Julie Stevens, gamine sidekick to Steed in The Avengers and later a Play School presenter

​Julie Stevens, the actress and broadcaster, who has died aged 87, was a sidekick to John Steed (Patrick Macnee) in The Avengers and, less glamorously, to Humpty, Jemima and Hamble in the children’s series Play School.

From 1964 to 1978 she was part of a line-up of Play School presenters that included Rick Jones, Brian Cant, Carol Chell, Derek Griffiths, Johnny Ball and Floella Benjamin – although the humans often played second fiddle to the perennial cast of soft toys.

“The hardest thing about the show was getting the toys to stay up straight,” Julie Stevens recalled. “I mutilated Hamble the doll by sticking a knitting needle in her to keep her steady.”

Leading the viewers in sing-songs was Julie Stevens’s forte, but her deficiencies in other areas proved to be an advantage. “I was very nervous at first because my drawing is so bad,” she told The Daily Telegraph in 1971. “But the children’s delighted reaction to my efforts [was]: ‘Oh, I can draw better than that.’ My bad drawing became an asset.”

Play School was watched by more than 70 per cent of Britain’s two-to-four-year-olds, and its fans were devoted. When the six-year-old P​rince Andrew visited the set, Julie Stevens told him he was becoming “a bit old for Play School – you’ll be watching other programmes soon.” The wilful young Royal demurred: “I am going to watch it for ever and ever and ever.”

She summarised Play School’s appeal in 2004: “It used, for the first time, imaginative play, music and abstract concepts for young children, while never talking down to them. They felt that the programme was theirs and a wh​ole generation looks back to those days with gratitude and affection. I know because I meet some of them pretty often when I am out and about.”

She was born Julia Bullas in Prestwich, Greater Manchester, on De​cember 20 1936. Educated at Stand Grammar School, she went on to be a nurse at Manchester Royal Infirmary. While still a teenager she appeared on the television talent show Bid for Fame, singing and doing impressions, and secured a contract with ABC.

Adopting the professional name Julie Stevens, she became a ubiquitous television face in the late 1950s: “I … did everything – advertising magazines, a quiz show called For Love or Money with Des O’Connor, a programme about pets with Rolf Harris.” She was initially best-known as host of ABC’s weekly Sunday Break, a religious discussion programme for teenagers with rock ‘n’ roll and skiffle interludes.

She went on to audition along with some 50 other actresses for the role of Venus Smith in the second series of The Avengers (1962-63); after she finished up in a shortlist of three with Angela Douglas and Vera Day, her singing ability got her the part.

​Venus was a nightclub chanteuse with a Twiggy-esque pixie haircut, a representative of ebullient 1960s working-class youth culture rather reluctantly charmed by the debonair secret agent Steed into assisting him in his missions.

The producers were testing out possible long-term sidekicks for Steed, and although Venus managed to save his life on one occasion by distracting a pair of villains with her affecting piano playing – another art in which Julie Stevens was proficient – she was dropped after six episodes in favour of the leather-clad martial arts expert Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman).

She went on to appear in Z-Cars and as Jim Dale’s love interest in Carry On Cleo (1964) before auditioning successfully for Play School. She missed its very first editions in April 1964 as she was giving birth to her son – she watched the first show, the inaugural programme on the fledgling BBC Two, from the maternity ward of Hammersmith Hospital – but made her debut the following month.

She also appeared in the spin-off Play Away, read stories on Watch with Mother and larked about in costume in Cabbages and Kings, a 1970s precursor to Horrible Histories. Her work for grown-ups included a starring role in the ITV sitcom Girls About Town (1970-71): “Julie Stevens over-acted valiantly in an attempt to animate the material,” was the Telegraph’s verdict. She also released a number of records.

In 1978, to her great dismay, Julie Stevens was dropped from Play School, although it continued for another decade. She went on to act occasionally in series such as Holby City and Doctors, but much of her later life was devoted to working as personal manager to Sir Harry Secombe – one of the figures, as it happened, whom she had impersonated in her television debut decades before.

In 1961 Julie Stevens married John White, also a television presenter. After their divorce she married the actor and stage director Michael Hucks in 1981; that marriage was dissolved in 2001. She is survived by the son and daughter of her first marriage.

Julie Stevens, born December 20 1936, died December 5 2024​