Are You Being Served? depicts the work and lives of the staff of a fictional London department store, Grace Brothers. Its main characters serve in the ladies' and gentlemen's departments, alongside their senior staff, maintenance workers and the store's owner.
Mrs. Betty Slocombe (played by Mollie Sugden) is the Head of the Ladies Department.
Mrs. Slocombe was born Mary Elizabeth Jennifer Rachel Abergavenny Yiddell in 1926 in Blackpool. She frequently dyes her hair unusual colours such as lime green, bright blue or orange. Throughout the series, her husband was alluded to have either left Mrs. Slocombe, or was possibly arrested by the Fraud Squad.
She lived with her cat, Tiddles, which she referred to as "my pussy;" this was the source of many a double entendre, most of which Mrs. Slocombe herself completely misses. Mrs. Slocombe also tries to use received pronunciation, but when exasperated or annoyed, she reveals more than a trace of a Northern accent. Mrs. Slocombe's catch phrases were "...and I am unanimous in that..." and "Weak as water!" She often mispronounces long words, rendering, for example, "obstreperous" as "obstropulous" and "organism" as "orgasm" and "centimeters" as "centipedes". She spent much of her free time prowling public houses, roller rinks and discos with her friend Mrs. Axelby, but due to her middle age, men are less and less attracted to her, which she dismisses as politeness on the part of all men.
A running joke on the part of Mr. Lucas is to suggest that Mrs. Slocombe was a bit wilder in her younger days. At one point she mentions a wartime experience of "being flung flat on me back on Clapham Common by a land mine", claiming "the German Air Force was responsible" (prompting Mr. Lucas to reply "all the other times she was flat on her back, the American Air Force was responsible").
She is very vain about her age, once claiming to be "only 46" and another time claiming to be in her 30s. However, in the episode "Fifty Years On", the staff determine that she was born in 1926, and in "Founders Day" Mr. Lucas announces her year of birth as 1926. In "The Junior" Captain Peacock threatens to reveal that she worked as a nippy, implying that she was at least in her late teens during WWII.
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