An actress with a famous pussy has sadly passed away. Mollie Sugden, whom lovers of sitcom will always associate with the immortal line - "Leave my pussy alone Captain Peacock" - died yesterday at the age of 86.

The playwright Harold Pinter had said of her famous line, "Of course the line was gut wrenchingly pertinent. It summed up the human condition, the whole fucked-up-ness of the shop worker taking it up the behind from the petit-bourgeois floor manager."

The television producer Melvyn Bragg once devoted an entire South Bank Show to the line, in a programme entitled, "And who will leave my pussy alone, Mrs Slocombe?" In it academics and writers discussed the way in which the whole nature of sitcom was changed forever by this utterance. The playwright Dennis Potter memorably exclaimed, "Pussy? Pussy? Pussy? Ask not what this 'Slow-Cum' pussy can do for you, ask rather what you can do for this pussy.'"

Commenting on her death, the comedian and writer Barry Cryer said yesterday, "What ever became of the 'pussy'... that's what I would like to know."