British Broadcasting Corporation. Photo: Suicasmo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broadcasting_House_20160816.jpg)
British Broadcasting Corporation. Photo: Suicasmo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broadcasting_House_20160816.jpg)
Tessa Wyatt is an English actress born in 1948 in Woking, Surrey. She is best known for playing Vicky Tripp in the ITV sitcom Robin's Nest from 1977 to 1981, and her career since the 1960s has spanned film, soap opera and long-running British television drama.
Background
Tessa Wyatt was born on 23 April 1948 in Woking, Surrey, England. Woking is a town in Surrey, southwest of London, and her birth took place in the years of reconstruction after the Second World War.
Her maternal grandmother encouraged her to act, and she attended Elmhurst Ballet School before beginning her professional career. At the age of 12 she obtained her first professional job, in a television programme featuring Richard Hearne's Mr Pastry character, and soon afterwards she gained an agent.
Education
Wyatt attended Elmhurst Ballet School, a vocational dance school founded in 1923 in Camberley, Surrey, by Helen Ida Mortimer. It was one of the earliest vocational dance schools in the United Kingdom, and its training combined a full academic day with instruction in ballet and dance. The school was based in Camberley until it moved to purpose-built premises in Edgbaston, Birmingham, in 2004.
Career
Wyatt's screen career began in childhood with her first professional television job at the age of 12. Her early television appearances included parts in Z-Cars, The Wednesday Play, Public Eye, Callan, Dixon of Dock Green, Doctor at Large, Play for Today, UFO and The Goodies. In the 1969 series of Public Eye she played a character called Judy Blackburn in the episode The Comedian's Graveyard, a coincidence given her marriage to the radio DJ Tony Blackburn in 1972.
Her film appearances included Wedding Night (1970), the cult horror film The Beast in the Cellar (1970), England Made Me (1973) and Spy Story (1976). England Made Me, a British drama directed by Peter Duffell and based on Graham Greene's 1935 novel, cast her as Liz Davidge opposite Peter Finch and Michael York. In a 2013 interview, Wyatt said that Duffell had tried to coerce her into appearing nude in a scene while she was filming abroad as a young actress.
From 1977 to 1981 Wyatt played Vicky Nicholls, later Tripp, in Robin's Nest, an Independent Television (ITV) sitcom and spin-off of Man About the House. ITV was Britain's commercially funded network of regional franchise companies, and Robin's Nest ran alongside the Man About the House spin-off George and Mildred. Richard O'Sullivan played her on-screen boyfriend and later husband, Robin Tripp. Following the series she appeared in Return of the Saint, Boon and 2point4 Children.
In 1997 Wyatt was part of the original cast of the Channel 5 soap opera Family Affairs, playing Samantha Cockerill. Channel 5 was launched in 1997 as the fifth national terrestrial channel in the United Kingdom, and Family Affairs was the first programme broadcast on it. The soap ran until 2005, when the channel announced that it would not renew the series.
Since 2000 she has appeared in Casualty and Doctors, both productions of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the UK's public service broadcaster. In Doctors she played Harriet Mercer, and she returned to the programme on 19 May 2015 alongside George Layton. She also appeared in the fifth series of Peep Show as Jeremy's mother and, in an episode of The Old Guys, as Tom's love interest opposite Roger Lloyd-Pack and Clive Swift.
In 2013 she joined the cast of the BBC soap EastEnders, playing Betty Spragg.
Wyatt married the radio DJ Tony Blackburn in 1972, and the couple had a son, Simon, born in 1973. They divorced after five years.
From 1978 she was in a relationship for seven years with her Robin's Nest co-star Richard O'Sullivan, and they had a son, Jamie. In 1986 she married the property developer Bill Harkness at Hammersmith Register Office, a civil register office in west London, and the couple have two children, Joanna and Jack.
child:
Joanna
Child of Wyatt and Bill Harkness.
child:
Jack
Child of Wyatt and Bill Harkness.
husband:
Tony Blackburn
Radio DJ whom Wyatt married in 1972; the couple divorced after five years.
Son:
Simon
Son born in 1973 to Wyatt and Tony Blackburn.
Partner:
Richard O'Sullivan
Co-star in Robin's Nest, where he played Robin Tripp; they were together for seven years from 1978.
Son:
Jamie
Son of Wyatt and Richard O'Sullivan.
husband:
Bill Harkness
Property developer whom Wyatt married at Hammersmith Register Office in 1986.
References
Tessa Wyatt - Wikipedia
Encyclopedia article covering Wyatt's birth, education, marriages and television career.
