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Blunderbuss News - 2020

Julie Ankerson RIP

We also regret to report the passing of Julie Ankerson, who attended FGGS and Farnham College from 1970-1977.

Julie took part in a number of College drama productions including, The Winter's Tale, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Cherry Orchard.

This obituary has been kindly supplied by Julie’s sister Vicki:

Julie died on 28th July 2021, in the Royal Berks Hospital Reading from metastatic breast cancer. She was three days away from her 62nd birthday.

Julie loved the theatre and films and should have been the country's foremost comic actress, but life seldom goes to plan. Needing to earn a crust after leaving drama school, she fell into a job in the film library at the BBC, and then into a career as a foley artist, receiving three Emmy nominations and working on films such as Gosford Park, and TV programmes including Sherlock and Doctor Who, where she worked on every episode following its reboot, until forced to stop by increasingly bad health.

She took jobs in John Lewis and then Boots, where her sense of the ridiculous and her quiet stoicism helped her to make many new friends and to bear the hardships she faced in her final years. She enjoyed filling her house with collections of books, snow globes, Sindy dolls, art and Poole pottery. She even wrote a novel based on becoming a foley artist in the 1980s (it's called Fen - do read it). She was diagnosed with breast cancer, underwent operations to remove it and was given the all clear, but it nevertheless spread to her stomach and liver. Two years later, she died in great pain, in a corner of a horrible public ward, in the middle of a pandemic, but wanted everyone to know that she was OK about dying and had enjoyed her life. Her funeral was attended by those who knew her and loved her at every stage of her life, including the remaining two of the group of friends from Farnham College, Caroline and Simon.