Ann Tirard had a long and versatile career stretching back to the 1960's when, amongst other roles, she was "Mrs Schmidt" in the film "The Frozen Dead" and "Old Woman" in "The Witchfinder General". She will be best known to Doctor Who fans not, it says here, as the amazing Seeker in "The Ribos Operation", in which she was painted white and told to wave sticks about for two episodes, but as some old woman in "The Romans". We detect some kind of anti-Tom Years bias in who-ever compiled the account.

Although clearly ripe for filing under the legion of old hags that decorated Tom Baker's mid-70's reign in Doctor Who, Tirard must actually have been about 12 when she brandished those famous sticks and cemented the phrase "bones of our fathers, bones of our sons!" into the fan lexicon, for she would still be working some fifty years on.

Tirard initially had hopes of becoming the next "Who girl" as rumours were rife that then-star Mary Tamm was rubbish and about to be sacked. Sadly "The Seeker" was brutally shot on screen by the Graff Vynda K, and so the viewing public was denied her popping up and waving her sticks at the beginning of "Destiny of the Daleks" the next year.

It was clear, however, that Tirard was determined not to be blighted by the typecasting curse that afflicted many of her fellow actresses in Who; she thus only had to wait fourteen years for the next fortune telling old hag part to become available, when she won the esteemed role of "Tarot Card Reader" in Indiana Jones.

Later Film roles were varied and challenging to the extreme, Tirard appearing as ""Old Woman in Court", "Homeless Old Lady" and, best of all, "Lady in Telephone Box".

She died on 12 August this year to the attention of nobody. I mean, if third extra on the left in "The Smugglers" can get an obituary mention in "Outside the TARDIS" in DWM, you'd think that the least they'd give Tirard is a front cover and six page colour feature.