An Audience with Sunny Ormonde – The Archers’ Lilian Bellamy

Early bird tickets £10 (£8 conc) to midnight on Monday 6 April. 

Celebrate 75 years of The Archers and 25+ years of the inimitable Lilian Bellamy in this special audience with actor Sunny Ormonde.  

Sunny will be chatting – in and out of character – about the glamorous, witty and often outrageous Lilian and her many romantic entanglements. There will be insider stories from the popular radio show and tales from Sunny’s extensive career in radio, TV and theatre. Expect fun, frolics and a fabulous night out!  

Sunny Ormonde has been playing the outrageous and wayward Lillian Bellamy in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers since 2000 and has become one of the listeners’ favourite characters! In that time, she has roared around Ambridge on a Harley Davidson, drunk The Cider shed dry with Eddie Grundy, absconded to Costa Rica with her wicked Tiger, recklessly kicked off her slingbacks and leaped into bed with Tiger’s brother, Paul. Not to mention the furlong frolics with Justin Elliot and generally wreaking havoc in the quiet Borcestershire village! She has also appeared regularly with fellow Archers cast members in many theatre entertainments: Larkin About: Come Rain, Come Shine, The Land of Lost Content and Wicked Women.   

Sunny is a seasoned theatre performer having appeared in everything from pantomime to Shakespeare and the lead in Shirley Valentine. She has created two One-Woman Shows: An Evening with Sunny Ormonde and Dorothy, The Airings of an Archers Actor’s Aunt, which toured extensively. Sunny adores the spoken word is and has recorded well over 400 plays and short stories for the BBC, including The Old Curiosity Shop with Tom Courtney and The Sea with David Tennant. She can be heard regularly as a guest artist for the science fiction audio company Big Finish. Her wide-ranging TV credits include Casualty ,Doctors, Brookside, Waiting for God, Why Can’t I Go Home?, The Life of Shakespeare, Hope it Rains and Grange Hill for the BBC, Framed for Anglia Films and Jupiter Moon for Sky TV. Sunny recently appeared as Mrs Hughes in the film Christmas at Plumhill Manor. Sunny also has a very successful podcast, One Stiletto in the Grave, which she hosts with her friend, the writer Jane James.  

2026 sees The Archers’ 75th anniversary, and Sunny is involved in several of the many events planned to mark this milestone including, BBC1’s Bargain Hunt, Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and a nationwide stage show, The Archers live at ’75. 

Access and Covid safety measures: if you have specific access needs or queries and/or prefer to be seated away from other audience members as a Covid safety measure, please contact our Admin at: [email protected] with your request.  

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Host or Publisher Huddersfield Literature Festival