Your obituary of the inestimable Prunella Scales quoted her as saying that her 10 years as Dottie in the 1990s Tesco commercials financed her touring and stage work. She was being modest.

In fact they financed a lot more, as her husband, Tim West, told me when we shared a dressing room during those years. Now their sons were independent, he and Pru sat down at the end of each year, worked out how much money they would need for the next one, and put all the rest aside to fund students through drama school and for other charitable causes. Their contributions to British theatre were huge and many.