The Coronation Street and Last of the Summer Wine star Jean Alexander has died aged 90, her niece has confirmed. Alexander, who was best known for playing Hilda Ogden in the soap, had just turned 90 earlier this week.

Her family was hoping to celebrate her birthday this week but, sadly, did not get the chance, Alexander’s niece Sonia Hearld told the Guardian.

“She was a great person and she will be missed,” Hearld said on Friday night.

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She added: “At the moment, it is a shock to the family and we are really just getting round to coming to terms with it. We were hoping to be celebrating her birthday this week but that hadn’t happened. She turned 90.

“She was in Coronation Street and Last of the Summer Wine. She had a very well-known face, she was once dubbed the all-time favourite soap star, I believe. She was part of people’s lives. She was very well liked in her time.”

Alexander has previously been quoted as saying that she was confused by her own popularity. “I think probably because she was a downtrodden, poor little soul. I think people were sorry for Hilda.

“She went plodding away, doing her best all the time, always aspiring to better things. I liked playing her. She was a gift to play but I wouldn’t want her living next door to me,” she said in 2005.

On Friday, Hearld said her aunty was a “very private lady”, who was “dedicated to her work and determined to be professional”.

She added that Alexander was “very generous with fans who approached her”, to whom she felt she owed her status. “Without them, she would be nowhere,” she believed.

“She was a great person and she will be sadly missed,” Hearld said.

23 years as Hilda Ogden

Alexander played Hilda Ogden in Coronation Street for 23 years to 1987 and, after leaving, she appeared in Last of the Summer Wine as Aunty Wainwright.

In 2010, she revealed she had come under some pressure to put back on her curlers and return to Coronation Street as Hilda Ogden but had always turned the idea down.

“It would be impossible for me to recreate Hilda. She would be totally different from the scrubber who left the Street. My agent said they had tried a number of times to get me back but the answer was always the same,” the Liverpool Echo reported her as saying.

“I didn’t hear anything about the money involved but no, I’m sorry, after 23 years I couldn’t recreate that character as she would be now – and I didn’t want to play her as she was.”

Four years later, it emerged that she had another problem with the programme: there was too much sex in it. “The only stories they seem to have in mind is who is jumping into whose bed next. I lost interest,” she told the Daily Mirror.

“Things have to move on, I know, but in the days of Hilda Ogden, Annie Walker and co, the Street was gentle, funny and human. The humour has all but gone out of it.”

Awards

Alexander won an Royal Television Society award in 1985 and was nominated for the Bafta television award for best actress in 1988.

She was born Jean Hodgkinson in Liverpool in 1926 and reportedly worked as a library assistant in the city before beginning her acting career. – (Guardian Service)