Mrs Margaret Sainsbury

The star of the first-ever British fly-on-the-wall documentary of a working class family from Whitley died suddenly at her home on Sunday evening.

Margaret Sainsbury, who as Margaret Wilkins was the formidable matriarch in the 1974 documentary The Family, collapsed at home in Finchampstead with her second husband Albert Sainsbury at her side.

Mrs Sainsbury, 73, of Woodmoor, is thought to have had a heart attack.

Her elder daughter Marian Hodder, 54, who lives in Central Reading, said: “This has come as a tremendous shock. Mum has been in fairly good health but had recently been to her GP feeling unwell. But to be rung up and told that she had collapsed and died was naturally a very big shock for everyone.”

Mrs Hodder said she would be announcing the details of her mother’s funeral arrangements later.

The documentary of Margaret and her then husband Terry Wilkins, who she divorced a year after the programme, was aired as a 12-part series produced by Paul Watson.

When asked if her mother ever regretted exposing the family to the very earliest form of reality TV, Mrs Hodder said: “Absolutely not.”

The documentary was an honest portrayal of ordinary family life in Reading which had a huge influence on both factual and fictional television which followed it.

The Wilkins family, who lived in Whitley Street, were attacked in the tabloid press at the time for their strong language and for publicly airing what were taboo subjects.

TV clean-up campaigner Mary Whitehouse called for the programme to be banned.

But filmmaker Mr Watson said he wanted to “make a film about the kind of people who never got on television”.

He is credited with giving the working class a voice for the first time on TV and the documentary is regarded as a groundbreaking contribution to broadcasting history.