Crossroads' Valerie Pollard Dies

[Angela Channing]

Crossroads actress Heather Chasen who played the character Valerie Pollard has died. She was 92.

Her character Valerie was a bubbly sophisticated lady with red hair when she arrived at the motel as the wife of multi-millionaire businessman J. Henry Pollard. She’d been known to have a fling or two – and we’re not talking about the drink so J.Henry, who by then was a part-owner of the motel, decided to make the complex a personal prison for her. He cancelled her credit cards and tried to show Valerie the error of her ways by grounding her in Kings Oak.

It wasn’t long however before Valerie was up to mischief. She bedded engaged Adam Chance who had been previously involved with her daughter Miranda.

Heather Chasen later appeared in Coronation Street and EastEnders. I saw her way back in the 1980s on the London stage in No Sex Please We're British which was then the longest running comedy in West End history.

 

[Barbara Fan]

Oh I remember the Pollards - her daughter was a spoilt wee madam with a funny nose if i recall.

RIP Heather Chasen

 

[Angela Channing]

Valerie Pollard was a fascinating character and one of the most memorable from that era of Crossroads. She was part comedy character and had some brilliant one-liners, part tragic character stuck in a loveless marriage and part bitch who would do whatever she had to in order to get what she wanted. I always thought the actor who played her husband, J Henry Pollard, was quite wooden in the role and Heather Chasen did all the work to make their scenes together believable.

Younger viewers might remember Heather more from EastEnders where she played Janine Butcher's grandmother.