Good Life Star Confronts London's Crime Epidemic
Felicity Kendal, the beloved 79-year-old actress famous for playing Barbara Good in the classic BBC sitcom The Good Life, has found herself confronting a very different reality in modern London. The veteran actress has witnessed three shocking mobile phone robberies in just three days in her Chelsea neighbourhood, highlighting what she describes as an alarming rise in crime under Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan's leadership.
Have-a-Go Hero Moments
Speaking to local news website The Chelsea Citizen, Kendal revealed disturbing details of the brazen daylight robberies she observed. "Crime was never like this before," said the actress, who has lived in Chelsea since the 1960s. "The phone-snatching is appalling. I have never known anything like it. Within three days I saw three."
In one particularly dramatic incident, Kendal demonstrated the same determination that made her television character Barbara Good so beloved. "I was driving down Draycott Avenue when I saw a young woman walking and suddenly a few bikes swarmed around her," she recalled. "They grabbed her phone and 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."
Brazen Criminal Behaviour
Despite her quick thinking that prevented one theft, Kendal - who opens next week in a revival of Indian Ink at Hampstead Theatre - rejects any suggestion of bravery. "It was just instinct," she insists. "I did nothing really. I wasn't facing a knife. I just shouted. But these gangs are so brazen. They just think they will get away with it - and they're not wrong."
The actress described another incident where she witnessed three bikes shooting onto the pavement, smashing a car window, and stealing a woman's phone in seconds. She saw yet another phone snatched the following day in Sloane Square, but was unable to intervene.
Kendal's experience comes as she considers selling her beloved four-storey Chelsea house, which has become too large to manage since her husband Michael Rudman died in 2023 and her son Jake moved out. "I'm happy to move on when the time is right," she says, though she adds, "I have always loved living in Chelsea, so I can't imagine being anywhere else."
