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Wendy Richard MBE (born Wendy Emerton on 20 July 1943) is an English actress best known for playing Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? from 1972 to 1985, and Pauline Fowler in EastEnders from 1985 to 2006. She was educated at two fee-paying independent schools: first at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and then at the Italia Conti Academy stage school in London.

She first became familiar to TV audiences playing Joyce Harker, a regular in the BBC`s 1960s soap opera, The Newcomers. She has also appeared in Dad`s Army (first as Edith Parrish, and later as Private Walker`s girl-friend Shirley), Up Pompeii! and The Likely Lads. Richard also appeared in two Carry On films, playing a cameo role in Carry On Matron and a supporting part in Carry On Girls (which also featured future EastEnders co-star, Barbara Windsor). In 1962, her distinct cockney vocals also helped get her to #1 on the UK singles chart — uncredited, on the single, "Come Outside", by Mike Sarne. She also appears in a missing scene on the Beatles 1965 movie `Help!`. Her scene is on the special features DVD. However, she doesn`t appear in the final version of the movie.

Richard endured two battles with breast cancer in the mid 1990s and then in 2002. Her cancer went into remission after years of treatment. She was given a clean bill of health in 2005. Articles about her departure from EastEnders suggest her health challenges did not play any role in her decision to leave the series and that it was because her character in the soap was to remarry, something she disagreed with. Richard later revealed she left because of stress and that she is stress-free since leaving the show. She still keeps touch with co-stars Natalie Cassidy, Todd Carty, and James Alexandrou.

During the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, Richard was a frequent and conspicuous supporter of Thatcher`s policies and achievements. At one point the EastEnders script writers gave Richard a script in which Pauline Fowler launched into a vicious tirade against Thatcher; Richard refused to perform this sequence, accusing the script writers of using the series as a soapbox for their own political opinions. Richard lives with John Burns, her husband, 20 years her junior, in the Marylebone area of London.

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