Sylvia Anderson, co-creator with her then husband Gerry Anderson of the futuristic puppet adventure series Thunderbirds, and voice of its Lady Penelope character as passed away at the age of 88. During the 1960s and 1970s, the creative team of Century 21 productions, led by the Andersons made several futuristic puppet animation series including Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and of course Thunderbirds. Many of today’s aerospace designers were inspired by the hypersonic flying machine creations of these series. For space cadets, in the 1970s the team also made the moon base-set live action science fiction series, UFO and Space 1999.
However, it was for her voice that Silvia Anderson will be most remembered. In Thunderbirds, she had the voice role of Lady Penelope, the upper class-accented English lady secret agent, who was ably assisted by her moaning butler and chauffeur of her futuristic pink Rolls Royce, Parker. Anderson also later played Lady Penelope’s elderly great aunt Sylvia in the new CGI animated television remake of Thunderbirds, Thunderbirds Are Go. We give Sylvia Anderson our salute and her family and her friends our condolences.
