Judy Bennett was born in Liverpool on the 22nd of October 1943 and attended Notre Dame Mount Pleasant High School, (a girls' catholic grammar school, now St Julie's Catholic High School), in Liverpool. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, before beginning a career in radio when she voiced young male characters in 'Mrs Dale’s Diary' and in 'Waggoners’ Walk' and was then employed by BBC Schools Radio after a day of auditioning actual little boys resulted in none being cast. After that roles such as 'David Copperfield', Pip in 'Great Expectations', Gavroche in 'Les Miserable's' kept on coming. Judy was very good at sounding like a boy and seemingly making a career out of it so when she was booked to play a part in ' The Archers' she expected to be playing another little boy. However, to her surprise, it was as 12-year-old Shula Archer that she joined the cast in 1971. She also played Kenton, Shula's twin brother, and the younger sister Elizabeth, before assuming the role of Shula herself. However she wasn’t to completely give up her talent of providing young voices, lending her ability to a number of Ambridge children including the young Adam Macy.
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| as Shula Hebden-Lloyd |
Judy credits the Editor of 'The Archers' at the time she joined, William Smethurst, with creating the character of stables owner Shula Hebden-Lloyd with her. The eldest child of Phil and Jill Archer and the twin of Kenton, Shula was a wild child who struggled to settle into a job after school. Judy affectionately labels the young Shula as 'the village bike' because "she had more boyfriends and relationships than anyone else." Shula went travelling with one of these boyfriends (only for him to abandon her in Bangkok). Judy recounts that William Smethurst was keen to travel to the Far East to record Shula's plight and laughs at the memory of pointing out to her boss it couldn’t happen because she was seven months pregnant. Judy recalls, "His face fell". While she wasn’t able to be part of William Smethurst’s vision of international recording trips, 1982 brought Judy two significant moments of 'Archers' history. She was in the final scene of the last episode that was broadcast in New Zealand and, closer to home, she performed as Shula live on the day news broke that Princess Diana was in labour with her first child (Prince William). Two new scenes were written for that evening’s episode of 'The Archers' – one for if the baby had been born and one for if it had not. With recording and editing done on tape at the time it would not have been possible to record and re-edit the programme. Instead the final scene was performed live with William Smethurst confirming which version to go with moments before they went on-air.
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Enjoying her retirement with Charles
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In 1976 she married Canadian-English actor Charles Collingwood who played 'Archers' character Brian Aldridge. Charles recalled, "I first got to know Judy in 1972 on a children's television series, although we met briefly a year or two before that. We used to do voices for cartoon series and puppet shows, but we really got to know each other on 'Words and Pictures', a zany series which we did in Bristol. We were both in bad marriages, and although we were not having an affair, we sympathised with each other about the state of our domestic lives. When those marriages ended, our friendship grew. We knew each other for three years before we got married and by 1975 we were together and living as a family, and my wife had got her life sorted out." Judy has two sons from her first marriage, and a daughter from her marriage to Charles, the actress Jane Collingwood. Having also voiced characters in a number of cartoon series, such as 'The Perishers' (1979) and 'Dennis the Menace and Gnasher' (1996-99), Judy, after 51 years decided to say farewell to 'The Archers' with her final appearance on Friday the 30th of September 2022. She said, "I’ve absolutely loved it and met so many friends, but the time has come to leave and I’m feeling happy." Although she bid farewell to 'The Archers' she still maintained a strong link with the programme in that her husband, Charles continued as Brian Aldrige. Ironically Shula Hebden-Lloyd and Brian have rarely been in the same scenes together. One brief on-air interaction that Judy remembers was when the pair of them danced at a ball. She recounts, "As we went away from the microphone as if Brian and Shula were heading to the dance floor Shula said, "Keep your hands to yourself"!"
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/11/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-paul.html
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