Helen Fraser

Helen Fraser (born Helen Margaret Stronach in; Oldham, Lancashire 15 June 1942) is an English actress, a familiar face in many television comedies and dramas from the early 1960s to the present. She is now living in Halesworth, Suffolk. She trained at RADA alongside Tom Courtenay and John Thaw, among others. She got her breakthrough role alongside Courtenay in the 1963 film Billy Liar. They later played the parents of character Dave Best in the BBC sitcom The Royle Family in the 2008 Christmas special. She is best known to television viewers for her long-running role in the ITV women's prison drama Bad Girls as unpleasant warder Sylvia "Bodybag" Hollamby from the very first episode in 1999 to the very last in 2006. She reprised the role...