Born on 20 December 1936, in Prestwich, Higher Manchester, it was Stevens profitable a expertise contest aged 20 that led to a contract with the previous broadcaster ABC Tv Restricted.

She joined the solid of spy collection The Avengers in 1962 as nightclub singer Venus Smith, who would assist Patrick Macnee’s character John Steed in his missions, earlier than she was picked to play Gloria in Nineteen Sixties comedy movie Carry On Cleo.

In 1964, her daughter mentioned she was closely pregnant together with her first youngster Daniel when she auditioned for youngsters’s programme Play College.

The favored present made its debut throughout BBC Two’s launch in April 1964, and ran till March 1988.

It formed the childhood of tens of millions and catapulted a lot of its presenters to fame, together with Rick Jones, Brian Cant, Johnny Ball, Toni Arthur and Floella Benjamin, a presenter, actress and author and now a Liberal Democrat peer.

Stevens was additionally identified for comedy exhibits Women About City and and kids’s comedy present Cabbages And Kings in addition to Play Away, a collection for older youngsters, and appeared on Holby Metropolis.

She was additionally a private assistant and later the supervisor of former Goon Present comic and Oliver! actor Sir Harry Secombe’s.

Stevens, who lived between Provence, France and London, was married to presenter John White, whom she divorced in 1974, earlier than marrying actor and theatre director Michael Hucks, in 1980 till 2001.

She moved again to the UK in 2016 to be close to her daughter, who mentioned the previous few years have been troublesome “however she confronted it as she did all challenges, with good humour and nice attraction”.