Actor best known for playing the put-upon wife, Olive, in the 1970s sitcom On the Buses and its three spin-off feature films
The actor Anna Karen, who has died in a house fire aged 85, was already appearing in a TV sitcom, Wild, Wild Women, as one of the workers in a millinery sweatshop, in 1969 when she was cast in another, in the role for which she is best remembered – Olive Rudge in the bawdy but hugely popular On the Buses.
The writing team of Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, who created both programmes, conceived Olive as the dowdy, put-upon wife of the idle Arthur (played by Michael Robbins). They would appear alongside Reg Varney as Olive’s brother, the bus driver Stan Butler, Bob Grant as his conductor, Jack, Stephen Lewis as their boss, Inspector “Blakey” Blake, and Doris Hare as Olive and Stan’s domineering mother. (Hare was the original choice for the role but was out of the country when the programme began, so was replaced for the first series by Cicely Courtneidge.)
