Felicity Kendal, 79, scares off phone thieves after witnessing three ‘appalling’ attacks

National treasure Felicity Kendal has turned have-a-go hero after fending off a phone snatcher in her Chelsea neighbourhood.

The 79-year-old actress rose to fame as the star of beloved sitcom The Good Life and gentle crime drama Rosemary & Thyme.

She leapt into action amid a recent spate of crime in the London borough where she has lived since the 1960s.

‘Crime was never like this before. The phone-snatching is appalling,’ she revealed recently.

‘Within three days I saw three,’ she outlined, sharing how she had ‘snapped’ after witnessing one such attack.

Spotting a woman become swarmed by a gang of phone thieves, Felicity took action, scaring off the criminals with a well-timed honk of her car horn.

Speaking to local news outlet The Chelsea Citizen, Felicity said: ‘One day I was walking my dog Rufus and suddenly three bikes shot onto the pavement, smashed a car window, and someone screamed.

‘A woman was parked there and they had taken her phone, just like that. It was over in seconds. I was driving down Draycott Avenue the next day when I saw a young woman walking and suddenly a few bikes swarmed around her. It was like Spaghetti Junction. They grabbed her phone and they started to speed off.

‘Something in me snapped, so I banged the horn and yelled and one of the lads dropped the phone. The woman got it back.’

Describing her reaction as ‘instinct,’ Felicity went on to talk about her life in Chelsea, revealing how she might sell the four-storey house she shared with late husband Michael Rudman, who died in 2023.

‘I’m happy to move on when the time is right,’ she said, adding: ‘I have always loved living in Chelsea, so I can’t imagine being anywhere else.’

Felicity met theatre director husband Michael in 1974, and the pair married in 1983. Felicity and Michael divorced in 1991, before reconciling seven years later.

On meeting Felicity, Michael reflected: ‘I can’t say I fell in love with her that day, but I certainly felt differently about her than I did about her co-stars Tom Courtenay and Michael Gambon.’

Writing in his memoir, I Joke Too Much, he continued: ‘Soon afterwards I offered Felicity a role in a play I was directing in the West End.

‘The production went well and when, some time later, we began dating we decided to keep our relationship a secret.’

In 2021, Felicity spoke of her fear when Michael was hospitalised with Coronavirus, telling The Camden New Journal: ‘I think I can speak for a lot of people about the fear being huge, and the frustration being a real hardship.’

‘That feeling that you don’t know what state your loved one is in, and knowing you still can’t go and see them – it’s not like anything you’ve experienced before. It was just such a scary time. Michael is in his eighties.’

Michael spent a fortnight in intensive care on a ventilator, before his eventual recovery – although the ensuing health problems meant that he required full-time home carers for the last two years of his life.

Speaking to The Times Magazine about her husband’s death, Felicity described the experience as ‘f***ing s**t.’

She continued: ‘People say, are you OK? Of course I’m not. He just f***ing died on me. Some days I am very good. Sometimes not so good. Mostly, I am getting through. Stupid things set me off. It’s very strange. You can’t tell ahead what it’s going to be.’

‘If anything, I suppose I would like to say that it is good to talk about these things. There’s a lot of stiff upper lip with death. People avoid it or say things like, “I’m sorry you lost your husband.”

Felicity added: ‘I actually hate that. It’s as if you have lost the cat. I haven’t lost Michael; he is dead. We are all at one point or another going to have to deal with similar things, so let’s be open about it.’

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