As time went by people said 'too much', 'too over-the-top even for Bet', but Tony and I always knew it wasn't, and Bet's fan mail proved us right." She has also said that Bet was always dressed in a 'common as muck way'. Goodyear has stated on different occasions that she would research the typical salary her character would be on for her barmaid job, as she wanted her character only to appear in outfits that she could realistically afford. This was to make her character credible and believable. This was where the leopard skin style of clothing came from because it was considered naughty, racy and very sexy in her character's early days and was deemed very affordable, staying true to her character. As actress Julie Goodyear got older, Bet's physical appearance matured. No longer the one to wear miniskirts and wear her hair long, she adopted a somewhat infamous wardrobe in that many of her outfits were leopard skin print, which to this day is one of Bet's defining attributes. During the 1970s, Goodyear instructed makeup to style her hair in to her trade mark beehive hair style. She either wore her hair down during the 1970s or the beehive or various styles. A few years later she asked for a hair piece to be styled into a beehive, then pinning it over her own hair. When Bet married Alec, Goodyear decided to wear short curly wigs; she would do some scenes with her in long hair. She continued to use short wigs until 1992 when she brought her much loved famous trade mark beehive back. As Goodyear's hair turned white, she also started to bleach her hair and style it in a beehive fashion. In a survey published in the Manchester Evening News in April 2007, Bet's beehive was voted the worst haircut in soap history. In the early years of her beehive hairdo, Goodyear would have her real hair combed back and she sprayed a large amount of hair lacquer onto it, though after a few years she received a false hairpiece to keep up the image onscreen. Her appearance was also the inspiration for Freddie Mercury's drag character in the music video for I Want To Break Free, by rock band Queen. Reception Inside Soap magazine readers voted Bet as 'Greatest ever Landlady.' In Dorothy Catherine Anger's book "Other worlds: society seen through soap opera"