June Spencer: Veteran Archers star who found art could imitate life

June Rosalind Spencer was born on 14 June 1919, just six months after the end of World War One.

Her acting career began at the age of three, when she was cast as King of the Land of Nod in a school play. When she heard the audience laugh, June knew it was the life for her.

She went to Nottingham High School for Girls, which she found “very stark, grey and cold”.

She was forced to give up sport – her favourite lesson – when a doctor somehow misdiagnosed a heart condition.

An only child, her father was a “sensible and supportive” biscuit salesman, but her mother was another story.

A “complex woman”, Mrs Spencer had once aspired to the stage herself, but – according to her daughter - “just gave up on life... and decided she was an invalid at the age of 40”.

June Spencer had little choice but to leave school to look after her mother – who eventually lived until she was 94.

Miserably, mother and daughter sat together in a darkened room in case Mrs Spencer had "an attack".

Her headmistress was angry, complaining that her former pupil was throwing her life away. “I was frightened of her,” June later recalled.

“She told me, ‘Of course, you can't expect to get anywhere without your School Certificate’.

"I have thought of those words many times since, particularly when I received my OBE.”

But The Archers was an instant hit with the actors – despite never having their credits read out on air – in demand for local appearances.

"I remember going down to a gathering of all the Women's Institutes in Cornwall,” June recalled, “and I was mobbed. It was quite frightening."

There was a brief break from the show when June and Roger adopted two children in the late 1950s. Thelma Rogers took over the part for a while, but soon returned to the theatre.

On taking back the role, Spencer insisted she had little in common with Peggy, who rather lacked a sense of humour, but her on-air journey from young barmaid to grieving widow saw them both involved in some of the show's strongest storylines.

Peggy’s first husband, Jack Archer, succumbed to alcoholism, while her second husband Jack Woolley – with whom she hoped to enjoy a happy retirement - was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

The show’s slow-moving plot lines meant each disease unfolded over years - as they do in real life. And both issues were close to June’s heart.

Around the time of her Golden Wedding anniversary, Spencer had noticed that Roger’s memory “was playing him false” and “then the repetitive questions started,” she said.

When Peggy Woolley’s husband was given the same disease in The Archers, June was supportive and – with her experience of Roger’s gradual disintegration – was often consulted by the scriptwriters.

Roger passed away in 2001. Five years later, June saw her son David – a ballet dancer who had lost his career through injury - die of alcohol abuse. He was 55 years old.

For Spencer, such things were not unusual occurrences of life imitating art. Her attitude was that every family experiences traumas and disasters, and drama helps them to deal with it.

“We tackle difficult situations that come up in real life, and treat them without being sensational,” she said.

“I think people appreciate that. When they have the same sort of problems, they hear how the Archers coped, and I think it helps them."

June Spencer was made an OBE in 1991 and a CBE in Queen Elizabeth’s Birthday Honours List in 2017.

Interviewers who came to her home in rural Surrey were routinely charmed.

“It's hard not to go overboard with admiration for a nonagenarian who remains so unaffected by her fame on the one hand,” wrote one, “and some of the awful things life has thrown at her on the other.”

She held a special place in the nation’s heart as queen of its longest-running radio drama, and was thought of with enormous affection by her fellow cast members.

June “shone through sadness without a word of complaint," recalled Charles Collingwood - who plays Brian Aldridge, her fictional son-in-law, “and always remained immense fun".