Dame Thora Hird DBE was an English actress and is best remembered for her comedy roles. Hird was born in the Lancashire seaside town of Morecambe. She was the mother of the actress Janette Scott, and thus formerly the mother-in-law of the singer Mel Tormé.

Her first ever appearance on stage was when she was two months old in a play her father was managing. Her family background was largely theatrical: her mother, Marie Mayor, had been an actress, while her father managed a number of entertainment venues in Morecambe, to include the Royalty Theatre where she made her first appearance, and the Central Pier.

Thora often described her father as her sternest critic and attributed much of her talent as an actress and comedienne to his guidance. Although Thora left Morecambe in the late 1940s, she retained her affection for the town, referring to herself as a "sand grown'un", the colloquial term for anyone born in Morecambe.

Thora Hird was mainly associated with television comedy, notably the sitcoms Meet the Wife (a 1960s classic), In Loving Memory and later series of Last of the Summer Wine. However, she played a variety of roles, including the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and won BAFTA Best Actress awards for her roles in two of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues.

She starred as Captain Emily Ridley in the sitcom Hallelujah! about the Salvation Army, a movement for which she had a soft spot throughout her life. She played the screen mother of Deric Longden in Wide Eyed and Legless (aka the Wedding Gift) and Lost For Words which won her a BAFTA for Best Actress.

Hird was a committed Christian, hosting the religious programme 'Praise Be!', a spin-off from Songs of Praise on the BBC. Her work for charity and on television in spite of old age and ill health made her an institution. Her advertisements for Churchill stairlifts (often misidentified as Stannah) also maintained her in the public eye.

Most of her earlier film work still survives, including her 1942 appearance in the classic wartime propaganda film Went the Day Well?. She also worked with the classic British film comedian Will Hay, and starred opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer (1960)

She was created an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1983, and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1993. She received an honorary D.Litt. from Lancaster University in 1989.

She died, aged 91, in March 2003, having suffered a stroke. Hird's energy and resilience were such that, even following the news that she had suffered a stroke, BBC bosses were still hoping that she would recover in order to appear in the next series of Last of the Summer Wine.