Forever remembered as the dolly bird prone to wardrobe malfunctions, the actor was a survivor whose career was forged in groundbreaking 60s realism
For a certain generation, she is pub landlady Peggy Mitchell in the BBC TV soap EastEnders, commanding wrongdoers to get out of the Queen Vic with the same defiant and imperious passion as Evita singing from the balcony (and I think she could have done that role). Barbara Windsor was the matriarchal pop-culture exemplar of the white working class with a Cockney accent flavoured by a certain kind of showbiz-nasal quiver – Bruce Forsyth had something similar (he was born in Edmonton, she in Spitalfields, a true east Londoner.)
I myself as a kid saw her in panto as a wonderful Cinderella at north London’s Golders Green Hippodrome in the 1970s on the bill with Benny Hill’s straight man Bob Todd and wrestler Jackie “Mr TV” Pallo. And I met her in the 90s at a party – sweet, shy, amazingly and instantly lovable and very petite.