Obituary: Paula Tilbrook, Emmerdale actress

She had signed up to the Yorkshire serial for just three episodes, but her character, supposedly an ex-Tiller Girl, became embroiled in a relationship with the poacher-turned gamekeeper Seth Armstrong, played by Stan Richards. She “retired” Betty in 2015.

She was already something of a veteran when she arrived on the show, having made a TV debut in Jack Rosenthal’s Granada sitcom, The Dustbinmen, in the early 1970s in her native Manchester. She also appeared regularly in Ken Dodd’s radio and TV shows.

She had roles too in Yanks, an early Richard Gere vehicle set during the Second World War and filmed partly near Keighley, and in Alan Bennett’s A Private Function.

Nor was she a stranger to soap opera, having covered the whole of the North with minor roles in Coronation Street and as Betty Hughes in the Liverpool-set Brookside. She was also Mrs Tattersall in Open All Hours and had three different roles in Last of the Summer Wine.