The much-loved TV personality, actress, singer and stage performer was regarded as one of the earliest stars of commercial television in Britain, having been present when ITV launched in 1955.

Her death was announced this week through a tribute in Intermission magazine, which described Sheila as “Britain’s longest serving performer”.

The description reflected an extraordinary career that began when she was only three years old and continued for decades across television, musical theatre, variety and the West End.

For Sheila, the arrival of ITV marked another major chapter in a career that had already seen her perform on some of Britain’s most prestigious stages.

When ITV launched on September 22, 1955, Sheila was there on opening night.

The following evening, she began Friday’s Girl, a short programme built around her singing and performance talents.

The programme quickly established her as one of the first recognisable faces of Britain’s new commercial television era.

An obituary for her late husband, director Charles Reading, reported that Sheila became the first popular singer to top the television ratings, with Friday’s Girl attracting an extraordinary audience of around 12 million viewers.

At a time when television was still establishing itself as a central part of British life, that level of popularity made Sheila a genuine household name.

Her career was not limited to singing.

She later became a presenter as well as a performer, appearing on early television programmes including On View, which ran from 1957 until 1962.

She also went on to appear in In My View, further establishing herself as a familiar presence on the rapidly expanding television landscape.

Her career in entertainment, however, had started long before the arrival of ITV.

Sheila won her first professional role at just three years old, beginning a life in showbusiness that would eventually take her from childhood performances to the West End and television studios.

She originally trained and worked as a singer, musical-theatre performer and variety entertainer before making the transition into television.

Her first West End appearance came when she was only 16.

In 1943, she appeared in Strike A New Note, where her dance partner was a young Eric Morecambe, who would later become one of Britain’s most celebrated comedians.

The production gave Sheila an early connection to a golden generation of British entertainment figures.

Her stage career continued with appearances in major Palladium productions, including Happy And Glorious with Tommy Trinder and Out Of This World with Frankie Howerd.

Those productions placed her alongside some of the biggest names in British variety and comedy, helping to establish her reputation as a versatile performer capable of moving between different forms of entertainment.

By the time commercial television arrived in the 1950s, Sheila was already an established performer with years of stage experience behind her.

That experience proved valuable as the new medium searched for personalities who could connect with audiences.

Sheila became one of those personalities.

Her success with Friday’s Girl demonstrated the appetite for entertainment programmes built around charismatic performers, while her later presenting work showed that she was equally comfortable carrying a television programme.

Sheila’s career also coincided with a period of enormous change in British entertainment.

Television was moving rapidly from a novelty enjoyed by relatively small numbers of households into a mass medium capable of reaching millions.

The success of Friday’s Girl demonstrated precisely how powerful television could become.

An audience of 12 million was extraordinary for the period, and Sheila’s popularity helped make her one of the recognisable stars of the early ITV era.

Behind the scenes, Sheila also became connected to one of the major figures of British post-war entertainment.

She met Charles Reading while working in television at Associated-Rediffusion.

Reading had an extensive career of his own as an actor, theatre designer, director and producer, and was closely associated with influential impresario Val Parnell.

The pair married in 1957 and went on to have two daughters, Sally and Jane.

Charles remained an important figure in the entertainment industry throughout his career and worked on major productions, including Glamorous Nights at Drury Lane.

The production featured Sheila, who by then had become an established veteran of the stage despite still being relatively young.

The couple remained married until Charles died in 1999.

Sheila was previously engaged to magician and entertainer Peter Waring, although their planned marriage was eventually called off.

Her life, both professionally and personally, was therefore closely intertwined with the world of British entertainment.

Yet it was her longevity that ultimately made her career particularly remarkable.

Many performers from the first generation of commercial television disappeared from the public eye as the industry changed.

Sheila continued working.

Her later television credits included appearances in some of Britain’s best-known programmes, demonstrating her ability to remain active across multiple generations of television.

She appeared in Crossroads, the long-running soap opera that became a fixture of British television.

She also appeared in Emmerdale, another programme that would go on to become one of the country’s most enduring television dramas.

Her credits extended into shows such as Shelley, Minder and The Good Old Days.

Each appearance represented another chapter in a career that had begun in the theatre before the Second World War and continued through the arrival of television, the expansion of ITV and the transformation of British popular culture.

The sheer range of her work is part of what made Sheila’s career so unusual.

She had been a child performer, a singer, a dancer, a musical-theatre star, a variety entertainer, a presenter and an actress.

She had performed live on the West End stage, worked in television during its earliest commercial years and remained active long after many of her contemporaries had retired.

Her career also provides a window into a vanished era of British entertainment.

The world Sheila entered as a child was dominated by live performance, variety theatres and stage productions.

Television was still decades away from becoming the dominant entertainment medium.

By the time she appeared on ITV, the industry was changing rapidly, creating new opportunities for performers who could adapt to the demands of broadcasting.

Sheila did exactly that.

Her work on Friday’s Girl helped make her one of the earliest television stars of the commercial era, while her later appearances allowed audiences to continue seeing her on screen for many years.

Her death at the age of 99 marks the passing of one of the last links to that pioneering generation.

Although she may be less familiar to modern audiences than some of the stars who followed her, Sheila’s contribution came at a crucial moment in British broadcasting.

She was there when ITV began, helping establish the kind of entertainment programming that would become a defining part of commercial television.

Her story also demonstrates just how long a career in entertainment could last when built on a foundation of versatility and stage experience.

From her first role at three years old to her West End debut at 16, from dancing alongside a young Eric Morecambe to achieving enormous television audiences, Sheila experienced almost every major stage of Britain’s entertainment revolution.

She later watched television evolve from a new technology into a central part of everyday life and continued appearing on screen as generations of viewers came and went.

Sheila is survived by her daughters Sally and Jane.

Her husband Charles died more than two decades ago, but the legacy of their shared lives in British entertainment remains part of her story.

For those who knew her career, her death represents the end of an extraordinary professional journey.

Sheila Mathews was not simply present at the beginning of ITV. She was one of the performers who helped give the new broadcaster a human face.

Her remarkable career stretched from the theatres of the 1940s through the birth of commercial television and into the modern television era.

At 99, she leaves behind a legacy that is almost as long as the history of British commercial television itself.