Patricia Brake, who has died of cancer aged 79, was an actor who had one of her biggest successes on television as Ronnie Barker’s screen daughter, Ingrid – first in the 1970s sitcom Porridge, visiting the wily old lag Norman Stanley Fletcher in Slade prison, then as a pivotal character in the sequel, Going Straight.
Alongside the Somerset-born actor’s cockney accent – a distinctive quality she brought to many comedy roles – Brake caught the eye of the television critic Clive James for her “fluffy but compelling sexiness”. He added that she played Ingrid “with all the lowlife zing that cockney sparrers of stage and screen are traditionally supposed to display but never do”.
