Are You Being Served was one of the quintessential British comedies, being part sitcom, part music hall and a lot of double entendre. The cast was wonderful and the script really quite forward looking (in a now backward kind of way). So it is with great sadness that I heard of the death of Mollie Sugden, the comic actress best known for her role as Mrs Slocombe in the 1970s series. She is obviously held in great regard around the world as she has since become one of the largest trending topics on Twitter, with even Jonathan Ross adding his tweets to get the tag  #MrsSlocombesPussy (kicked off by, erm, yours truly at the suggestion of Lucy Tweeting) to the top of the Twitter tree.

Mrs Slocombe joins Miss Brahms (Wendy Richard) at the great sales counter in the sky. Rest in Peace, Mollie.

Updated: In a brief look at how USA-centric social networking has become (and how speedy blogging means that even a quick Google search is beyond many journalists) both Mashable and TechCrunch have dismissed the #MrsSlocombesPussy tag as spam, with TechCrunch’s writer even applauding censorship of the term on Twitter.