RIP Brenda Cowling

After a lifetime of bit parts, Brenda Cowling, who has died of a stroke aged 85, found herself in front of up to 12 million television viewers when she played the cook, Mrs Lipton, in You Rang, M'Lord? The "upstairs, downstairs" sitcom, from the Dad's Army creators Jimmy Perry and David Croft, was inspired by the experiences of Perry's grandparents, who had been the butler and cook in a household in Berkeley Square, London.

The writers had frequently used Cowling for character roles in their previous series and immediately recognised her as an ideal fit. "Brenda was a very warm woman, looked like a cook, spoke like a cook and walked like a cook," said Perry.

For good measure, the widowed Lipton had a relationship with the butler, Alf Stokes (played by Paul Shane), in the 1988 pilot and four series (1990-93). The sitcom ended with the couple getting married and leaving to run their own boarding-house.

Cowling was born in London, where her father worked in publishing. On leaving St Monica's convent, Palmers Green, she worked as a secretary for a City stockbroker. In her spare time, she acted with the Intimate Theatre amateur company in a Palmers Green church hall. She achieved her acting ambition when she won a scholarship to Rada (1948-50), where her contemporaries included Perry, Lionel Jeffries and Warren Mitchell.

While there, Cowling made her (uncredited) film debut in the thriller Stage Fright (1950), directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Richard Todd. She then went into rep, touring with the West of England Theatre Company (1950-52), followed by spells at the Castle Theatre, Farnham, Surrey (1952-53) and the Little Theatre, Bristol (1953-55).

In 1956 Cowling had a small role in the film comedy The Silken Affair, starring David Niven. Most of her parts in subsequent pictures were similarly fleeting, such as in the big-screen version of the television sitcom Please Sir! (1971), in which she played the mother of the wisecracking rebel Eric Duffy (Peter Cleall), and Carry On Girls (1973), as a matron. She was seen as one half of a German couple trying to feed Roger Moore their picnic in the James Bond film Octopussy (1983).

When Jeffries wrote and directed The Railway Children (1970), he cast her as the housekeeper, Mrs Viney. The actor was by then appearing regularly on television. Following her small-screen debut in the Francis Durbridge thriller The Other Man (1956), she took dozens of bit parts, but was slightly more prominent as Miss Perren in The Forsyte Saga (1967) and Mrs Bunce, landlady of the barrister-turned-MP Phineas Finn, in The Pallisers (1974).

She also popped up as the mother of Betty (Jo Rowbottom) in the first series of the caravan-park sitcom Romany Jones (1973) and played the man-hating Gwen Botley, mother of Angie (Julia Foster), in Good Girl (1974). She was Jane in Potter (1979-83), Roy Clarke's comedy about a retired confectionery firm boss. Fawlty Towers fans will remember her as a nursing sister in the episode The Germans (1975).

Throughout this, Cowling was one of the unofficial repertory company called on by Perry and Croft. She played Godfrey's friend Mrs Prentice in Dad's Army (1972), a WVS member in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (1981) and three roles in Hi-de-Hi! (1984-88), as well as a customer in Are You Being Served? (1981).

Cowling, who never married, gave up acting after a stroke in 2006.