Pat Coombs

Patricia Doreen Coombs (27 August 1926 – 25 May 2002) was an English actress. She specialised in the portrayal of the eternal downtrodden female, comically under the thumb of stronger personalities. She was known for many roles on radio, film and television sitcoms and Children's ITV's Playbox and Ragdolly Anna.

Coombs was diagnosed with osteoporosis in 1995, and became an active campaigner for the National Osteoporosis Society. Her Christmas appeal letter raised £100,000 for the charity's research.

She had just completed a role for Radio 4 alongside June Whitfield in Like They've Never Been Gone when she died on 25 May 2002, aged 75, from emphysema in Denville Hall actors' home, a west London nursing home to which she had moved to be close to her friend Peggy Mount, who had died six months earlier.