Sheila Hancock as Helen A in
The Happiness Patrol
(1988).
“Within
my actress’ heart I had to firmly believe that everything Helen A said and did was right,” mused
Sheila
Hancock in 1999,
ithin
“even though, when I thought about it, I could see what an absolute cow she was.”
It was 11 years since she’d starred in the Seventh Doctor serial The Happiness Patrol, topping an impressive guest-star roster that included Georgina Hale, Ronald Fraser, Lesley Dunlop and John Normington. Hancock was cast as the psychopathic overseer of the colony planet Terra Alpha, and, since the story was recorded in the summer of 1988, no great leap of the imagination was required to transpose Helen A into the then Prime Minister, Margaret T, and her cheerfully vacant consort, Joseph C, into Denis T. “I only accepted the part on the condition that I could play her like Margaret Thatcher,” she confirmed in the same 1999 interview.
Hancock played Gwen in the 1959 stage musical Make Me an Offer.