Call them Angels of the evening, as I list 10 of the most memorable nurses to have graced the wards of St Angela’s and Heath Green hospitals between 1975 and 1983!
Patricia Rutherford (Fiona Fullerton, 1975 – 1976)
One sequence in the first episode of Angels sums up Pat Rutherford’s personality. Having caught the train to start at St Angela’s hospital, on arrival, Pat gets an already overworked train guard to help her with her luggage. After that, it’s an easy taxi ride to her destination. No red carpet was rolled out especially for Pat, alas, but them’s the breaks.
From that short clip alone, it’s not hard to deduce that Pat isn’t short on authority, self-confidence or readies. Pat hails from wealthy, upper class stock, and from the moment she arrived kicking and screaming into the big wide world, has been showered with material goodies and plenty of pound notes. Pat is also fortunate in that her dad, Lawrence (Geoffrey Palmer) seems to have pulled a few strings to get her in to St Angela’s.
Whether or not Pat actually wants to be there is a different matter. Instead of swotting up for her nurse’s exams, Pat would be much happier partying. The above pencil-chewing screengrab sums up Pat’s laissez-faire approach to the academic side of her job. Give Pat some practical training on the wards rather than a musty old book any day of the week.
Inevitably, Pat’s modern, brisk, no-nonsense attitude to nursing causes clashes. Huffy teaching sister and lecturer Heather Windrup (Faith Brook) is none too impressed by Pat’s lack of commitment to her studies. Pat repays the favour by being unimpressed by Windrup (or Windbag as Pat and others call her) being such a joyless old boot. In fact, uptight old biddies seem to get Pat’s goat – to the extent of furious name calling. Mrs Ennis (Susan Field), for instance, in the last episode of the first season, is yelled at by Pat for being an “ungrateful, diabolical old bitch.”
And what does Mrs Ennis object to the most? Being called old!
Pat does form an unlikely friendship with the more reserved Mo, although this pal path isn’t always smooth. On one night out, Pat sneakily gets Mo drunk in order to get rid of her. However, they do seem to stay friends – even if the pair are chalk and cheese, personality-wise.
On the subject of Mo…
Maureen Morahan (Erin Geraghty, 1975 – 1976)
Poles apart from Pat, the shy, reserved form of Mo Morahan is also summed up in the commute sequence of the first episode. Whereas Pat got lucky with attentive train guards and a taxi, Mo has no choice but to slum it by carrying her luggage herself and getting the bus to St Angela’s.
Unlike Pat, Mo has a very clear vision of what she wants to do with her life. She is prepared to swap the Irish farm countryside for the bright lights of Battersea in order to achieve her vocation of being a nurse. Partly to help others, but also as she explains in 1976’s Coping episode: “The feeling that you’re needed… wanted…” She has no hesitation getting stuck in to her studying. Whereas Pat couldn’t wait to get started on the wards, Mo is less enthusiastic, preferring to make sure that she’s got every medical term and condition memorised to the letter before she begins.
Generally easy-going in nature, she’s not as much of a party animal as her new chum, Pat. But she can still be quite stuck in her ways. In Season Two’s swansong, she sniffily dismisses the homeless as people who made their own choices. In the Coping episode, she’s puzzled as to why Larry (John Duttine) is a nurse as opposed to a doctor, but she’s also astutely sceptical of his ambitions to make it big instead of wanting to help patients: “Ambition and nursing. It’s a funny combination.”
The early days of Angels tend to make parallels with Pat and Mo. One clear cut difference is that Pat goes back to her dad and her old lifestyle after a hard day’s work, whereas Mo seems to have outgrown her past life. In Home Sweet Home, she visits her family and discovers that her old flame, Michael (Aidan Murphy) has been getting too close for comfort with Mo’s sister Kate (Pauline Quirke. Confused? Read on…). By the end, she’s realised that despite her initial nerves at work, her future lies at St Angela’s rather than the farm.
But a sideline as a Frank Spencer impersonator may be out of the question…
Jo Longhurst (Julie Dawn Cole, 1975 – 1976)
Those expecting a Veruca Salt-esque brat demanding golden chocolate bars from the hospital’s food dispensing machine may be surprised when encountering the more affable Jo Longhurst.
Offering empathy, good cheer and kindness, Jo is a notable asset to St Angela’s. She’s more tolerant than say, Pat, when it comes to dealing with awkward patients such as Mr Collins (Lewis Fiander) in the Case History episode. Collins is a surly, irritable miseryguts, but instead of tipping unpalatable hospital grub in his lap, Jo calmly wants to know why he’s so grumpy.
This people pleasing attitude can bring its own problems, though. In the earlier first season episode Appraisal, Jo is accused by Sister Easby of being too emotionally invested in her patients. Whereas she should be displaying professional detachment, Jo is more concerned that patients should be as happy as possible. Which backfires big-time when attempting to appease young Nigel (Keith Jayne) who wants to be anywhere but the hospital. As an attempt to mollify the kid, Jo agrees to give him a piece of cake. What she doesn’t know is that the cake contains wheat, which isn’t good news for wheat-averse Nigel.
It’s that tendency to do things her own way that makes Jo clash with old school authority types. In the Season Three opener, Solo, she’s out in the big wide world as a community nurse (and a lot of Season Three breaks free from the claustrophobia of the hospital wards to go out and about on location), but her modern-day, instinctive approach rubs the old-fashioned Sister Norton (Avis Bunnage) up the wrong way.
Family-wise, it’s a mixed bag. She gets on better with her dad, Stephen (Tenniel Evans) rather than her overbearing mum, Rosemarie (Kathleen Dunham), the argy bargy of which comes to a head in 1976’s Ties. She generally gets on well with the other nurses, although she can’t abide Sandra’s untidiness, and initially doesn’t see eye to eye with…
Shirley Brent (Clare Clifford, 1975 – 1978)
If we really have to resort to that horrible, modern-day cliché of “The Journey” (and whoever came up with this phrase should be put on a one-way rocket to Pluto), then the nurse who goes the furthest in the early days of Angels is Shirley Brent.
The serious, socially awkward outcast of the first series is a different proposition from the more assertive, confident Shirley in the third series. In the beginning, Shirley’s aloofness causes friction with her fellow nurses – as seen in the second episode, Initiation, when she refuses to let a kid visit his grandad. Jo disagrees, and overrides Shirley’s authority, leaving her out in the cold. The credits play out over Shirley forlornly tucking into an unappetising canteen meal all on her lonesome.
Shirley’s loneliness is a recurring theme of the first series. The Interim episode sees her questioning her own future as a nurse as she equates the relentless toll of death with her own loneliness. As with many of the other nurses on this list, Shirley’s isolated personality stems from a troubled childhood. Her own folks never took an interest in her, or showed her any kind of parental love. Even when she proudly announces that she’ll be taking part in the hospital’s silver anniversary celebrations, her parents respond with little more than an absent-minded shrug.
In the Legacies episode of Series Two, she’s put in charge of a squatter junkie called Diana – as with Pat and Mo, they’re poles apart in one sense, but in another, are two peas in a pod. Like Shirley, Diana never received love from her parents, instead receiving all the creature comforts that money can buy. Shirley muses that both her and Diana are “losers” in the parent stakes.
Shirley’s social gawkiness is returned to time and again. She explains that nursing means that she can just get on with her job and not have to deal with attempting to navigate the social niceties of other people. “It’s me and it’s right, somehow,” she explains. However, her eagerness to go on the geriatrics ward does bring out her softer side. Season Two’s Ambition presents us with another cantankerous old lady, Mrs Cosgrove (Betty Romaine), but surprisingly, Shirley displays empathy and kindness towards her, and does her best to make her stay more comfortable.
That burgeoning confidence continues in the third season. She’s now happy to socialise with the other nurses and offer them advice – and the other nurses are equally happy to hang out with her (even Jo, in a marked contrast to the early days). The severe bun and the thick-rimmed glasses are mostly swapped for contact lenses, but she’s still not having much luck when it comes to love. The Patterns episode pairs her up with a married man, Harry (Denis Lill) which naturally doesn’t end well.
Although Shirley is more confident by this point, it’s not bragging showboating though. Shirley’s still ridden with self-doubt, and she seems genuinely surprised to be referred to as a “Mary Jane” in Patterns by patient, Lesley (Kate Fahy). “You always know what you’re doing,” explains Lesley, to which Shirley insists that she doesn’t.
Similarly, the season finale, Challenges, forces Shirley into the dreaded Christmas show – something that she’d have run a mile from, previously. At one point, it does look like she’ll speedily exit the stage and leave a Shirley-sized hole in the nearest wall. Director Derek Martinus cleverly depicts Shirley’s terror through quick, close-up shots of panicked eyes and her dizzying surroundings. But to her surprise, she not only completes her song and dance routine, she also quite enjoys it.
Given her “journey”, it’s appropriate that Shirley, in effect, hands over the baton to the next generation of Angels in the early part of the fourth season. The roles are reversed in the Perfect, Imperfect episode when she’s the patient rather than the nurse – but she can still offer support and advice to a flustered Katy.
Sandra Ling (Angela Bruce, 1975 – 1979)
“That’s what perception is, isn’t it? Something wrong with a picture… the atmosphere… the settings, just slightly wrong…”
One of the longest-serving Angels, Geordie Sandra flourishes more in the outside world on health visitor duty than in the confines of St Angela’s. The above quote from the Signals episode of Season Three sums up her eagle-eyed detective skills. An alternative job as a Miss Marple-style detective could well have been waiting in the wings during Sandra’s twilight years.
Sandra does get off to a bumpy start though. She’s shaken to the core by a patient who’s just committed suicide, leaving her to assert that nursing is no more than “a con”. Meanwhile, her tendency to intervene can work against rather than for her patients. In the Facing Up episode, she makes the mistake of dropping anvil-sized hints to a teenage girl’s father about her pregnancy. Shockingly, Barbara’s dad gives her a black eye and evicts her from the family home.
As a health visitor though, Sandra can make her mark. On three occasions, she spots that something is wrong with each picture. In Signals, the middle class suburban ideal of the Paget family (Nigel Havers and Sharon Maughan as the well-to-do couple) isn’t what it seems. The cough of Mr Khan (Renu Setna) in the Health Visitor episode isn’t as harmless as he claims, with Sandra’s quick intervention managing to save a newborn baby’s life. More troubling is the case of Catherine Butler (Cherith Mellor) in A Place Of Safety – Sandra’s horrified discovery of bruising on Catherine’s eldest daughter helps to save the day.
The same episode also spotlights Sandra’s diplomacy. When assigned to visit Catherine in the aftermath of the discovery, Sandra is geared up for a shouting match against a monster. But instead, she approaches the meeting with detached, non-judgemental professionalism as instructed, and to her own surprise, walks away feeling a little sorry for Catherine.
Her diplomatic skills are also tested to the max when dealing with a stubborn old fellow Geordie, Tommy Blackshaw (Colin Douglas) in Health Visitor. Blackshaw lives on his own in accommodation that’s seen better days. The clutter’s piling up. The walls seem to be developing a new kind of bacterial life. The damp’s turning into a stream of smelly brown water. But still, he refuses to move into an old folk’s block of flats, bemoaning the current modern ways – Sandra, however, empathises with and understands him.
Mind you, Sandra’s own tidiness needs work – much to Jo’s chagrin. The state she leaves the flat in, it looks like the local chimp’s tea party has done the housework.
Anna Newcross (Joanna Monro, 1978 – 1981)
Single-minded and efficient to the max, Anna Newcross has no hesitation in setting out her stall in her first episode, Decisions. In a heated interview with the big cheese of St Angela’s, Anna admits that she doesn’t have “some divine calling” to help suffering humankind. Instead, she bluntly confesses that she needs a job and one that has a “bit more meaning to it than simply pounding a typewriter all day.”
She gets the job.
But it’s a job that’s not without its problems – where she comes unstuck is in her attempts to reconcile work and home life. Anna has a young daughter that needs looking after. She’s split from her wimpy husband, a floppy side parting of a man called Keith. The only support she can get for her daughter is from her long-suffering mum, Joan (Gwen Cherrell), and when she has had enough to walk out on her nannying duties, it leaves Anna in a bit of a bind. The lazy, messy live-in replacement nanny doesn’t help matters either, leaving Anna’s flat knee-deep in Farley’s Rusks and used nappies.
Anna’s single-mindedness does come at a cost – usually paid by the other people in her life. She ultimately leaves her daughter in the custody of Keith and his new squeeze – and Anna initially refuses to grant him a divorce in the vain hope that he’ll get back together with her as an easy fix to the babysitting logistics problem.
Even her friends aren’t immune. While she calls a spade a spade, Anna is one of the most popular nurses on the ward. Her chums are gutted when she’s run over by a random motorcyclist in the closing episodes of the sixth series, leaving her with serious head injuries. But Anna has a tendency to put her own needs first, such as when she has an affair with Rose Butchins’ boxer boyfriend, Den Booth (Ken Sharrock). More to the point, Anna doesn’t really seem that sorry that she’s slept with Den (and got herself pregnant again), practically announcing the news with no-nonsense aloofness to Rose. You kind of wonder whether Anna sees other people as squishy stepping stones whom she tramples on to get what she wants.
Katy Betts (Shirley Cheriton, 1978 – 1981)
Hard-working and committed to her job, Katy’s dedication isn’t exactly stress-free. From time to time, Katy will get overpowered by events out of her control. She’s flustered and out of her depth when put in charge of a rowdy female surgical ward. An explosion at a local restaurant also puts her in the thick of the action, leaving her tear-stained and knackered at the episode’s end.
Like Pat, Katy isn’t so hot on the theory side of her work, instead getting more out of its practical aspects. A common theme of Angels is the financial pressure put on the characters, and the lengths that they go to in order to earn a bit of extra cash. One of the Season Five cliffhangers is Anna discovering that Katy’s pulling pints in the local pub. It’s a job that’s made more awkward when Katy struggles to deal with a leering, drunken letch called Mr Johnson (John Rolfe) – the same Mr Johnson who’s on the St Angela’s board of determining whether Katy passes or fails her course (she passes, any road).
Another problem facing Katy is her love life. In her earlier episodes, she’s paired up with Hughie (David Simeon) – think of Alan Partridge playing Dr Kildare – whose womanising and old-fashioned views give him The Big E.
Her later choice of hubby – PC Roger (Gary Whelan) – isn’t any different. Roger’s caveman-style approach to his marriage is to expect Katy to stay at home and play the doting wife, providing meals on the table and arranging his clothes in a neat, freshly-ironed pile. When Katy refuses to play ball, Roger’s only response is to slap her in the face. After a few more episodes worth of grunting control freakery, gaslighting and two timing, Roger astonishingly wants to give the marriage another go. Just as crazily, Katy agrees, as the pair locate a new two-up-two-down pad in leafy suburbia to begin a fresh start.
Rose Butchins (Kathryn Apanowicz, 1979 – 1981)
Poor old Rose Butchins ultimately cuts a sad figure by the time she’s finished her time on Angels.
Life never seems to throw her the same opportunities to Rose as some of her friends. In her early days, she’s lumbered with a sloshed kleptomaniac for a room-mate in accommodation so miniscule, a mouse would have trouble moving about.
Her family is a frequent source of irritation. Rose’s mum, Sherry (Deirdre Costello) comes barging into the ward for a quick visit and the hope that her daughter will provide her with a spare drug or 10. In Series Six, Rose’s waster brother Terry (Richard Tolan) pops by for a visit, and causes no end of trouble by demanding a steady supply of money and later setting her pad on fire with a sleepy cigarette. No wonder she comes down with a bad case of appendicitis not long after.
Series Seven revolves around Rose’s dramatic rise and fall. Having secured herself a good position at the new Heath Green hospital in Birmingham, Rose has grown in self-confidence, because she’s starting anew without any of the baggage that dragged her down in her old workplace. “Everybody had seen me mother and they met our Terry,” she tearfully explains in her last episode, whereas at Heath Green, she could make a fresh start in a place where nobody knew her.
Rose’s downfall is down to two things – one: the way in which she wears her heart on her sleeve, easily swayed by the prospect of a happy relationship. In Season Six, she has already had the hots for Norman Pollard (a pre-Lewis Kevin Whately), but the attraction is only one-way. One episode ends on a zoom-in into Rose bawling her eyes out. In Season Seven, she meets a boxer called Den Booth, and while she thinks she’s got it made, he two times her with Anna. Again, it’s another episode that concludes with a close-up of hapless Rose blubbing on her lonesome in a bus stop.
Rose’s other issue is her short fuse – which ends up with her shoving a no-good father called Mr Daley (Davyd Harries) into a filing cabinet. Rose is suspended from duty and taken to court, but in the end, she takes the decision out of everyone’s hands by choosing to leave and to go travelling. By the time she’s hoisted an oversized rucksack the size of an elephant onto her shoulders to walk off into the unknown, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Rose.
Vicky Smith (Pauline Quirke, 1982 – 1983)
If you’re somehow still awake (my congratulations to you) after reading this latest bit of written diarrhoea, you may recall that I mentioned Pauline Quirke earlier.
Quirke had played Mo’s younger sister Kate in 1976. To make things even more confusing, she then plays a random character called Marilyn in a 1980 episode along with Sarah Lam as Jenny – and if that’s not tangled enough, Lam will then also get herself a regular role the following year as Linda Mo.
Are you with me so far? It’s not the last time this article that I’ll be encountering an actress who had more than one role. For Quirke, the third time was the charm as she won herself the part of Vicky Smith in the last two series of Angels.
Initially, Vicky wastes no time in establishing herself as an abrasive no-mates. Fellow newcomer Janet Dickens (Michelle Martin) wants to make friends with her, and when that fails, she confronts a tinned ravioli-cooking Vicky, accusing her of making things difficult. “I don’t want to be friendly,” snarls Vicky. “You’re nosy. And you’re always going on about yourself – but nobody gives a monkey’s.” It’s a wonder that the episode doesn’t end with Vicky pouring tinned ravioli all over Janet’s blubbing head.
Vicky’s furious lone wolf approach stems from her upbringing. I don’t think any Angel seems to have a normal, loving family. The difference with Vicky is that she was adopted, with her foster mother revealed to be an evil, abusive alcoholic.
While she gets on fine with her adopted father, Len (Derek Martin), Vicky has only taken a job as a nurse because she thinks it’s close to where her real mum is to be found. When she does ultimately track down her birth mum (Jacqueline Hill – how many more Doctor Who alumni can you fit in one article?), she’s left with the bitter realisation that the two can’t ever form a mother-daughter relationship. Vicki’s mum treats her like a waitress at an uptown wine bistro.
The fallout from this is that Vicky resorts to stealing pills in a self-loathing, depressed haze. Luckily, she returns the pills while also managing to cling on to her job. She also softens a bit – enough to make friends with Janet, bonding over those old-style CB two-way radios.
Like Katy, Vicky needs the cash, and isn’t averse to taking a job at the rival private hospital. But even Vicky has her morals, choosing to quickly leave after bitterly pointing out that the snooty care place puts pound signs ahead of patients.
Alison Streeter (Juliet Waley, 1982 – 1983)
“Faulty.”
That’s how sweetly shy, put-upon Alison poignantly describes herself in an episode from the last season. And before we go any further, here’s some more confusion, since Juliet Waley had previously played Michelle Holder in late Series Six and early Series Seven. Rather than continue where Michelle had left off the following year, instead, the Angels producers chose to start from scratch and create a new character, Alison.
As well as new face returns for Juliet Waley, Pauline Quirke and Sarah Lam, the 1982 series also saw the return of Lesley Dunlop. Originally, Dunlop had played Ruth Fullman in the first series, and yet played a brand new character called Doreen Keaton.
These days, if an actor or actress plays more than one part in a TV series, producers feel the need to resort to a self-consciously post-modern explanation (It’s a long-lost relative! There’s some kind of timey wimey rip in the fabric of the universe!). Whereas, back in the day, that’s how things were. TV wasn’t repeated on a regular basis. Your favourite telly wouldn’t be available on video until the early 1980s. Viewers at home weren’t obsessively over-analysing every single face that appeared on the box.
Right. Alison Streeter, then. Kind, likeable, hard-working, but also a bit gullible and a tad clumsy. The eighth season ends with Alison accidentally chucking a cake over Vicky’s and Janet’s new CB radio rig. In the next series, she’s bought supposedly healthy vitamin pills which turn out to be pellets of coloured chalk.
Never let it be said that Alison isn’t prepared to earn her pay, though. Like with Katy, she takes a bonus job at a local pub (while amusingly plastering her face in New Romantic-esque make-up), and when that trial period inevitably proves disastrous, she takes a job at a hamburger bar.
One of the most harrowing storylines in the later run of Angels is poor Alison’s encounter with a bloke who didn’t quite understand the meaning of “No”. Alison’s forgiving nature is taken to the absolute limit the following season when she meets up with the blusteringly contrite Edward again – now working in the same place – and not only forgives him, but dates him and then marries him! And not once does she wallop him in the misters with a heavy bedpan.
Still, despite this, Alison does find the 1983 season a much easier ride than the previous 12 months. She’s more self-assured, and more on the ball, astutely working out that a promising young footballer has been pumped full of pills by his dad (Geoffrey Hinsliff) in order to make him top player on the pitch.
Alison’s mum and dad favoured her sister who won all the cups and awards at school, leaving Alison feeling like second best – and failing her exams in ’82 wouldn’t have swayed their opinion. But after retaking her finals this year, Alison passes with flying colours.
In the end, the “faulty” towered.
(Screengrabs credited to BBC Birmingham)
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