Editing Yootha Joyce (section)

==Final years and death==
Joyce was affected by her long-term [[alcoholism]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Eder |first=Bruce |title=Yootha Joyce – Biography – Movies & TV |url=https://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/36432/Yootha-Joyce/biography |url-status=dead |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305101057/http://www.nytimes.com/movies/person/36432/Yootha-Joyce/biography |archive-date=5 March 2016}}</ref>

A feature film version of ''[[George and Mildred (film)|George and Mildred]]'' (1980) was her last work. Amidst growing concern over her health, she was admitted to hospital in the summer of 1980. Joyce died in hospital of [[liver failure]] four days after her 53rd birthday on 24 August 1980. Her co-star and good friend Brian Murphy was at her bedside.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.family-announcements.co.uk/localworld/view/3350243/yootha-joyce|title=Yootha Joyce – Funeral Directors and services |work=family-announcements.co.uk}}</ref> Joyce's funeral took place on 3 September 1980 at [[Golders Green Crematorium]], where she was cremated.<ref>{{cite web |title=Whole lotta love |url=http://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/mar/09/popandrock1 |website=The Guardian |date=9 March 2007 |access-date=20 February 2022}}</ref> Her ashes were scattered on the [[crocus]] lawn in the grounds of the crematorium.<ref name="biography"/>

At the [[inquest]] into Joyce's death, it was revealed that she had been drinking up to half a bottle of [[brandy]] a day for ten years and recently very much more,<ref name="belfast telegraph">{{cite web |title=Yootha Joyce died an alcoholic – inquest told |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0002318/19800916/097/0006 |publisher=[[Belfast Telegraph]] |date=16 September 1980 |url-access=limited}}</ref> and that she had, in the words of her lawyer Mario Uziell-Hamilton, become a victim of her own success, and dreaded the thought of being typecast as Mildred Roper.<ref>''[[The Times]]'', 16 September 1980</ref><ref name="Grdn2023"/> The [[pathologist]] stated that Joyce's liver was twice the normal size and that her heart and lungs had also suffered because of her drinking; Joyce's cause of death was given as [[Cirrhosis|portal cirrhosis of the liver]].<ref name="belfast telegraph"/> Joyce's biography implies that she turned to drink to steady her nerves, particularly after her divorce and subsequent failed relationships, loneliness, typecasting, lack of other work, and lack of privacy due to the popularity of Mildred Roper, and had become [[Depression (mood)|depressed]].

Joyce appeared [[List of works published posthumously|posthumously]] in her last recorded television performance, duetting with [[Max Bygraves]] on his variety show ''Max'', singing "[[For All We Know (1934 song)|For All We Know]]". The episode was aired on 14 January 1981. Actor and comedian [[Kenneth Williams]] wrote in his diary of the performance that "she looked as though she was crying... as she got up [and left the set] one had the feeling she never intended to return."<ref name="Brown2010">{{cite book|author=Len Brown|title=Meetings With Morrissey|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q8nPi6BUf-QC&pg=PT444|date=7 April 2010|publisher=Omnibus Press|isbn=978-0-85712-240-7|pages=444}}</ref> He also went on to mention her in a later entry in his diary (9 April 1988, just days before his own death) that "there was a break in her voice when she got to [the line] tomorrow may never come... she was a lady who made so many people happy and a lady who never complained".<ref name="WilliamsDavies1993">{{cite book |last=Williams |first=Kenneth |editor-last=Davies |editor-first=Russell |title=The Kenneth Williams Diaries |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1yJaAAAAMAAJ |date=24 June 1993|publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0-00-255023-9 |page=799}}</ref>