The Liver Birds "Man is the dog, and woman is the bone. He eats the best of you, and buries the rest of you, and when his dish is empty—he'll dig you up again." This would be the last series with Beryl; as Polly James explained: "The reason I left the programme in the end was that I felt I was in danger of caricaturing what was already a pretty outrageous character." Producer Sydney Lotterby had to find a new leading actress to keep the series going after Polly James' departure. In 1971 he'd replaced Pauline Collins with Nerys Hughes, and Hughes herself
Polly James Polly James Polly James (born 1941) is an English actress with a career in theatre, film, television and radio. She was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, under the name Pauline Devaney. After graduating from RADA, James's TV career began in BBC2's "Thirty-Minute Theatre", followed by the role of a drug addict in "Z-Cars" in 1967. She played Audrey Hargreaves in "Coronation Street" in 1967. She is best known for her role as Beryl Hennessey in the first four series of the British sitcom "The Liver Birds" (1969–74), mostly alongside Nerys Hughes. She played Cicely Courtneidge in the biographical musical of the