Caroline Kwouk was married to actor Burt Kwuok

WHETHER acting, dancing, or taking tourists around Britain’s gardens, Caroline Kwouk was a born performer who made life her stage.

She died last month, aged 90.

Born Caroline Tibbs, she grew up in Hereford and moved to London on a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), after which she worked as a chorus girl in repertory theatre touring plays around the country.

She later became a casting director in Soho, seeking the silkiest-voiced actors to dub foreign films into English.

Caroline married actor Burt Kwouk – famous for his role as Cato in the Pink Panther films – in 1961, and lived much of her life in West Hampstead where her beautifully-kept garden put the neighbours’ to shame. A plaque on the house marks Burt’s former home.

Former Camden Councillor Alderman Flick Rea first met Caroline in 1957 when they were students at RADA and Caroline asked to borrow a peach mohair stole that Ms Rea had been given for her birthday.

“She was a couple of years older than me – a glamorous, very attractive lady with wonderful legs, quite daunting,” Ms Rea said.

“I walked into the student common room and she said, ‘I like that stole, I’d like to borrow it for a play’. I thought: ‘I’ll never see that again’, but a week later it arrived back. She’d not only worn it, but taken it to the cleaners. So I thought, ‘not only is she glamorous and intimidating, but also rather nice’.”

They didn’t become friends until some years later when Caroline and Burt moved in down the road from Ms Rea in West Hampstead in 1978, when their son Chris was four-years-old.

Caroline Kwouk loved in West Hampstead

When Caroline’s mother and Ms Rea’s husband both died within a short space of time, the two women became close friends, cooking for each other on Sundays and going on holidays to the Scottish Hebrides, the Scilly Isles and Spain.

Ms Rea added: “We were always trying out new recipes – one of her favourites was Christmas dinner without the turkey.

“During lockdown, we fell into a habit of phoning each other virtually every day. At eight-o’clock I’d talk to Caroline on the phone. I rather miss our nightly call, it was the pillar of my day – I miss her telling me, which she did frequently, what the weather was going to be like tomorrow.”

In later life, Caroline retrained as a tour guide, taking tourists around the country to visit heritage gardens.

“It was a very good job for her because she had a busful of people who she told what to do,” said Ms Rea.

“She was a very caring person and very much an Alpha woman – she knew her own mind and didn’t hesitate to tell you, and she and I had some wonderful arguments. She never liked admitting to being wrong.”

She added: “She would do anything for you that she possibly could. She was unique, I’ve never met anybody like her. She could sort of drive you mad, but at the bottom of it all was a good heart, which I discovered very early on when my stole came back to me wrapped in a nice bag from the cleaners.”

Caroline was pre-deceased by her husband Burt, and leaves behind a son and three granddaughters.