Synopsis

Married comic actors Hattie Jacques and John LeMesurier seem the perfect couple, with their two young sons and the legendary Christmas dinners they host for their friends. However, in 1963, after a charity fund raiser for leukaemia, Hattie meets the young and handsome John Schofield, whose son died of the disease. He tells her that she is lovely and boosts her confidence about her plumpness. When he splits with his wife, John LeMesurier suggests he becomes the family's lodger but he becomes Hattie's lover, jealously so, angry that he cannot be part of her 'This Is Your Life' TV tribute. The gentlemanly LeMesurier moves into the spare room, all the while remaining good friends with Hattie, who encourages him to date family friend Joan Malin, whom he will eventually marry. To preserve Hattie's public reputation, her husband accepts blame in the divorce court and will remain on good terms with her for the rest of her life. Two years later, Schofield deserts Hattie for an Italian heiress. She will never remarry, seeking the company of younger men and succumbing to illness propounded by her size, leading to her death from a heart attack at the early age of fifty-eight.