Barbara Kelly came to Britain from Canada with her husband, Bernard Braden, in 1949, and after appearing with him on the radio comedy Bedtime with Braden, became a national celebrity through the television panel game What’s My Line? She was on the first programme in July 1951 and stayed with the show, in which the panel had to guess the occupations of contestants from a brief mime, through most of its 12-year run.

An extrovert blonde with a quick wit and a deep-throated chuckle, she was part of a regular team that also included Lady Isobel Barnett, the irascible Gilbert Harding and the genial magician David Nixon. Her striking collection of earrings became a newsworthy part of the programme, not least when she dropped one down her dress and Lady Isobel leant over to retrieve it.

Kelly’s father, an Irishman, was a lorry driver in Vancouver. Her mother, who was from Manchester, forced ballet classes and elocution lessons on her. Deeply unhappy at home, she escaped at 17 to marry Braden.

Soon after coming to Britain she got a part in a West End play, Male Animal. Later she starred in Angels of Love at the Savoy Theatre, directed by Braden, and she also acted on television. But she never relished the stage, often feeling sick before performances, and happily settled for light entertainment on television. Thanks to What’s My Line?, with its huge viewing figures, she became one of Britain’s best-known and most popular figures.

Kelly appeared in a number of low-budget films, the least forgettable of which was perhaps Castle in the Air (1952), where she played the brassy American divorcée Mrs Clodfelter Dunne, keen to buy a castle from an impoverished laird. Various sitcoms were created to present the couple together; An Evening at Home with Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly (1951) had an innovative format later borrowed for The Kumars at No 42, but lasted only one series. The Rolling Stones (written in 1960, before the band had formed) was never aired, and a third, B and B (1968), soon vanished.

In the 1960s Kelly was appointed by British European Airways to head an advice service for women travellers and on ITV presented a series, also aimed at women, on managing the family budget. She also spent three years hosting the ITV show Criss Cross Quiz, but when that ended in 1967 she gradually faded from view.

The same thing happened to her husband after the BBC ended his series, Braden’s Week, in 1972. Some in the corporation were angry that he had starred in a margarine advert while on contract. A researcher for Braden, Esther Rantzen, went on to host That’s Life, which closely followed the Braden’s Week format. Braden refused to comment, but Kelly, always the more forthright and outspoken of the couple, let her bitterness show. Asked by an interviewer about Rantzen, she said: “I don’t want to discuss her, because I can’t be accountable for what I say.”

Throughout the 1970s, Kelly’s main activity was running Prime Performers, an agency which booked celebrities for shop openings, cruises and after-dinner speeches. She had more than 1,000 names on her books, including Lord Tebbit, Bob Monkhouse and Will Carling. Her husband began a complementary business, organising conferences.

Kelly returned to What’s My Line? with the original chairman, Eamonn Andrews, when it was revived on ITV in 1984 and so served another three years with the show. In May 1987 she underwent an operation for throat cancer which, though successful, left her face scarred.

Braden died in 1993. Kelly is survived by their two daughters. A son predeceased her.

Barbara Kelly, television personality, was born on October 5, 1924. She died on January 15, 2007, aged 82