ACTRESS Sheila Hancock saved a woman from an assault when the attacker recognised her from TV. Sheila, 89, said there was “a bit of a struggle” before the assailant fled. She said: “I aspire to be a pacifist. It is one of the things you sign up to when you become a Quaker, as I […]
ACTRESS Sheila Hancock saved a woman from an assault when the attacker recognised her from TV.
Sheila, 89, said there was “a bit of a struggle” before the assailant fled.
She said: “I aspire to be a pacifist. It is one of the things you sign up to when you become a Quaker, as I did in 1993.
“Possibly as a result of a wartime childhood, I am by nature aggressive.
“My metaphorical fists are always at the ready.
“If I think I see injustice, or cruelty, I can react too hastily.
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“The batty old lady won’t let them get a word in edgeways.
“I once intervened in a quite violent altercation between a man and a frightened woman in the dead of night on Hammersmith riverside.
“After a bit of a struggle, vocal and physical, I managed to stop the large attacker.
“Sadly, not with my Quakerly anger-management approach, but because he recognised me off Gogglebox.”
Writing in her new autobiography Old Rage, Sheila added: “I am far from sure that I would have intervened had he been wielding a gun or knife.
“In the latest type of war, manifesting as terrorism, it is not clear how the power of persuasion can be effective.”
Sheila, who was married to Inspector Morse star John Thaw from 1973 until his death in 2002, was on six episodes of Channel 4’s Celebrity Gogglebox in 2019 with pal Gyles Brandreth.
