Corrie star Jean Alexander dies aged 90
Former Coronation Street actress Jean Alexander, who starred as Hilda Ogden in the soap for over two decades, has died.
Alexander, who played the much-loved character between 1964 and 1987, passed away in hospital on Friday, three days after celebrating her 90th birthday.
Once voted the nation's favourite soap star for her turn as the pinny-wearing cleaning lady rarely seen without a set of tightly-wound hair curlers, her family remembered her as being glamorous and "great fun" off-screen.
In the years after leaving the cobbles, Alexander became a mainstay of BBC sitcom Last Of The Summer Wine as bric-a-brac shop owner Auntie Wainwright, appearing on the programme until 2010.
Her niece Sonia Hearld, 64, told the Press Association that Alexander, who announced her retirement in 2012, had recently spent time in hospital.
She said: "I saw her last week when we went to see her in hospital. She was feeling a little bit poorly but she was talking to me and my husband quite happily.
"There was nothing telling us anything was wrong - she was just generally weak and under the weather.
"We have not had the details."
