Acclaimed British actress and presenter Penelope Keith has died at the age of 86, immortalised by her roles as Margo Leadbetter in BBC’s The Good Life and Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To the Manor born. Her family said in a statement that she "died peacefully whilst living with cancer at her home in Surrey”, reported BBC News. The star had a career spanning back to the late 1950s and saw her winning acclaim both on the stage and the screen.

She was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and late won a highly coveted Oliver Award. However, it was her role as the snobbish suburban housewife Margo Leadbetter in BBC sitcom The Good Life, which transformed her into a household name. Following the star’s death, many are curious to know more about BBC’s The Good Life star’s role as Margo.

Actress Keith was born in 1940 and would have been 35 when she graced the screen as Margo in The Good Life, which first debuted on the BBC back in 1975.

The show ran for four series between 1975 and 1978 and followed couple Tom Good (played by Richard Briars) and his wife Barbara (Felicity Kendal) as they tried to escape big-city living and become completely self-sufficient in their home in Surbiton.

As Tom and Barbara had varying degrees of success in adopting their new lifestyle, which saw them growing crops and livestock in their back garden, their neighbours Margo (Keith) and Jerry Leadbetter (Paul Eddington) were left horrified.

Interestingly, Margo and Paul were only supposed to minor characters, but ended up becoming integral to The Good Life.

Over the course of the series, the two couples grew close despite their very different lifestyles.

Margo had a snooty exterior and was something of a social climber, who was left infuriated when her neighbours’ lifestyle dampened her attempts to impress her social circle.

Nonetheless, Margo had a soft centre and was actually much kinder than fans might have thought.

Speaking with Sir Terry Wogan on the BBC back in 1985, Keith reflected on starring in The Good Life and why the character became so popular after initially being only a minor role.

“I don’t know, she had some great lines,” Keith said, referring to a moment where Margo told a bureaucrat that she was “the silent majority”.

“I think that just went home to everybody; suddenly, she became a hero. Someone’s challenging bureaucracy,” she explained.

Reflecting on whether audiences could ever accept her as something other than Margo, Keith said: “Yes, I think they do. I’ve done a lot of performances on the television of what I think of as classic plays like [Noel] Coward, they all escape me now the names, but various people.

“And people now say, ‘Penelope Keith, actress, performer, I don’t think they think I’m Audrey or Margo. I think the gentlemen of the press would like to put me in the box of Audrey or Margo, but I think people accept me as an actress.”

The Good Life is streaming on the BBC iPlayer now