Clare Dunkel dead aged 59 – Are You Being Served? actress and ex-glamour model dies

GLAMOUR model turned crime writer Clare Dunkel has died aged 59.

The actress and Miss Nude 1982, who starred in classic British comedies like Are You Being Served? and The Two Ronnies, passed away from motor neurone disease (MND) on July 27.

Clare shot to fame as a page three girl in the seventies, going by the name Candy Davis.

She went on to become a bestselling author who was known as a "connoisseur of corpses".

Clare, who wrote under the name Mo Hayder, published 10 novels and sold 6.5 million copies worldwide.

The novelist – dubbed the "queen of fear" – said she had a "obsession" with blood spattered murder scenes and describing violence in gory detail.

"Everybody’s fascinated by gore really, aren’t they?" she once said.

"Two hundred years ago, we’d all have been going down to the gallows — and anyway I think it’s bad for people to suppress their dark side; it only gets more intense."

'QUEEN OF FEAR'

Clare married actor Gary Olsen in 1985, but the couple divorced five years later.

She then moved to Japan to live an "isolated" life.

"I think I was torturing myself, a kind of self-punishment for all those years of not really getting my act together," she told The Times.

Throughout her career she appeared as Miss Exotica Stormtrooper in The Two Ronnies, Miss Belfridge in Are You Being Served, and in The Benny Hill Show.

Clare was diagnosed with MND in December but it "progressed at an alarming rate" and she died last month from the illness.

She is survived by her daughter, Lotte, and her husband, Bob.

Fellow authors paid tribute to the writer, who they described as "incredibly different".

Crime fiction writer Mark Billingham said: "Crime/horror mash-up is quite an established thing now, but there were very few people working in that genre when Mo came along.

"She just had this ability to put images in your head that would not go away.

"There are some, especially from The Treatment, which are still in my head 20 years later. Her books are properly frightening and properly disturbing."

Her agent Jane Gregory of David Higham Associates said Clare was "a brilliant writer and a wonderful, extraordinary, unique human being".

What is motor neurone disease?

Motor neurone disease is a rare condition.

About two in every 100,000 Brits develop it each year.

It affects specialist nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing the function of motor neurons to break down.

When this neurodegeneration occurs, everyday activities become increasingly difficult or completely impossible.

Over time, the condition progressively worsens as the muscle weakens and can visibly waste.

The majority of those diagnosed with the disease are given a three-year life expectancy starting from when they first notice the symptoms.

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