Happy Mother's Day to Hyacinth Bucket – from your son, Sheridan
Hyacinth Bucket, played brilliantly by Patricia Routledge, has spent a lifetime in our collective homes over the years insisting her surname is pronounced Bouquet. She is pretty much a pompous social-climbing snob. Unbeknownst to most neighbor residents of Blossom Lane, Hyacinth originally came from a very poor working-class background. Her main mission in life is to impress others with her lifestyle and perceived affluence and refinement. Hyacinth likes to spend her days visiting stately homes convinced she will meet and strike up a friendship with the owners, especially if they are nobility and hosting candlelight suppers with her Royal Worcester double-glazed Avignon china and Royal Doulton china with ‘the hand-painted periwinkles’. She is also the proud owner of a white slimline telephone with automatic redial whose main callers include either Hyacinth and Richard’s son, Sheridan, or those trying to find the nearby Chinese take-away.
Sheridan Bucket, who goes totally unseen for the entire series, is Hyacinth and Richard’s spoiled son. He is away at college a poly which Hyacinth insists is ‘university standard’, and is known to audiences primarily through Hyacinth’s phone conversations with him. Most of the time, instead of ‘talking to his mummy’, Sheridan needs money for some crazy things that his ‘friend’ Tarquin has or has suggested, including a walking holiday in Iceland.
Whether it’s to just ‘talk to his mummy’ or ‘ask for money’, let’s hope Hyacinth hears from Sheridan today. Happy Mother’s Day, Hyacinth.
