Mrs Merton is a quintessential British TV legend.  The creation of the brilliant comedienne/writer Caroline Ahearne, this ‘elderly’ agony aunt was the host of an BAFTA Award-winning mock TV chat show that ran for three years from 1995 on the BBC.  Celebrities lined up to be her guest even though none of them were spared a quizzing with her biting, faux naive interviewing style.

Several of her more famous questions passed into TV folklore, like the time with a big smile on her face when she opened an interview with Debbie McGee, the partner of magician Paul Daniels, with the query: “So what attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”   (If you know who Daniels is, then it makes it even funnier.)

When the series ended Ahearne went on to write and star in the groundbreaking award winning TV series The Royle Family which , like Mrs Merton, would become a cult classic. The show was about a seemingly ordinary Northern working-class family who appeared to do very little besides slouch on two couches in front of a TV just sounding off about their mundane lives and their off-kilter views on life.  Despite its seemingly very simple premise, it was hilariously funny and became compulsive viewing in the UK. 

Caroline Ahearne died of cancer aged 52 two months ago , and yesterday one of her Royle Family co-stars Ricky Tomlinson was talking about her on a British Morning TV Show. He questioned why the actress hadn’t been honored with a state funeral after her death in July. ‘Why didn’t she have a state funeral? Everybody loved her,’ he told the presenters,  before adding: ‘We had a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher and everybody hated her.’  

Tomlinson was spot on. Ahearne and Mrs Merton were much beloved by the British viewing public. Here she is in a clip chatting to the infamous Cynthia Payne the Madame of a brothel which catered to elderly British gents that ended up with an hilarious Trial and scandal that shook up the Establishment but kept the nation laughing for years.   Two British legends together.