Diane Holland

Diane Holland
Diane Holland in Hi-de-Hi!
Born	June Diane Neeltje Holland (1930-02-28)28 February 1930 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia[1]
Died	24 January 2009(2009-01-24) (aged 78) Godstone, Surrey, England
Resting place	Unknown
Occupation	Dancer and actress
Years active	1949–2001
Relatives	Gilda and Jimmy Perry (sister and brother-in-law)

Diane Holland (pronounced De-anne) (28 February 1930 – 24 January 2009) was a British actress and dancer best known for playing Yvonne Stuart-Hargreaves in Hi-de-Hi! from 1980-88.

Early life[]

Born in Melbourne, Australia as June Diane Neeltje Holland, she was raised in England, where she lived for the remainder of her life. She was partly Dutch through her paternal ancestry. On arrival in Britain, the family was hampered by her father's ill-health, the after-effects of having been gassed in the trenches during World War I.^[2] During WW2, Diane and her sister Gilda were evacuated with their school (Cone-Ripman) to Loddington Hall, in Leicestershire.

Career[]

Finding a love for dance as a young girl, Diane trained as a dancer at the London Cone Ripman (now Arts Educational), and enjoyed success throughout her career on stage. In her youth, Diane earned the role of principal dancer in Sunday Night at the London Palladium shows, and also performed as principal during summer seasons in Monte Carlo and other European casino hotspots as part of an She also performed in many West End productions including: ‘Her Excellency’ (1949), ‘Fancy Free’ (1951), and ‘Rocking the Town’(1956). Later in her career, Diane was given her most well-known part of ballroom dancer Yvonne Stuart-Hargreaves in Hi-de-Hi! (1980) by her brother-in-law, Jimmy Perry. Perry, who co-wrote Hi-de-hi!, married Holland's sister Gilda, and saw Holland's talent after she appeared in pantomimes and plays at , which he and Gilda managed together.

Diane also played the recurring role of Sarah Maynard in Crossroads from 1964–70.^[1] In the late 1960s she also received critical acclaim for her performance as in the European premiere of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, alongside Skip Martin. During the 1970s, she frequently worked alongside comedian Eric Sykes in (1972) ‘Sykes’ and TV film (1980). At the peak of Hi-de-Hi! in the 1980s, Holland received letters from British troops in the Falklands with the BBC press office stating that she had become a Forces' sweetheart, although she claimed this was a slight exaggeration and that it ‘just snowballed’. ^[3]

Following the end of Hi-de-Hi! in 1990 she appeared in Central Television's comedy The Upper Hand. In 1992–93, she played the notorious female magistrate, Celia Littlewood, who had eyes for Miss Brahms, in Grace and Favour, the sequel to Are You Being Served.

One of her last appearances was in one of her favourite roles as maiden aunt in The Nutcracker in The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, a role she had played for many years. She also received critical acclaim for her role as a terminally ill patient in Casualty in 2001. She appeared in Tales of the Unexpected in the episode named The Stinker. She also appeared in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em as a maternity hospital receptionist.^[4]

Death[]

Diane lived quietly in the village of Godstone, Surrey, where she died at home on 24 January 2009 at the age of 78 after contracting bronchial pneumonia. Her burial place is unknown, but is falsely claimed to be the graveyard of St. Nicholas' Church in Godstone.^{[citation needed]} She never married or had children, and while a private lady, her obituaries frequently note her being ‘extremely kind-hearted’ and her ‘very dry sense of humour’. Diane’s agent stated that she was ‘a real trouper’, ‘a joy to look after’, and ‘extremely hard-working’. The news of her death was not made public until more than three weeks later. She was survived by her younger sister, Gilda Neeltje Perry, a former dancer, actress and theatre manager. ^[5]

References[]

Plus additional multiple sources researched by Catherine Lucy Goodall.

External links[]

• Diane Holland at IMDb