The Biography

Bridget Joanna Turner (22 February 1939 – 27 December 2014) was an English actress. Turner played a radical English teacher, Judy Threadgold, opposite Alun Armstrong's woodwork teacher in Alan Plater's Get Lost! for Yorkshire Television, shown in 1981. Armstrong was unavailable for a sequel, so it was completely recast and became The Beiderbecke Affair with the parts going to Barbara Flynn and James Bolam. She played Phyllis in Alan Ayckbourn's TV film Season's Greetings (play). On 8 May 2009, John Cleese stated in an interview that Turner was the original choice in 1974 for the role of Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. She turned it down and the part was given to Prunella Scales. Turner died on 27 December 2014 in Dorchester, Dorset, at the age of 75, and was survived by her husband, Frank Cox. She was godmother to the actor Tom Burke.