Carole Boyd

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Description

Carole Boyd is best known for her role as Ambridge's interfering busy-body Lynda Snell in The Archers, a character she has played since 1986.

On leaving drama school, Carole won the Carleton Hobbs Award - a six-month contract with the BBC Radio Drama Company. This was followed by extensive theatre work, including a year with Alan Ayckbourn's company in Scarborough, where she created the part of June in Way Upstream.

Vocal versatility, accents and dialects are her speciality, so when she's not playing Lynda Snell, BBC Radio 4 listeners may hear her on Poetry Please while CBeebies' devotees hear Carole as every female character in Postman Pat. Voice-overs, commentaries and presentations also form a large part of her repertoire.

Carole's television appearances include Minder, Campion, Hetty Wainthropp and the evil Mrs S Melly in BBC Children's TV Bodger & Badger.

She has recorded around 300 audio books and has won several prestigious British Talkie Awards for her recordings of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, George Eliot's Middlemarch and Ian McEwan's Atonement. She also won the American Audie for Landgirls (Angela Huth).

In 1999, she wrote and recorded her own audio book: Lynda Snell's Heritage of Ambridge for the BBC Radio Collection.

In July 2000, she joined forces with piano duo, The Bibby Sisters, to form the words and music trio, 'Infinite Riches'. The group regularly performs to enthusiastic audiences at music festivals and stately homes around the country.

Carole plays the wicked Esther Hartlieb in the screen adaptation of Cornelia Funcke's children's bestseller, The Thief Lord (2005) and is currently recording a new series of Postman Pat (2007).

Carole also delights audiences at literary festivals and celebrity-, corporate- and cruise events with her one-woman shows.

Archers highlight(s)

There are several: meeting various Royals and other national treasures, having wonderful Graham Blockey playing long-suffering Robert Snell, Lynda's regular Christmas spectaculars which are always a laugh and Lynda's occasional "moments of truth"- i.e. Rob's bankruptcy.

Other career highlights

Too numerous to mention, but maybe winning awards for audio books e.g. "God of Small Things", "Middlemarch" and "Atonement" make me proud.

Actor's view of their character

Lynda's deeply deluded, big on self-regard, low on self-awareness, has no sense of humour and a deep-down insecurity ("only Robert understands me") - but is also well meaning and basically good-hearted.