Yesterday upon the stair...

...I met a man who wasn't there.  Yes I'm sure we all know the rhyme.  A post on a site I look at from time to time had an article on TV personalities that never in fact appear.  It's an American site but I wondered about UK examples.  And the two which immediately sprang to mind were both wives - Captain Mainwaring's "Elizabeth" and of course Arthur Daley's "'er indoors".  But I can go back further than that to "Budgie" back in the 70s where "Mrs Endell'l 'ave a tomato juice" was almost a catch-phrase  - the point being that we never saw her.  Is this sexist??