YORK actress Maggie Fox - who was a co-director of award-winning comedy duo LipService Theatre and who appeared in Coronation Street - has died suddenly after an accident.

The news was announced by her comedy partner and fellow Lip Service director Sue Ryding. 

She wrote: "It is with great sadness that I have to announce the death of Maggie Fox, my comedy partner of 40 years and co-Artistic Director of LipService.

"Maggie passed away yesterday with her family around her."

"We are still all in a state of shock as this was very sudden following an accident. As you can imagine I am completely heartbroken.

"Our theatre company LipService was officially launched in 1985 and we have written 22 original comedies, touring all over the world, managing to have children in between!

"It's notoriously difficult to present new work in theatre and we are really proud that we managed to do so and to build an audience for it.

"We had planned a new digital version of Chateau Ghoul which we had already filmed which will be shared with you later in the year in memory of Maggie, plus some live events using the huge amount of digital footage we thankfully have archived. Details to be published when have a plan.

"Thank you for supporting us over all these years, we are so lucky to have such a loyal audience. We do hope you will join us to celebrate her comedy genius later in the year."

LipService had been touring their latest two-hander, the haunted house thriller Chateau Ghoul, written, produced and performed by Maggie and Sue with a multi-media combination of on-stage live humour and digital projections.

Sue did give one performance with an understudy, but following Maggie’s death, the tour has been discontinued. “Maggie is irreplaceable and so, reluctantly, Sue Ryding and the rest of the company have decided we must cancel the remaining dates of the upcoming tour,” read LipService’s first announcement released to such venues Pocklington Arts Centre, where regular visitors Maggie and Sue had been booked to perform on March 26.

Janet Farmer, director of Pocklington Arts Centre, paid tribute, saying it had welcomed Maggie and Sue as LipService Theatre for 15-plus years and they had always been hugely popular with many sell-out performances of their 'wonderful spoof shows based on literary classics.'

She said she and her colleagues were 'shocked and devastated' to hear the tragic news of Maggie’s death.

Former Press theatre critic Charles Hutchinson said Maggie had been born into a theatrical family: her father was on the board of York Theatre Royal; her uncle was a mainstay of the York Settlement Community Players.

He said that Maggie and Sue won the Critics’ Award for Comedy for both Withering Looks and Knot One Murder One at the Edinburgh Fringe; the Manchester Theatre Awards Stage Door Award for Excellence in 2013 and the Manchester Evening News Award for Withering Looks.

He said Maggie had appeared in four roles in Coronation Street - Ruth Audsley, Nurse, Judge Travers, Charmian Gray- between 1990 and 2010; and six episodes of The Forsyte Saga, as Bilson, in 2002-2003.

He added: "Thank you, Maggie. You brought us so much merry mayhem in slickly organised yet deliriously chaotic comedy; now you have been taken away by tragedy, theatre’s other face. God bless you and a fond farewell."