Virginia Stride

Virginia Stride (born Virginia Thomas in Yokohama, Japan) is a British actress of stage and screen who first came to public attention on television in the 1960s. She was the first wife of the actor John Stride (born 1936), whom she met when they were studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), and in 1964 she introduced the first programme to be seen on BBC Two.

Virginia Stride was, in her own words, a “fat little girl” and, although she became slimmer in her teens, her self-consciousness about this in childhood had apparently made her sceptical of an acting career. In the event she went to RADA rather than read English at university, and took her husband’s name for professional purposes because of pressure from agents who felt that Virginia Thomas “didn’t sound quite right”.

Virginia Stride played the recurring role of BD Girl Katy Hoskins in Z-Cars (1962–64), the long-running BBC television series about the police in an area of Liverpool. In 1964 she appeared in an episode of The Avengers as Alice Brisket, secretary to Quilpie (played by Ronald Radd), who was the controller of John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman).

With Gordon Rollings Stride was the first presenter, on 21 April 1964, of Play School, a daily programme for young children on BBC 2. Because a power failure coincided with the channel's scheduled opening the previous evening,Play School was the first programme to be transmitted on BBC 2.

In 1966 Stride appeared in the BBC comedy series On the Margin, a collection of sketches and songs written by Alan Bennett, who, together with John Sergeant (later the BBC’s political correspondent), also starred in the show. The six episodes of On the Margin were twice repeated in 1967, but were among many programmes "wiped" by the BBC in the 1970s. A compact disc of surviving audio extracts was released by the BBC in 2009.

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