Pat Brooker: Factory worker and pub landlady who found late celebrity on 'The Only Way Is Essex'

The cockney great-grandmother became an unexpected overnight television star on the 'structured reality' show

Brooker: ‘I am a typical Essex girl,’ she said. ‘Well, I hope so!’ (PA)

Pat Brooker was a cockney great-grandmother who became an unexpected overnight television star thanks to her appearances on the “structured reality” show The Only Way Is Essex as “Nanny Pat”, the grandmother of the first person to find celebrity beyond the programme, Mark Wright.

She was born in 1935 at St Andrew’s Hospital in Bromley-by-Bow, East London. As she later wrote, “from what I’ve been told that makes me a proper cockney as it’s within earshot of the ol’ Bow Bells at St Mary-le-Bow church in the city.” Her mother died when Brooker was 12, leaving her as head of the household to look after her father and older brother.

When she left school she found work in a factory manufacturing women’s underwear from parachute silk, and later worked in a newsagents and as a pub landlady, In 1953 she met a council worker, Charlie Brooker, who was five years older, when he came to the house to replace the fire. They married, and were together for 52 years until Charlie’s death.

She first appeared on TOWIE alongside Wright in the show’s 2010 debut. “Mark started filming for the show and he kept talking about me to the producers and before I knew what was happening I was starring,” she recalled. She soon became a favourite with audiences, who adored her directness and one-liners. “I am a typical Essex girl, well I hope so!” she said. “I am nice, but I am just plain, unlike all the young girls with their fake tans and big heels. ”

Last month Brooker celebrated her 80th birthday on TOWIE in a party themed around the Royal Wedding, arriving at Croydon’s Addington Palace in a horse-drawn carriage. Asked how she coped with her new-found fame she replied, “I just get on with it. People say how do you feel that you’re a star, and I go, ‘I’m no different to anybody else’. I don’t take much notice of it.”

Her autobiography, Penny Sweets And Cobbled Streets: My East End Childhood, was published in 2012, containing a wealth of anecdotes of growing up in Bow. She writes of her wartime experiences, “It was such a terrible thing to live through the war. I don’t think if it happened today half the kids could get through it.” Brooker’s last appearance was for the show’s Christmas Special episode, which was broadcast on 16 December, the day she died.

Patricia Joan Brooker, television personality: born Bromley-by-Bow, London 21 November 1935; married 1955 Charlie Brooker (died 2007; three daughters; two sons); died Essex 16 December 2015.