SUNNY ROGERS was the long suffering stooge, feed and pianist to Frankie Howerd for 35 years. A diminutive figure with a sparkling smile, she bore the brunt of the comedian’s onstage insults with remarkable finesse: “Poor old soul. She’s past it, you know — that is, if she ever ’ad it! She’s deaf — aren’t you dear? Deaf! I said deaf!”

Audiences adored her and she was much respected among her peers for her own considerable comic timing. “Far from being a poor old soul,” said Roy Hudd, “she was very glamorous and knew exactly what she was doing on stage with Howerd. She could feed a line or throw a glance at him that would bring the house down.”

Rogers was born Jessie Mary Rogerson in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1913. She was three years old when her headmistress at Welbeck Primary School wrote to her mother: “You really should send your little girl to dancing school. All she does is sing and dance and entertain us all day long.”

Nicknamed Sunny because of her smile, she made her first stage appearance dancing at the Trocadero Grillroom, London, and at 14 became a Tiller girl. She went on to become a choreographer and producer of floor shows and later joined a rope-spinning Western act, Buck and Chick, which toured Europe and Egypt.

In 1946 she appeared with the act in a variety revue entitled They’re Out! at the Metropolitan Theatre in the Edgware Road. The programme included Max Bygraves, Pamela Denton and Frankie Howerd billed as “The Borderline Case”.

“I became very friendly with Max and Frankie,” Rogers recalled. “I was always laughing and joking with them. I used to try and calm Frankie’s nerves. I’d never seen someone get so het up before a performance. The poor dear was nearly climbing up the wall.”

The show subsequently went on tour and Howerd asked Rogers to appear in sketches with him, many of which he had written himself. In 1960, by which time Howerd was making a name for himself, Rogers began accompanying him on the piano in his act. They toured extensively throughout South Africa and Rhodesia as well as making numerous radio broadcasts.

“The important thing was that I should appear to be deaf”, she said. “I would let rip with Autumn Leaves and Three Coins in a Fountain while Frankie just stood by mouthing at me, and making lewd comments. I adored being his ‘poor old soul’.”

Few people in showbusiness knew Howerd as well as Rogers, and many regarded her as the gay comic’s surrogate wife. Haunted by self-doubt and often battling with acute depression, Howerd frequently turned to Rogers for support and advice. She had never married and after teaming up professionally with Howerd she rarely worked with other performers. “People said that if I hadn’t been so attached to Frank I could have been a great choreographer”, she said.

A permanent fixture on Howerd’s television shows Rogers last appeared on stage with him in his acclaimed one-man show at the Garrick Theatre in London in 1990. Howerd died on Easter Sunday, 1992.

Rogers retired to live in Brighton although she was an active helper with many showbusiness charities. She died at a nursing home in Worthing.

Sunny Rogers, variety artiste and musician, was born on May 10, 1913. She died on December 20, 2005, aged 92.