Meg Johnson

Television soaps dominated Meg Johnson’s career, ranging from brief spells in the short-lived Empire Road to extended runs in Coronation Street and Brookside. But it was as the flamboyant pensioner Pearl Ladderbanks in more than 1,000 episodes of Emmerdale from 2003 to 2020 that she claimed her place in soap opera’s hall of fame. 

Born in Manchester, she made her stage debut aged six at Bolton’s Grand Theatre and performed with amateur drama and opera groups before beginning a 40-year-long professional association with the Oldham Coliseum. 

Her West End debut, as Widow Carney in Oliver!, followed at the Aldwych in 1983. Despite TV commitments, she returned often to the stage, and was especially notable in a string of musicals that included Dolly in Annie Get Your Gun (Prince of Wales, 1992), Stella in Follies at the Shaftesbury in 1987 (a role she first played at the Forum, Wythenshawe in 1984), Maggie in 42nd Street (Dominion, 1991), Nettie in Carousel (Shaftesbury, 1993), and Mama Morton in the 1997 revival of Chicago at the Adelphi. She was also seen in Sunday in the Park with George at the Leicester Haymarket in 1999.

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