Upstairs, Downstairs - Out of Costume - After Upstairs, Downstairs 2

Six months after her last appearance in Upstairs, Downstairs, Rachael Gurney appeared in part 4 of the BBC's Fall of Eagles, entitled Requiem For A Crown Prince. The episode featured Rachel playing the neurotic Empress Elisabeth, wife to Emperor Franz Josef of Austro-Hungary. The play depicted the bizarre, but true attempts that were made to cover up the death of her son Rudolf, the heir to the throne, after he had committed suicide in a pact with a lover. Gurney's subsequent TV appearances were few and far between.
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Nicola Pagett in the BBC's 1977 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Newspaper The Evening News claimed: "Nicola Pagett has created the classic Anna. She doesn't appear to be acting. She is Anna Karenina."

The 21-year-old Lesley-Anne Down found Upstairs, Downstairs the first rung on the ladder to fame which would later see her go on to star in the mega-soap Dallas. Her earlier career was rather less well-paid and she had resorted to posing for a syndicated set of tasteful topless photographs in 1975. In the UK they were published in Mayfair, which informed us: "Daughter of a caretaker, she was born in Putney, South London, and began her career at the age of 10 by enrolling for a modelling course. Two years later she was one of the country's top child fashion models and soon appearing in a succession of films, like That Smashing Bird I Used to Know, All the Right Noises and Scallawag [sic]. Her failure to get a part in That'll Be the Day left her open for the role in her favourite TV series, Upstairs, Downstairs. 'It was fantastic,' she said. 'I never missed an episode.' A willowy five feet seven, 33-22-33, Lesley shares a King's Road flat and spends what spare time she has very unaristocratically - swimming and watching football." The magazine added: "Although this Mayfair is Lesley's first unclothed photographic sequence, she received an offer to strip when she was only 14 for a sexy film." Ahem!!! Just as well Lesley turned the offer down!

Husband and wife John Alderton and Pauline Collins were reunited on screen in 2002 in the cinema film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War. Collins plays a woman sent to an old people's home who tries to start a revolution amongst the inmates over the penny-pinching ways of the owner (played by Alderton).
Sadly, in recent years, the pair - for whatever reasons - have been reluctant to discuss UpDown on-screen, in the way of interviews etc. A great shame.

The cast reunite in Summer 2002 for the After Upstairs, Downstairs documentary. Left to right: Jackie Tong (Daisy), Meg Wynn Owen (Hazel), Simon Williams (James), Jenny Tomasin (Ruby), Lesley-Anne Down (Georgina) and Gareth Hunt (Frederick). Note the hastily added "1" in front of the 65!