Obituary: Margot Boyd

Margot Boyd, the stage and radio actor who has died aged 94, had the voice of a duchess and a way of delivering every word she spoke as if she were addressing the back row of the gallery. She brought the sound of the grande dame to every role during more than 70 years of acting, and in recent years was best known as Mrs Antrobus in The Archers on Radio 4. While she did not normally play actual aristocrats, she remarked: "I've always played terribly fierce parts. But I've never felt fierce. Petrified, more like. I'm a terrible worrier."

In 1984, as a 71-year-old member of the BBC radio drama company, Boyd found a note in her file asking her to travel to Birmingham for a one-off appearance in The Archers, to give a talk to the over-60s club on "the colourful world of the Afghan hound". She knew "not a lot" about the programme ("I had never actually listened to it"), but her father had worked as an estate manager, and in her native Bath "every other woman was a Mrs Antrobus ... it was full of ex-colonial people who had servants galore. They were all very horsey and doggy." A regular visitor to Crufts dog show in former years, she proved such a success in Ambridge that Mrs Antrobus became a regular character for the next two decades.

Born Beryl Billings, Boyd belonged to a family that loved the theatre and entertaining itself with recitations. Acting at school led to a place at Rada, where she won a gold medal and found herself in a play directed by George Bernard Shaw. "He was wonderful - very encouraging," she recalled. Her first professional job was in twice-nightly rep at the Theatre Royal, Leeds. Although in her 20s, she would play women of 55 or more, and got the chance to play in all the touring West End productions. Thus it was a natural step to join the touring companies and go to London.

In 1950 Boyd got a part in Toni Block's Flowers for the Living at the Duchess Theatre, and ten years later came her first venture into Agatha Christie, Go Back for Murder. In the meantime, she had her own BBC-TV series as Mary Pemberton in Our Miss Pemberton (1957), and three years later was Mrs Trench in Richard Hearne's Leave It To Pastry.

Noël Coward gave her a two-year run in Waiting In The Wings, in the leading role of a manager of a home for retired actors. Not one of Coward's best plays, it nevertheless brought together a bunch of famous old players, led by Sybil Thorndike. When Coward turned up in Dublin to rehearse it before the London opening, he told the cast: "You're all worried in case you dry up. But I don't give a damn. If you forget a line I'll shout it from the box."

In James Hanley's new piece, Say Nothing (Theatre Royal, Stratford East, 1962) Boyd played a voracious, bulky, adulterous wife who thinks only of money. Her performance particularly deserved wider attention, for the play was quite unusual - a gloomy but original and sharp-witted study of a family which had turned in on itself. But without a transfer it languished. She returned to Agatha Christie, in the triple bill Rule of Three.

Then Boyd tried musical comedy. Joining Sandy Wilson's sequel to The Boy Friend at the Players, she came forward as the formidable Lady Brockhurst in the mildly successful Divorce Me, Darling (Globe, 1965). After touring to Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham as the housekeeper of a tense theatrical household in Lesley Storm's They Ride On Broomsticks, Boyd returned to the West End. Playing opposite James Stewart in Mary Chase's Harvey (Prince of Wales, 1975) she was cast as the mountainous Mrs Ethel Chauvenet.

Television work continued with Dixon of Dock Green and Middlemarch; in 1973 came an appearance in ITV's Upstairs, Downstairs and there was also a lot of radio work. Looking back at her introduction to The Archers, she remarked: "When I first looked at the script it was one of the funniest things I'd ever read. In my 70s I'd have been mad not to have taken it on. I've always loved working on radio anyway. It demands such precision and discipline to get the timing right."

Boyd, who did not marry, found her 90th birthday celebrated with a surprise party at BBC Pebble Mill, Birmingham, when she went to record scenes for the programme, now as the oldest-ever member of the cast. She had her favourite lunch: egg and chips with a whisky and soda.

Margot Boyd, actor, born September 26 1913; died May 20 2008