Background
Ysanne Churchman was born on 14 May 1925 in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, to Andrew Churchman and Gladys Dale, well-known stage and radio performers in London.
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Ysanne Churchman
Edit ProfileCareer
In 1938 Churchman appeared on both British Broadcasting Corporation Radio Children"s Hour and in a British Broadcasting Corporation television play Gallows Glorious. She trained as a dancer at Cone-Ripman College. After learning repertory and theatre she specialised in radio and voice work for film and television
This led to national fame as Grace in the long-running radio series The Archers when Grace suffered grievous injuries in a fire on the night of the Independent Television launch in 1955.
The character died in the following day"s episode. (She strongly suspected the producer was glad to be rid of her at the time as she had discovered that some of her cast members in this regional, Birmingham, production, were not being paid Equity minimum rates and raised the matter).
She went on to voice five other Archers characters over the years, most recently Mary Pound in 1983. Along with many story-telling and reading roles on the British Broadcasting Corporation she also performed as: Sara in the series Sara and Hoppity, Marla and Cassie in Space Patrol, the voice of Alpha Centauri in the series Doctor Who, and Soo the computer in Dominick Hyde.
She was the first actress employed by Capital Radio, reading a serial book
He died in January 2015 after 63 years of marriage. She retired in 1993, but still does occasional voice-over and television appearances. Following the death of Dorothy-Rose Gribble on 1st October 2014, Churchman is currently the oldest-living Doctor Who actress, followed by Honor Blackman and June Whitfield.
