Sim's wife, Naomi Merlith Sim [née Plaskitt] (1913–1999), actress and writer, was born on 30 November 1913 at 30 The Embankment, Bedford, the younger daughter of Hugh Plaskitt (1880–1917), an alcoholic solicitor, and his Scottish wife and cousin, Norah Frances (1880–1963), daughter of Colonel David Cowie, army officer. They separated in 1913 and Norah Plaskitt brought up the daughters; Hugh Plaskitt died on 12 November 1917 of malaria contracted while on active service as a lance-corporal in the Army Service Corps in Africa. Naomi was educated at Bedford high school, a school in Callander, Perthshire, and St George's High School for Girls, Edinburgh. Keen on acting, at twelve she was in the Scottish Community Drama Association production of Yeats's The Land of Heart's Desire. There she met and fell in love with Sim. At fourteen she left school and became a pupil at his school of drama and speech training; she later became his secretary. In 1930 she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but after her two years there gave up any thought of an acting career: ‘Alastair was always the most important thing in my life' (The Independent, 16 Aug 1999). Following their marriage she devoted herself to his career. They appeared together in one film, Wedding Group (1936). Generous and hospitable they quasi-adopted several young people, including George Cole (later in the St Trinian's films and the television series Minder). After Sim's death Naomi wrote an autobiographical memoir, Dance and Skylark: Fifty Years with Alastair Sim (1987), and contributed to The Oldie magazine. She died on 3 August 1999 at Forrigan Bungalow, Newnham Hill, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, following a stroke. She is survived by her daughter, Merlith.

Michael Gilbert, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography