Remembering Kathryn Apanowicz

The actress appeared as a regular in EastEnders and also had memorable roles in Angels and Emmerdale…

Presenter and actress Kathryn Apanowicz has died aged 64. She began her road to fame aged nine when she was discovered by talent scout Jean Pearce, who ran a Leeds based performing arts school that provided Yorkshire Television with young star talent.

At the time of Kathryn joining YTV for their children’s variety series Junior Showtime, aged 11, she had already had ambitions to become a marine biologist. Speaking to YTV in 1989 she recalled, ‘I wasn’t a particularly a good dancer, but I had a strong singing voice. My teacher used to say I could put across a song,’

Kathryn Apanowicz in EastEnders / BBC PR 1987

After her child stint with ITV on Junior Showtime she featured in film Bugsy Malone, Thames Television sitcom Rooms and aged 17 she was back in Leeds to present Calendar Kids. It was Yorkshire Television where she’d also find love with the late Richard Whiteley, host of main Yorkshire news programme Calendar and Channel 4 quiz Countdown, which she guest appeared in dictionary corner.

By the late 1970s she was in regular work with BBC One, featuring in their medical saga Angels as Nurse Rose Butchins and then found her biggest fame with EastEnders as polish chef Magda Czajkowski, lover of Den Watts (Leslie Grantham) and also had a dalliance with Simon ‘Wicksy‘ Wicks (Nick Berry.) Kathryn also had two short stints in Emmerdale between 1992 and 1998, as two separate characters, and popped up in an episode of Coronation Street in 1995.

Kathryn Apanowicz with Lorraine Kelly, Kay Adams and Carol McGiffin on Live Talk / Granada TV

As well as presenting and performing Kathryn was a broadcaster for BBC Radio Leeds and BBC Radio York and in 2000 when ITV’s Loose Women was revamped into a more sophisticated affair, as Live Talk, Kathryn was one of the founding faces of that new look. In recent times she featured as a talking telly expert on Channel 5 formats such as ‘Goes Horribly Wrong…’ 

From 1994 until his death in 2005 Kathryn was the partner of Richard Whiteley. They had one son together, James.

Paying tribute on social media, Countdown co-star and friend Carol Vorderman said, ‘Very sadly, our dear Kathy died yesterday. Kathy was Richard Whiteley’s long term partner and with him when he passed 20 years ago. Now, she will be with him again, at his side, where she was always at her happiest. Rest In Peace my friend.’

Live Talk Girl Talk, Granada TV, 2001, the revamped more upmarket ‘Loose Women’