was just STUNNING. A few years ago, she turned up in a cameo in the
ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS movie, and although she'd changed so much, I managed to recognize her after only a few seconds!
