WENDY CRAIG’S schooldays are taking some unravelling. We’ve been on with this particular topic since Memories 180 more than two months ago, but some fascinating photographic evidence is now turning up.

The Northern Echo:
Wendy Craig as Titania in the white dress at the back in 1950. Betty Tate is on the left, the only fairy wearing horns on top of her head

Wendy, now 80, was born in Sacriston on June 20, 1934, and became famous in the 1960s and 1970s starring, usually as a housewife, in sitcoms. Her most highly regarded role was as Ria in Butterflies, which was broadcast between 1978 and 1983.

Her schooldays were a little nomadic. She started at Durham High School for Girls, where she was presumably happy because she has made several return visits in recent years.

Then her family moved to Darlington where she went to that town’s High School for Girls in Cleveland Avenue.

“I hated it,” she is reported as saying. “It was a huge place and I never fitted in.”

Cath Sewell, in Crook, has sent her third year class picture from 1948, and there in the back row is a tall aspiring actress.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember anything about Wendy Craig,” says Cath, “but I do remember that also on the photograph are two girls who had moved over from Halifax with Paton and Baldwins.” This is a stroke of genius from Cath, joining together two of Memories’ long-running strands – for more P&B pictures, please see later in today’s supplement.

After only a couple of years in Darlington, the Craigs moved to Picton Grange, a farm near Yarm.

John Woolway, in Darlington, has sent an extract from a book published in 1990 to mark the 500th anniversary of the founding of Yarm Grammar School. The memories of John Jenkinson, who taught there from 1932 to 1972, are included in the book, and he says: “During the term (at the start of 1949), I was asked to admit a young girl said by her mother to be interested in drama and elocution. Her name was Wendy Craig. In the more adventurous productions of the next few years, her undoubted talent was bound to be noticed and appreciated.”

One of those adventurous productions was A Midsummer Night’s Dream – well, it certainly looks adventurous from the cutting sent in by Betty Tate, of Picton. The cutting comes from the Darlington and Stockton Times of December 9, 1950, and Ms Craig is clearly the star of the show as Titania, the queen of the fairies.

Betty, several years younger than Wendy, was a fairy called Moth – you can see her in the picture with her deeliboppers upright on her head.

The Northern Echo:
Wendy Craig in 2011

“I don’t think I had anything to say,” says Betty, “but she was brilliant.”

Probably the year after this success, the star of Butterflies spread her wings and flitted off to fame and fortune in London.