Hilda Braid

Nov 8 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

SHE could have been in a picture-book, the sort of brown-eyed granny that everyone would have loved – kind, proud, occasionally fanciful, and unfailingly smart, with a keen and wise mind, which missed nothing, particularly where her wayward, wide-smiling grandson, Alfie, was concerned.

And it was a measure of her acting skill that in a comparatively short time on EastEnders (2002-2005), Hilda Braid turned Victoria “Nana” Moon into a national treasure.

Of course, she was best known for adding a little much needed charm to the gloomy happenings in Albert Square through her exchanges with Alfie (Shane Ritchie), then landlord of the Queen Vic.

But there were tears, admiration and true appreciation of the restrained emotion she found for her visit to the military grave of her beloved husband, William, who had been killed in Normandy in 1944.

In May last year, it won the Best Single Episode category in the British Soap Awards.

In her wonderfully realised final EastEnders’ episode, in December, 2005, Nana Moon can’t put the angel on top of the Christmas tree, as had been her tradition. She asks Alfie to do it instead. They then sit together, watching a dancing snowman, but his battery is low. Alfie goes to check on the still snowman, but when he returns to his chair, Nana Moon has gone.

Well, you can call it soap opera if you like, but it was also beautifully played, touching and sensitive – as you would expect from a woman, who had trained at Rada and had appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

It was, however, on TV that she established her reputation as a superb character actress.

She was Florence Johnson, mother of Shirley, the girlfriend of Walter “Wolfie” Smith, leader of the Tooting Popular Front, in Citizen Smith (1977-80).

Four years later, Kent-born Hilda Braid had a brief spell on Brookside, playing Molly Partridge. Before that, she had been Winnie Plumtree in Crossroads. She was the woman on a bench in the film 101 Dalmatians (1996).

Her other TV credits include Casualty, Man About the House and My Family.

In recent times, the widow had been a patient in the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton. Her children, Robin and Penny, were at her bedside when she died.

Another regular visitor had been June Brown (Dot Cotton) in EastEnders.

Hilda Braid, actress; born March 2, 1929, died November 6, 2007.