Bonita Melody Lysette Langford was born on 22 July 1964 in Hampton
Court, Surrey. By the age of six she had won Hughie Green's Opportunity Knocks (1956)
television talent contest and gained membership of Equity. Later she
trained at the Arts Educational and Italia Conti stage schools in
London. By her early teens she had starred on New York's Broadway
("Gypsy"), on London's West End ("Gone With the Wind") and in
television shows (including the Bonnie and Lena (Lena Zavaroni) variety
spectaculars). Her biggest success of the mid-1970's came when she
played "Elizabeth Bott" in 7 of the 27 episodes of the children's drama
series Just William (1977). It was this that helped fix her in the minds of the
British public as a precocious child star - an image she found it hard
to shed in later years, despite amassing an impressive list of credits
as a dancer, singer and actress on stage: "Peter Pan: The Musical";
"Cats" and "The Pirates of Penzance", and on television: Saturday
Starship and The Hot Shoe Show (1983). Shorly after her stint as "Mel" in Doctor Who (1963), this
typecasting brought about an emotional crisis that caused her to take
almost a year's break form her career. By the close of the 1980's she
had recovered her health and resumed a hectic schedule of work, which
has continued to date. In 1995 she was in the news again when she was
married to actor Paul Grunert in Mauritius on 27 September.
