SHE starred in the River Hamble based Dallas-by-the-sea blockbuster Howards’ Way.

It captured the rich jet set life of the eighties but actress Dulcie Gray never forgot those who lived in a very different world, blighted by poverty.

Now Ms Gray, who died last November at the age of 95, has in her £1m will left a touching legacy to an African orphan she supported for 20 years.

She was married to actor Michael Denison, who died in 1998. The couple, who never had children, started sponsoring a five-year-old Kenyan boy in 1988. They paid £20 a month for him to go to school in the capital Nairobi through the charity SOS Children’s Villages.

They kept up the monthly payments until he left the care of the charity in 2008 after receiving a diploma in food and beverage studies.

Now she has remembered him in her will by putting £5,000 in a trust fund to be paid at the rate of £1,000 a year or more at the discretion of her executors.

She also left £5,000 to benefit other children in the SOS Children’s Villages.

Ms Gray, who played the role of Kate Harvey, became one of the best loved characters of the hit BBC series which was set in Bursledon .

Running from 1985 to 1990, the series captured the mood of the eighties when yuppies and materialism was riding on the crest of the wave.

Every Sunday millions of viewers were kept on the edge of their seats as they watched the drama of power games being played out on the up market yachting shores of the River Hamble.

Ms Gray played the occasionally fearsome and irascible mother of ruthless business woman Jan Howard.