Margot Boyd, who was born Beryl Billings on September 24, 1913, was brought up in Bath in Somerset. Before making the role of Mrs. Antrobus on THE ARCHERS her own, she had worked with some of the great names of theatre and film, including George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, Michael Redgrave, Vivien Leigh, James Stewart and Kenneth More.
Margot attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where she found herself in a play produced by George Bernard Shaw, whom she found "wonderful" and "very encouraging". When she left RADA she got a job in rep at Leeds Theatre Royal. The roles she recalled playing, twice nightly, never seemed to be under the age of 55, but she did have the opportunity to play in all the productions from the West End.
In 1984, while working for the BBC Radio Drama Company, Margot was given a small one-off part in THE ARCHERS and made such a success of it that she was written into the program as a regular character. Marjorie Antrobus, who lived in Waterley Cross, gave a talk to the Ambridge Over-60s Club. Her subject was "The Colourful World of the Afghan Hound". The talk was so well appreciated that she was asked back to open the village fete in July, when she gave another talk on dogs, acquiring the nickname "the dog woman".
Marjorie was so at home in Ambridge that she moved into Nightingale Farm in February 1988 and soon proved to be staunch support to Ambridge's various vicars. She served on the PCC and the parish council, and occasionally stood in as church organist or accompanist to village shows.
Letting a flat in her house to help make ends meet, she became a popular landlady to several of the village's youngsters, including Ruth, Roy and Hayley. She would often reminisce about her younger days as a colonial wife in Africa, Burma and Palestine, and her much-missed husband Teddy.
As she became more frail, Marjorie moved into The Laurels nursing home in 2002. She was last heard on THE ARCHERS in the omnibus edition transmitted on 19 September 2004.
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