An elderly former actor who admitted killing his dying wife will not have to serve time behind bars.

Stuart Mungall, 71, of Hendham Road, Tooting, was given a 12-month prison sentence suspended for two years at the Old Bailey this morning.

He will be supervised by the probabtion service for the duration.

In July, Mungall admitted killing his seriously ill wife after struggling to cope with her terminal condition.

Mungall, who starred in Yorkie bar adverts in the 1970s, smothered 69-year-old Joan Mungall with a pillow at their home on December 3 last year.

His wife, a close friend of famous actress Jane Asher, was suffering from Pick's disease, a neuro-degenerative condition with similar symptoms to Alzheimer's.

Mungall was charged with murder but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The plea was accepted by prosecutors after psychiatrists found he had been suffering from a "depressive episode" at the time.

In July the court had heard Mungall, who also appeared in episodes of The Bill, Casualty and Dempsey and Makepeace and on stage during a successful career, phoned his brother, daughter and a close friend to admit what he had done.

When police were called to the couple's home, he said: "She's not in pain anymore. She was in such pain last night.

"Doctors say do this and that but they cannot make it better, so I made it better."

He also told a doctor: "I couldn't cope any more. I killed her. It's been four years now."

Mrs Mungall, herself a successful actress who had worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, first suffered medical problems in 2008 when she developed epilepsy.

In June 2009, doctors discovered she was suffering from a degenerative brain condition - and by the autumn of last year she was housebound and effectively bed-ridden, and was almost entirely dependent on her husband.

Her worsening health caused the "devoted couple" to close the Patio garden centre business they had owned in Battersea and Tooting last year.

Prosecutor barrister Mark Dennis QC told the court in July: "There is no suggestion that his wife wanted to end her life prematurely, nor had she encouraged the defendant to act as he did."

The Recorder of London, Judge Peter Beaumont QC, said the 71 year-old's case posed a "very difficult sentencing exercise for the court".