Jean Boht was married to the composer Carl Davis for sixty years. He died in August 2023, and she died thirty-two days later, aged 91. For six years she had been Nellie Boswell, the mother at the head of the most watched kitchen table in Liverpool.

Carla Lane wrote Bread for BBC One from 1986 to 1991, and at its height twenty-one million people watched. It was a comedy about a family on the dole that never once asked you to pity them.

Six of the eleven faces around that table are still here. Peter Howitt, the first Joey, left at the peak and later wrote and directed Sliding Doors. Graham Bickley took over the leather coat in 1989. Jonathon Morris, Nick Conway and Victor McGuire played the brothers, and Melanie Hill went on from Aveline to Coronation Street and Waterloo Road.

Besides Boht, we have lost Gilly Coman, the first Aveline, at only 54; Ronald Forfar, the wandering Freddie; Eileen Pollock, the unforgettable Lilo Lil; and Kenneth Waller, Grandad.

What I admire about Carla Lane's writing is that the Boswells are never the joke. The jokes come from them, and that is a very different thing.

Whose side were you on when the Boswells rowed?

This video uses an AI voice. Details are correct to the best of our knowledge in September 2026.