Having bid farewell to Vera’s old mac, Brenda Blethyn is embracing power-dressing as Emma Harte, the formidable tycoon at the heart of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novels
Add A Woman of Substance to your watchlist There’s a barnstorming finale to Brenda Blethyn’s new series, A Woman of Substance. Octogenarian tycoon Emma Harte, frocked in immaculate royal-purple and a heavy gold necklace, confronts her family with deadly calm. “There’s a fatal flaw in your scheme – you underestimated me!” Think of a female version of Brian Cox in Succession. “I really get my teeth into that scene,” she says. “Trump them all. Sorry to use that word...” Even more fun is the final twist that follows, with a masterclass in close-up face-acting. Breezy, friendly, full of life and only a few days off her 80th birthday, Blethyn loved the story based on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel. “It’s so rich, it’s luscious.” It’s the ultimate rolling, readable popular saga: a 1900s Yorkshire kitchen maid, pregnant and abandoned by the young master, whose gift for dressmaking and commercial acuity builds, by the 1960s, to a global business and a troublesome dynasty. Channel 4’s 1984 adaptation had Deborah Kerr as the old Emma and Jenny Seagrove as her young self. This sprawling, spectacular new version has Blethyn as matriarch and boss, looking back on her life as she stalks through her New York HQ to challenge her boardroom. She smoulders with grand old-lady fury, a touch of Margaret Thatcher as she deals with ungrateful offspring and rekindles the furious feud with the rich Fairley family whose maid she once was. The story is a ferocious one about revenge and the brutalities of an early-20th-century class struggle. She also loved watching the moorland scenes with Jessica Reynolds playing Emma’s younger self. “She’s great. Look,” she says, pulling out a photo. “I found some old pictures of me and at her age I do actually look like her – the eyes. The producers hadn’t even seen those photos, but must have thought it worked. “Did you notice that they shot the New York locations in Liverpool,” she adds gleefully. “The Cunard Building is the same both sides of the Atlantic! At one point, I got there and saw this huge department store and thought, ‘Ooh, might do some shopping, but of course it was part of our set! New York in the 1960s, yellow cabs, sound effects, the lot.” The 1960s upmarket mature-couture (“But not shoulder pads, thank goodness,” she laughs) was a nice change, too. Having delighted the nation for 14 years as Vera, the dishevelled but brilliant chief inspector in Northumbria, “the glamour in this was wonderful. Our designer made these terrific clothes. Actually, yesterday I was in Newcastle as Vera, back in the costume. The poster headline was ‘Lewis Capaldi, Brenda Blethyn and Sting’. It was for a charity, Sunday for Sammy, for young people who want a profession in the arts. So there I was in the old mac, hat and boots, but probably anybody could have been inside.” She has relished being the triumphant Vera, and now Emma Harte. Before that, “I’d always tended to be cast as put-upon people.” But both Vera and Emma Harte have to depict an acute intelligence. How does she approach that? “I don’t have to show the thinking, I just think. And actually, I do love solving problems. I’m a member of the Times Crossword Club. My brother races me every day to do the cryptic puzzle first. He won the other day. As kids we didn’t have a TV and sometimes not the radio – no money.” (The radio licence was only abolished in 1971.) “But Dad set us brainteasers and puzzles to do, all the time.” Her own parents were not so distant from fictional Emma: her mother was a kitchen maid who worked up to lady’s maid, who met Blethyn’s father when he was a chauffeur for the same family. “Hard, long hours, working all the time, polishing grates, the silver, scrubbing.” Once her parents were married and living in Ramsgate in Kent, where Blethyn was later born and raised, the pair left “service” and found other work. “Mum had several jobs, morning and afternoon. She was a cleaner, cleaned the council offices. Dad drove for the Corporation. She’d take the housekeeping out of his pay packet, three pounds a week or something. There were nine of us. I was the youngest but the oldest ones had moved on by then.” In the series, Emma’s mother urges her to “Get out, and get on!” Did Blethyn’s mother do the same? “Yes! They both said, ‘You can do anything you want to do if you work for it. You’re as good as anybody else.’ So we’ve all worked hard.” Did she have books and stories, the stimulus an actor needs from childhood? “They both told us stories. My dad would talk about being in India in the Royal Artillery, walk about telling stories, acting them out. Perhaps about the desert, adventures, people in delirium. One of his duties was driving the dustcart, and he’d collect periodicals, books and comics that people threw out… he loved the Reader’s Digest. Mam would also tell us about her first job, collecting acorns for a pig farmer... is that right?” Yes, I tell her, captivated at this postcard from the 1930s. Acorns would have been used to make food that pigs love. Her father also taught her how to express herself – she suddenly cites a remembered string of long words he quoted mockingly: “Promulgating esoteric cogitations, beware of ponderous cogency... No, just say what you want to say in your words, don’t be pompous!” By this time I half wish I could time-travel and give both her long-gone parents OBEs. But instead, we move on to Blethyn’s actual career. She trained as a stenographer with Pitman’s shorthand – “I can still do it, useful when you’re on the phone” – then various office jobs, eventually ending up in the British Rail freight marketing department. “On the train today, one of the trolley ladies asked, did they let you keep your pass? No... but I did have one then, travelled everywhere! One day a lady came in, said she was from the Euston Players and they were doing a competition, a one-act play, and someone was sick. I said no, but she said, ‘Oh, it’s only one line.’ ” What, I ask, was the line? Blethyn promptly does it, word perfect, with expression. “It’s a real dirty old night. Evans the post says the mist is right down to the path.” She was enthralled with theatre from that moment. “I think we came last in the competition. But oh, the different skills – someone making the frocks, someone doing the lights, the set, someone selling tickets. And the more you do, the better you get. People said I should try going professional. I had no clue I’d ever be in televison or film. I didn’t tell my parents until I knew it was the right thing.” We veer off in wonderment at how much harder it would be today for a young aspiring actress to go from an office desk to studying at drama school for a year (“I had a grant!” Blethyn remembers) and then head almost straight onto the National Theatre stage. “I just don’t understand the lack of investment in theatre and arts. And all the students, they’re stuck with loans and these huge interest rates.” She is still a great champion of am-dram. “I’m a patron of the Enfield Players in Derby where my brother lives. No matter what your profession, theatre training is good. All the different skills and punctuality – ‘Don’t be late, you’re relying on other people, they’re relying on you.’ ” She remembers she once brought her parents to the National Theatre. “I took them along the miles of corridors and Dad said, ‘This must have cost a million pounds!’ He had that old twangy accent, born in 1894. And when I was offered a film job in America, A River Runs through It, my mum was in hospital. So I said don’t worry, I won’t go. But she said no, do go! Because it was directed by Robert Redford and she loved him. He sent her a photo saying, ‘Love to Louisa’.” So which does she prefer now, stage or screen? “I do love the stage, it’s the luxury of rehearsal and playing the part chronologically, not like in film or TV doing scenes in the wrong order, always having to remember what you don’t know. And I love an audience: that warmth, it’s like scoring a goal. But it’s hard to commit far ahead at my age. If it was, ‘Ooh, next week could you step in?’, I probably would.” Does she go to the theatre? “There was a time my niece came to stay and we had a whole week, matinees and evenings. I’m planning on doing that again.” As for the beautifully dressed, ferocious role of Emma in A Woman of Substance, who knows? After that final twist, what is she showing in that close-up? “Oh, she’ll be thinking of a way out.” After all, this is just the first of a seven-book series, and the next one – Hold the Dream – also features the old battleaxe. If it does get made, you may rest assured there’s still plenty of go in Brenda Blethyn, OBE.
Vera icon Brenda Blethyn talks new drama’s explosive finale: "Trump them all. Sorry to use that word..."
Having bid farewell to Vera’s old mac, Brenda Blethyn is embracing power-dressing as Emma Harte, the formidable tycoon at the heart of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novels.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. There’s a barnstorming finale to Brenda Blethyn’s new series, A Woman of Substance. Octogenarian tycoon Emma Harte, frocked in immaculate royal-purple and a heavy gold necklace, confronts her family with deadly calm. "There’s a fatal flaw in your scheme – you underestimated me!" Think of a female version of Brian Cox in Succession. "I really get my teeth into that scene," she says. "Trump them all. Sorry to use that word..." Even more fun is the final twist that follows, with a masterclass in close-up face-acting. Breezy, friendly, full of life and only a few days off her 80th birthday, Blethyn loved the story based on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel. “It’s so rich, it’s luscious.” It’s the ultimate rolling, readable popular saga: a 1900s Yorkshire kitchen maid, pregnant and abandoned by the young master, whose gift for dressmaking and commercial acuity builds, by the 1960s, to a global business and a troublesome dynasty. Channel 4’s 1984 adaptation had Deborah Kerr as the old Emma and Jenny Seagrove as her young self. This sprawling, spectacular new version has Blethyn as matriarch and boss, looking back on her life as she stalks through her New York HQ to challenge her boardroom. She smoulders with grand old-lady fury, a touch of Margaret Thatcher as she deals with ungrateful offspring and rekindles the furious feud with the rich Fairley family whose maid she once was. The story is a ferocious one about revenge and the brutalities of an early-20th-century class struggle. She also loved watching the moorland scenes with Jessica Reynolds playing Emma’s younger self. “She’s great. Look,” she says, pulling out a photo. “I found some old pictures of me and at her age I do actually look like her – the eyes. The producers hadn’t even seen those photos, but must have thought it worked. “Did you notice that they shot the New York locations in Liverpool,” she adds gleefully. “The Cunard Building is the same both sides of the Atlantic! At one point, I got there and saw this huge department store and thought, ‘Ooh, might do some shopping, but of course it was part of our set! New York in the 1960s, yellow cabs, sound effects, the lot.” The 1960s upmarket mature-couture (“But not shoulder pads, thank goodness,” she laughs) was a nice change, too. Having delighted the nation for 14 years as Vera, the dishevelled but brilliant chief inspector in Northumbria, “the glamour in this was wonderful. Our designer made these terrific clothes. Actually, yesterday I was in Newcastle as Vera, back in the costume. The poster headline was ‘Lewis Capaldi, Brenda Blethyn and Sting’. It was for a charity, Sunday for Sammy, for young people who want a profession in the arts. So there I was in the old mac, hat and boots, but probably anybody could have been inside.” She has relished being the triumphant Vera, and now Emma Harte. Before that, “I’d always tended to be cast as put-upon people.” But both Vera and Emma Harte have to depict an acute intelligence. How does she approach that? “I don’t have to show the thinking, I just think. And actually, I do love solving problems. I’m a member of the Times Crossword Club. My brother races me every day to do the cryptic puzzle first. He won the other day. As kids we didn’t have a TV and sometimes not the radio – no money.” (The radio licence was only abolished in 1971.) “But Dad set us brainteasers and puzzles to do, all the time.” Her own parents were not so distant from fictional Emma: her mother was a kitchen maid who worked up to lady’s maid, who met Blethyn’s father when he was a chauffeur for the same family. “Hard, long hours, working all the time, polishing grates, the silver, scrubbing.” Once her parents were married and living in Ramsgate in Kent, where Blethyn was later born and raised, the pair left “service” and found other work. “Mum had several jobs, morning and afternoon. She was a cleaner, cleaned the council offices. Dad drove for the Corporation. She’d take the housekeeping out of his pay packet, three pounds a week or something. There were nine of us. I was the youngest but the oldest ones had moved on by then.” In the series, Emma’s mother urges her to “Get out, and get on!” Did Blethyn’s mother do the same? “Yes! They both said, ‘You can do anything you want to do if you work for it. You’re as good as anybody else.’ So we’ve all worked hard.” Did she have books and stories, the stimulus an actor needs from childhood? “They both told us stories. My dad would talk about being in India in the Royal Artillery, walk about telling stories, acting them out. Perhaps about the desert, adventures, people in delirium. One of his duties was driving the dustcart, and he’d collect periodicals, books and comics that people threw out… he loved the Reader’s Digest. Mam would also tell us about her first job, collecting acorns for a pig farmer... is that right?” Yes, I tell her, captivated at this postcard from the 1930s. Acorns would have been used to make food that pigs love. Her father also taught her how to express herself – she suddenly cites a remembered string of long words he quoted mockingly: “Promulgating esoteric cogitations, beware of ponderous cogency... No, just say what you want to say in your words, don’t be pompous!” By this time I half wish I could time-travel and give both her long-gone parents OBEs. But instead, we move on to Blethyn’s actual career. She trained as a stenographer with Pitman’s shorthand – “I can still do it, useful when you’re on the phone” – then various office jobs, eventually ending up in the British Rail freight marketing department. “On the train today, one of the trolley ladies asked, did they let you keep your pass? No... but I did have one then, travelled everywhere! One day a lady came in, said she was from the Euston Players and they were doing a competition, a one-act play, and someone was sick. I said no, but she said, ‘Oh, it’s only one line.’ ” What, I ask, was the line? Blethyn promptly does it, word perfect, with expression. “It’s a real dirty old night. Evans the post says the mist is right down to the path.” She was enthralled with theatre from that moment. “I think we came last in the competition. But oh, the different skills – someone making the frocks, someone doing the lights, the set, someone selling tickets. And the more you do, the better you get. People said I should try going professional. I had no clue I’d ever be in television or film. I didn’t tell my parents until I knew it was the right thing.” We veer off in wonderment at how much harder it would be today for a young aspiring actress to go from an office desk to studying at drama school for a year (“I had a grant!” Blethyn remembers) and then head almost straight onto the National Theatre stage. “I just don’t understand the lack of investment in theatre and arts. And all the students, they’re stuck with loans and these huge interest rates.” She is still a great champion of am-dram. “I’m a patron of the Enfield Players in Derby where my brother lives. No matter what your profession, theatre training is good. All the different skills and punctuality – ‘Don’t be late, you’re relying on other people, they’re relying on you.’ ” She remembers she once brought her parents to the National Theatre. “I took them along the miles of corridors and Dad said, ‘This must have cost a million pounds!’ He had that old twangy accent, born in 1894. And when I was offered a film job in America, A River Runs Through It, my mum was in hospital. So I said don’t worry, I won’t go. But she said no, do go! Because it was directed by Robert Redford and she loved him. He sent her a photo saying, ‘Love to Louisa’.” So which does she prefer now, stage or screen? “I do love the stage, it’s the luxury of rehearsal and playing the part chronologically, not like in film or TV doing scenes in the wrong order, always having to remember what you don’t know. And I love an audience: that warmth, it’s like scoring a goal. But it’s hard to commit far ahead at my age. If it was, ‘Ooh, next week could you step in?’, I probably would.” Does she go to the theatre? “There was a time my niece came to stay and we had a whole week, matinees and evenings. I’m planning on doing that again.” As for the beautifully dressed, ferocious role of Emma in A Woman of Substance, who knows? After that final twist, what is she showing in that close-up? “Oh, she’ll be thinking of a way out.” After all, this is just the first of a seven-book series, and the next one – Hold the Dream – also features the old battleaxe. If it does get made, you may rest assured there’s still plenty of go in Brenda Blethyn, OBE. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. A Woman of Substance begins on Wednesday 11 March on Channel 4. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Libby Purves talks to Ambridge’s finest following the dark story that has unfolded to mark 75 years of The Archers
The Archers is on Sunday-Friday at 7pm on Radio 4. Add it to your collection It began in 2024 when Alice Carter, an intermittently recovering alcoholic from the prosperous Aldridge family, fell asleep drunk in the passenger seat of her car. Her nephew-in-law George Grundy, a farmworker’s son, couldn’t resist offering to drive her home (it was a flash car). But Alice half-woke and clawed drunkenly for the door: it made George swerve and knock another car, bearing Mick, Joy and Fallon, from the bridge into the River Am. George dived in for a heroic rescue but afterwards panicked and moved the blotto Alice into the driver’s seat. Fallon lost the baby she didn’t know she was expecting, and everyone’s trauma rolled on for weeks. Alice was riven by guilt, though she couldn’t remember driving. George finally admitted the truth: when his grandparents Neil and Susan reported it, he got sent to prison for eight months. On release, he found most of Ambridge pretty unforgiving. Jobless and barred from the Bull, he ranted at all of them on New Year’s Eve. Following a conversation with the now saintly, forgiving Alice however, he resolved to put the past behind him and make good. Hollie Chapman, who plays Alice, explains, “The tables turned, and when she went from being the drunk to someone giving George wise advice, the scene felt really emotional, and I nearly lost it.” Angus Stobie who voices George and joined Chapman on RT’s photoshoot to mark the dramatic storyline for the soap’s 75th anniversary, agrees that something changed in the characters’ dynamic. “I think George is slightly in awe of Alice and how she handled the whole situation. He also then means to change, family is at the centre of it all, and he wants to work and give back and provide.” But as George walked to his parents’ house in the dark that night, someone followed him, whacked him on the head with a wine bottle and left him for dead. Thankfully George recovered, and for weeks listeners heard characters suspecting one another of the attempted murder: Jolene the landlady; Fallon the pub cook and her policeman lover; George’s sister Keira; Alice’s dad Brian; Joy and her boyfriend Mick; and Amber’s roughneck father. Now we learn it was actually – shock! – Alice’s illegitimate half-brother Ruairi, who aspires to take over the family farm. Will Brian, in his 80s with angina, continue to pretend it was him to save his son? Will Ruairi confess? Will George lose his rag again? We asked Chapman, Stobie and some of the other actors who play these key figures how they feel about the dramatic revelation and what it means for the future of their characters in Ambridge. Charles Collingwood plays Brian Aldridge I was let in on the secret about Ruairi before everybody else, and sworn to secrecy. Everyone was saying it would be me who did it. But really! Brian could barely lift a bottle — except up to his lips! I loved the great scene with George, when Brian decides to cover for Ruairi. And then the one with Ruairi! Alice is Brian’s favourite child, he adores her. But remember, he has daughters and a stepdaughter and always longed for a son. Ruairi is the apple of his eye. Look how he treats him, compared to poor Adam [Brian’s stepson]. He’s always soft with his children. It’ll be fun to have him protecting his boy, who he’s never admitted has done a single thing wrong all his life. But I certainly don’t want Brian to go to prison! The series can’t have two people in jail in six months, and poor Brian is 82. If he were to fade away silently in Wormwood Scrubs, it’d be the end of my excessive wine-drinking at weekends. Back in the 1980s, they nearly wrote out the Aldridges for being a happy, wealthy family with no problems. But then they gave Brian a romantic wandering eye and the affair with Siobhan, from which Ruairi was born. Crises are an actor’s dream: the hard scenes to play are the ones where you’re walking across a field of not-quite-ripe oilseed rape. Sunny Ormonde plays Lilian Bellamy Lilian certainly could never forgive George. I might think he’d had a hard time, but Lilian never would. Sunny is nicer than Lilian, definitely. Now she’s lost her mother Peggy and sister Jennifer, she’s developing into the matriarch, a tigress protecting Alice. Of course, she’s highly suspicious about Brian, always had a feeling that he’s unreliable, after he cheated on Jennifer. But Lilian’s also never had much of a relationship with Ruairi, only when he was a child. She thought Jennifer an absolute saint for taking him on. And she felt a connection with Alice, because Lilian’s father was an alcoholic, and she herself could have gone that way… Would she agree to protect Ruairi? Interesting one. She might, you know! Blood is thicker than water, though he’s just her step-nephew-in-law. Hollie Champan plays Alice Carter Alice is very protective of her father Brian, and worried about his health. She wouldn’t believe he did it. But now… Ruairi is her half-brother! At first, I don’t think she’ll be able to believe that he did it, either. But she knows his ability to kick off, as he has done with her, more than once. Ruairi is certainly not going to be well liked. But remember that he and George are both damaged boys, from their upbringing, Ruairi lost his mother. Those memories are the advantage of a series playing out over a long period of real time. There are a lot of ways this could play out. Not necessarily criminal justice, but village justice — the people themselves might deal with it! Arthur Hughes plays Ruairi Donovan It was very exciting, the clandestine nature of the whodunnit. I was taken aside in November and told it was my character, when The Celebrity Traitors was at its height. I had to be careful in the studio not to give it away. Luckily, there was an ordinary plot to focus on, about wanting the farm… Ruairi’s an interesting person, striving for success. He really pushes himself, and has to deal with a lot: being Brian’s only blood son; having different mother figures; his sexuality. But he’s quite fierce, especially about his sister Alice, protecting her against George. He’s not in control of his emotions, and has a difficult relationship with alcohol. Would Ruairi cope with prison? It’s my eighth year playing him, and there’s a good relationship between The Archers and myself. I like it. I hope he’s not off to prison. And he’s pretty wily. He’ll find a way, he’s no fool. And entitled — oh, absolutely! With him it’s always, “I feel like I’m ready, so I’ll just have the farm, please.” It’s nice to have some antagonism going on. Perhaps a long-running thing with George when he finds out who hit him. I do like all this. I think Ruairi’s quite dark in many ways. I’d love more darkness in The Archers. Angus Stobie plays George Grundy How is Alice going to move past the place where George knows her family did that and they are all enabling and covering for Ruairi? I don’t know whether the class thing will come into play for George, but I do think there’s a scenario where the Aldridge family get away with it as usual. Maybe George will use it against them and gain sympathy across the village as the one who was smashed over the head. Might the Grundys take it as an opportunity? Make a power shift in Ambridge?
The Archers favourites star in 75th anniversary photoshoot and talk THAT dramatic George whodunnit reveal
Radio Times heads to Ambridge to take a deep dive into the latest plot twist.
This article originally appeared in Radio Times magazine. It began in 2024 when Alice Carter, an intermittently recovering alcoholic from the prosperous Aldridge family, fell asleep drunk in the passenger seat of her car. Her nephew-in-law George Grundy, a farmworker’s son, couldn’t resist offering to drive her home (it was a flash car). But Alice half-woke and clawed drunkenly for the door: it made George swerve and knock another car, bearing Mick, Joy and Fallon, from the bridge into the River Am. George dived in for a heroic rescue but afterwards panicked and moved the blotto Alice into the driver’s seat. Fallon lost the baby she didn’t know she was expecting, and everyone’s trauma rolled on for weeks. Alice was riven by guilt, though she couldn’t remember driving. George finally admitted the truth: when his grandparents Neil and Susan reported it, he got sent to prison for eight months. On release, he found most of Ambridge pretty unforgiving. Jobless and barred from the Bull, he ranted at all of them on New Year’s Eve. Following a conversation with the now saintly, forgiving Alice however, he resolved to put the past behind him and make good. Hollie Chapman, who plays Alice, explains, “The tables turned, and when she went from being the drunk to someone giving George wise advice, the scene felt really emotional, and I nearly lost it.” Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google Keep up to date on what’s worth watching with your favourite entertainment news from Radio Times – see more of our exclusive news and interviews featured prominently in Top Stories when using Google. Angus Stobie who voices George and joined Chapman on RT’s photoshoot to mark the dramatic storyline for the soap’s 75th anniversary, agrees that something changed in the characters’ dynamic. “I think George is slightly in awe of Alice and how she handled the whole situation. He also then means to change, family is at the centre of it all, and he wants to work and give back and provide.” But as George walked to his parents’ house in the dark that night, someone followed him, whacked him on the head with a wine bottle and left him for dead. Thankfully George recovered, and for weeks listeners heard characters suspecting one another of the attempted murder: Jolene the landlady; Fallon the pub cook and her policeman lover; George’s sister Keira; Alice’s dad Brian; Joy and her boyfriend Mick; and Amber’s roughneck father. Now we learn it was actually – shock! – Alice’s illegitimate half-brother Ruairi, who aspires to take over the family farm. Will Brian, in his 80s with angina, continue to pretend it was him to save his son? Will Ruairi confess? Will George lose his rag again? We asked Chapman, Stobie and some of the other actors who play these key figures how they feel about the dramatic revelation and what it means for the future of their characters in Ambridge. "There are a lot of ways this could play out. Not necessarily criminal justice, but village justice – the people themselves might deal with it!" Chapman reveals. She wasn't the first to learn of the latest Ambridge twist - that honour was bestowed on Brian star Charles Collingwood. "I was let in on the secret about Ruairi before everybody else, and sworn to secrecy," he explains. "Everyone was saying it would be me who did it. But really! Brian could barely lift a bottle – except up to his lips! I loved the great scene with George, when Brian decides to cover for Ruairi. And then the one with Ruairi! "Alice is Brian’s favourite child, he adores her. But remember, he has daughters and a stepdaughter and always longed for a son. Ruairi is the apple of his eye." He continues: "Back in the 1980s, they nearly wrote out the Aldridges for being a happy, wealthy family with no problems. But then they gave Brian a romantic wandering eye and the affair with Siobhan, from which Ruairi was born. Crises are an actor’s dream: the hard scenes to play are the ones where you’re walking across a field of not-quite-ripe oilseed rape." Arthur Hughes, who has voiced Ruairi since 2018, says that keeping the plot's outcome a secret what somewhat akin to the Beeb's reality TV show hit The Traitors. "It was very exciting, the clandestine nature of the whodunnit. I was taken aside in November and told it was my character, when The Celebrity Traitors was at its height. "I had to be careful in the studio not to give it away. Luckily, there was an ordinary plot to focus on, about wanting the farm…" Sunny Ormonde, better known to listeners as Ruairi's step-aunt Lillian Bellamy, adds: "Would she agree to protect Ruairi? Interesting one. She might, you know! Blood is thicker than water, though he’s just her step-nephew-in-law." Read more: The Archers confirmed for live 75th anniversary tour as fans can celebrate beloved radio drama Bridge Farm to be brought to life at new RHS show to celebrate The Archers' 75th anniversary Read our interviews with George, Ruairi, Alice, Brian and Lilian – or the actors who play them – in tomorrow's edition of Radio Times – subscribe here. Check out more of our Audio coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
From cake competitions to coercive control, The Archers has captivated its devoted listeners for 75 years and counting
The Archers is on Sunday-Friday at 7pm on Radio 4. Add it to your collection For all the gentle storylines about lemon-drizzle cake and family tiffs, there is something oddly majestic about The Archers and its survival for 75 years. It’s not about thriller events – though there’s a grand shock revelation coming very soon. The more solid pleasure of the radio drama lies in getting to know the characters over years, watching them arrive, reveal themselves, scrape against the others, maybe intermarry and bear children, with all recognisable tensions and worries and rows. And the reason that this tapestry of lives becomes sort of majestic is its sheer longevity: the following of fictional lives in real time. And in a largely urban society, it perhaps helps to remind those in cramped cities that food comes from hard work and green fields. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/02/08LI780404RT1619-NI-001-copy-2db3270.jpg" width="5527" height="3685" alt="Doris and Dan Archer (Gwen Berryman and Harry Oakes) celebrated the 1,000th epsiode in 1954." title="Vol 125 No 1619 November 19 1954 Programmes for November 21-27 NORTHERN IRELAND EDITIONThe 1000th Episode of The Archers, picture of Dan and Doris Archer" /> When you meet the long-serving actors they always stress that peculiar sense of living in a parallel reality. Pat Gallimore, who has played Tony Archer’s wife Pat for 52 years, says: “If anyone had told me at that audition in 1974 that I would be around for half a century, it’d be unbelievable. But like your own life it becomes part of you, surviving and thriving. A second life, a second family.” Gallimore’s character Pat is a classic example of a figure listeners have heard evolving over the years: from a Welsh-accented CND firebrand and leftist, who cancelled Tony’s Express for The Guardian, we’ve heard her support the farm going organic “way before it was mainstream”. The Archers was part of that new acceptance just as it reflects today’s rewilding enthusiasm. Her Pat also worked through a delicate handling of grief over her elder son’s death on a tractor. I remind her how furious farming people were when the then-editor giggled in an interview about his departure as a “fun” plot. “Yes,” says Gallimore thoughtfully, “we all know that things can hit people personally. It matters.” Another storyline that hit people personally, making national news, was the “coercive control” story between Pat’s daughter Helen and Rob. She portrayed a mother entirely unaware of what the listener – in genuinely troubling scenes – had heard happening. “I did argue a little bit at the time, asking why hadn’t Pat spotted what’s going on,” protests Gallimore. “But I suppose she had come to trust Rob, he helped on the farm.” That was a big story, but over 75 years there have been many smaller ones that gripped listeners, with news of them sometimes (as in my case) drawing back midlife listeners who got irritated or bored and gave up for two or three years. Returners easily fall back into the entangled stories of imaginary Ambridge, amused by changes in half-familiar characters, soothed by the rhythm of life. And of death, too: my generation has seen the end of several, from the roguish Joe Grundy and Walter Gabriel to wicked but repentant Rob and, just lately, the formidable matriarch Peggy herself. It’s a narrative hymn to humanity and mortality, and that is no small thing. My mother once said, “It helps us age, it’s company.” When the performance and script are particularly well done (right now under Jeremy Howe, a serious veteran of radio drama, it is on a high), it can touch hearts and change attitudes. A modern-slavery story a while back made many listeners say they became more conscious of how a plausible gangmaster would exploit homeless men, chillingly alluding to them as “the horses”. But all this wasn’t really the aim, back in 1951 when it launched nationally on New Year’s Day. When farmer Dan Archer was invented, paired with a London girl called Doris in a fictional village called Ambridge, it was actually an educational project for farmers: there was still rationing after the Second World War and it was vital to boost the national food supply. The BBC, with government urging, wanted to publicise new ways forward, beyond the plough-horses and steam threshing machines. But its first editor Godfrey Baseley realised that, actually, it would be family and neighbourhood relationships that kept the interest going. He gradually created a balance, so that the agricultural story editor’s rather plodding information wouldn’t overwhelm the general listener who just wanted “an everyday story of country folk” to calm them down while making supper. Successive editors devised non-farming plots to run alongside the informative stuff about dairy and arable problems, and kept up with changes in society. The Archer family – spreading sideways into the Aldridges with the marriage of Peggy’s daughter Jennifer to the rakish, affluent Brian – has always dominated, but gradually, to the relief of many, the working-class Grundys and Horrobins have been elevated from mere cartoon yokels. (Neil Kinnock once said The Archers should be called “The Grundys and Their Oppressors”.) The economic pressures on all classes are woven in: whether it’s Brian fretting about the cost of a £150,000 farm machine, old Peggy’s will supporting Alzheimer’s research and rewilding rather than her family members, or Emma’s heart breaking because she will never own a house. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/02/08scannatalie.dreweryradiotimes.com2026-01-26-17-43-573-0921830-e1770915239634.jpg" width="5570" height="3714" alt="Archers family David (Tim Bentinck), Jill (Patricia Greene), Phil (Norman Painting), Shula (Judy Bennett) and Elizabeth (Alison Dowling) in the 1980's" title="Archers family David (Tim Bentinck), Jill (Patricia Greene), Phil (Norman Painting), Shula (Judy Bennett) and Elizabeth (Alison Dowling) in the 1980's" /> The introduction of Asian characters has been gradual (artfully, the first one fell in love and married the vicar). That again reflects the nation, albeit sometimes stretching rural probability: the old joke is that it’s the only village in England where the year revolves round Diwali and the Pride festival. The latest, touchingly, is Akram Malik (Asif Khan), husband of the new local doctor, who involves himself with the Ambridge farm people because he is homesick for family farming in Pakistan. But aside from race and technology, producers also, with cautious but determined steps, had to keep up with changes in morals and family values since the staid 1950s. Doris Archer’s stout-knickered world is not ours. At a BBC event celebrating the life of June Spencer – who played Peggy for 70 years – I was asked to speak about the changes this matriarch had seen. I mischievously listed the “sexual rewilding” of Britain – Archers coping with adultery, divorce, hookups, abortion, single mothers with multiple baby daddies (including an anonymous donor and a “friend with benefits”), gay and lesbian couples, surrogacy, a granddaughter drunk while pregnant, and even a family grandson selling sex as an escort. Some more traditionally minded listeners objected to this, especially the acceptance of uncommitted hookups, but it does reflect modern mores just as faithfully as Brian’s £150,000 seed-drill and bovine TB anxieties reflect modern farming. Sunny Ormonde, who for 20 years has played the ageing femme fatale of the Archer family, cheerfully observes, “Lilian seems to have had affairs with almost everybody in the village, though never Brian. “When I started in 2000, I wanted to check whether listeners would take this middle-aged manhunter on board... but it’s interesting how things change as the long story goes on. With the loss of Peggy as well as her sister Jennifer, family dynamics change. There’s nobody left to put Lilian in her place, she’s had to grow up. Be the new matriarch.” Like several of the other professionals who receive scripts and recording dates, Ormonde completes the curious, beguiling loop between listener and actors that the series has created. “You see, I am a listener as well as being part of it. Sometimes I hear something that I didn’t know anything about and think, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ And I’m in it!” Indeed, the urge to be in it for a few lines of cameo has captured over the decades starry names from Princess Margaret to Queen Camilla, Dame Judi Dench to Sir Terry Wogan and Sir Bradley Wiggins. The jury that finally acquitted poor Helen of stabbing evil Rob included Catherine Tate and Dame Eileen Atkins. It’s become a bit like being asked to be in Who’s Who. As to the real cast, any theatre company talking to journalists can paint itself as a happy family, whether in truth it is or not. But I have over the years run into a fair few of the Archers cast, and it really does seem to be a reality in that sense. Certainly those who get killed off tend to strike a slightly wistful note, and there are apocryphal tales of senior actors complaining at not getting enough scenes (it is, of course, piece-work!). Pat Gallimore reflects, “I can’t remember any major fallings-out. Certainly not with me involved. One thing about it is, even though you’re together in scenes for years, it’s not claustrophobic like a real family. You do your work and come home. In the studio, we particularly enjoy the table scenes, loading the dishwasher and arguing about who’s making the supper, all together. But of course,” she adds, “as an actor it’s much more fun to play conflict or crisis.\ “I remember dear Colin Skipp [the original Tony] saying, when John [Pat and Tony’s son] died, that in a way those scenes are easier to play because there’s something to react against. Doing the workaday stuff, feeding the cows, doing the shopping, is actually far more difficult to get right. But you’re hardly going to win an Oscar for saying, ‘Let’s go and make some blueberry yogurt,’ are you?”
The Archers at 75: Reflecting on the British institution with BBC Radio stars and its celebrity fans
From cake competitions to coercive control, The Archers has captivated its devoted listeners for 75 years and counting.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. For all the gentle storylines about lemon-drizzle cake and family tiffs, there is something oddly majestic about The Archers and its survival for 75 years. It’s not about thriller events – though there’s a grand shock revelation coming very soon. The more solid pleasure of the radio drama lies in getting to know the characters over years, watching them arrive, reveal themselves, scrape against the others, maybe intermarry and bear children, with all recognisable tensions and worries and rows. And the reason that this tapestry of lives becomes sort of majestic is its sheer longevity: the following of fictional lives in real time. And in a largely urban society, it perhaps helps to remind those in cramped cities that food comes from hard work and green fields. When you meet the long-serving actors they always stress that peculiar sense of living in a parallel reality. Pat Gallimore, who has played Tony Archer’s wife Pat for 52 years, says: “If anyone had told me at that audition in 1974 that I would be around for half a century, it’d be unbelievable. But like your own life it becomes part of you, surviving and thriving. A second life, a second family.” Gallimore’s character Pat is a classic example of a figure listeners have heard evolving over the years: from a Welsh-accented CND firebrand and leftist, who cancelled Tony’s Express for The Guardian, we’ve heard her support the farm going organic “way before it was mainstream”. The Archers was part of that new acceptance just as it reflects today’s rewilding enthusiasm. Her Pat also worked through a delicate handling of grief over her elder son’s death on a tractor. I remind her how furious farming people were when the then-editor giggled in an interview about his departure as a “fun” plot. “Yes,” says Gallimore thoughtfully, “we all know that things can hit people personally. It matters.” Another storyline that hit people personally, making national news, was the “coercive control” story between Pat’s daughter Helen and Rob. She portrayed a mother entirely unaware of what the listener – in genuinely troubling scenes – had heard happening. “I did argue a little bit at the time, asking why hadn’t Pat spotted what’s going on,” protests Gallimore. “But I suppose she had come to trust Rob, he helped on the farm.” That was a big story, but over 75 years there have been many smaller ones that gripped listeners, with news of them sometimes (as in my case) drawing back midlife listeners who got irritated or bored and gave up for two or three years. Returners easily fall back into the entangled stories of imaginary Ambridge, amused by changes in half-familiar characters, soothed by the rhythm of life. And of death, too: my generation has seen the end of several, from the roguish Joe Grundy and Walter Gabriel to wicked but repentant Rob and, just lately, the formidable matriarch Peggy herself. It’s a narrative hymn to humanity and mortality, and that is no small thing. My mother once said, “It helps us age, it’s company.” When the performance and script are particularly well done (right now under Jeremy Howe, a serious veteran of radio drama, it is on a high), it can touch hearts and change attitudes. A modern-slavery story a while back made many listeners say they became more conscious of how a plausible gangmaster would exploit homeless men, chillingly alluding to them as “the horses”. But all this wasn’t really the aim, back in 1951 when it launched nationally on New Year’s Day. When farmer Dan Archer was invented, paired with a London girl called Doris in a fictional village called Ambridge, it was actually an educational project for farmers: there was still rationing after the Second World War and it was vital to boost the national food supply. The BBC, with government urging, wanted to publicise new ways forward, beyond the plough-horses and steam threshing machines. But its first editor Godfrey Baseley realised that, actually, it would be family and neighbourhood relationships that kept the interest going. He gradually created a balance, so that the agricultural story editor’s rather plodding information wouldn’t overwhelm the general listener who just wanted “an everyday story of country folk” to calm them down while making supper. Successive editors devised non-farming plots to run alongside the informative stuff about dairy and arable problems, and kept up with changes in society. The Archer family – spreading sideways into the Aldridges with the marriage of Peggy’s daughter Jennifer to the rakish, affluent Brian – has always dominated, but gradually, to the relief of many, the working-class Grundys and Horrobins have been elevated from mere cartoon yokels. (Neil Kinnock once said The Archers should be called “The Grundys and Their Oppressors”.) Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google Keep up to date on what’s worth watching with your favourite entertainment news from Radio Times – see more of our exclusive news and interviews featured prominently in Top Stories when using Google. The economic pressures on all classes are woven in: whether it’s Brian fretting about the cost of a £150,000 farm machine, old Peggy’s will supporting Alzheimer’s research and rewilding rather than her family members, or Emma’s heart breaking because she will never own a house. The introduction of Asian characters has been gradual (artfully, the first one fell in love and married the vicar). That again reflects the nation, albeit sometimes stretching rural probability: the old joke is that it’s the only village in England where the year revolves round Diwali and the Pride festival. The latest, touchingly, is Akram Malik (Asif Khan), husband of the new local doctor, who involves himself with the Ambridge farm people because he is homesick for family farming in Pakistan. But aside from race and technology, producers also, with cautious but determined steps, had to keep up with changes in morals and family values since the staid 1950s. Doris Archer’s stout-knickered world is not ours. At a BBC event celebrating the life of June Spencer – who played Peggy for 70 years – I was asked to speak about the changes this matriarch had seen. I mischievously listed the “sexual rewilding” of Britain – Archers coping with adultery, divorce, hookups, abortion, single mothers with multiple baby daddies (including an anonymous donor and a “friend with benefits”), gay and lesbian couples, surrogacy, a granddaughter drunk while pregnant, and even a family grandson selling sex as an escort. Some more traditionally minded listeners objected to this, especially the acceptance of uncommitted hookups, but it does reflect modern mores just as faithfully as Brian’s £150,000 seed-drill and bovine TB anxieties reflect modern farming. Sunny Ormonde, who for 20 years has played the ageing femme fatale of the Archer family, cheerfully observes, “Lilian seems to have had affairs with almost everybody in the village, though never Brian. “When I started in 2000, I wanted to check whether listeners would take this middle-aged manhunter on board... but it’s interesting how things change as the long story goes on. With the loss of Peggy as well as her sister Jennifer, family dynamics change. There’s nobody left to put Lilian in her place, she’s had to grow up. Be the new matriarch.” Like several of the other professionals who receive scripts and recording dates, Ormonde completes the curious, beguiling loop between listener and actors that the series has created. “You see, I am a listener as well as being part of it. Sometimes I hear something that I didn’t know anything about and think, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ And I’m in it!” Indeed, the urge to be in it for a few lines of cameo has captured over the decades starry names from Princess Margaret to Queen Camilla, Dame Judi Dench to Sir Terry Wogan and Sir Bradley Wiggins. The jury that finally acquitted poor Helen of stabbing evil Rob included Catherine Tate and Dame Eileen Atkins. It’s become a bit like being asked to be in Who’s Who. As to the real cast, any theatre company talking to journalists can paint itself as a happy family, whether in truth it is or not. But I have over the years run into a fair few of the Archers cast, and it really does seem to be a reality in that sense. Certainly those who get killed off tend to strike a slightly wistful note, and there are apocryphal tales of senior actors complaining at not getting enough scenes (it is, of course, piece-work!). Pat Gallimore reflects, “I can’t remember any major fallings-out. Certainly not with me involved. One thing about it is, even though you’re together in scenes for years, it’s not claustrophobic like a real family. You do your work and come home. In the studio, we particularly enjoy the table scenes, loading the dishwasher and arguing about who’s making the supper, all together. But of course,” she adds, “as an actor it’s much more fun to play conflict or crisis. “I remember dear Colin Skipp [the original Tony] saying, when John [Pat and Tony’s son] died, that in a way those scenes are easier to play because there’s something to react against. Doing the workaday stuff, feeding the cows, doing the shopping, is actually far more difficult to get right. But you’re hardly going to win an Oscar for saying, ‘Let’s go and make some blueberry yogurt,’ are you?” Read more: The Archers confirmed for live 75th anniversary tour as fans can celebrate beloved radio drama Bridge Farm to be brought to life at new RHS show to celebrate The Archers' 75th anniversary Celebrity fans Ruth Jones The Archers is my little 13-minute daily sanctuary. I’m not going to lie, they’re in bed with me almost every night. Sometimes I get really frustrated with it but that’s part of its joy. I nearly stopped listening when David and Ruth Archer almost lost the farm when it was threatened by a new road. I can picture all the characters in my mind, and yes, I do have favourites. I love Jazzer and in more recent times George and Brad. But Susan is also a joy, as is Tracy. My absolute top favourite though is Lilian (Sunny Ormonde, top right). Her wicked gin-swilling laugh, and her life-affirming, life-grabbing presence cheer me up every time she’s in a scene. Though the truth is I love ’em all. Seventy-five years – I won’t be around in another 75, but I do hope The Archers will. Brad Horrobin might be the future Joe Grundy, Martha Carter may be the future Lilian and who knows if the Bull will still be serving, but I’ll keep listening into my old age if I’m lucky enough! Sir Stephen Fry One of my very earliest memories is of fitting myself under the chair that my mother sat on and listening with her to The Archers. The theme tune was as familiar to me as Pop Goes the Weasel, Happy Birthday or Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. In fact, I cannot really remember a time when I didn’t think of The Archers as a natural and inevitable part of my life, like the milkman and the chimney sweep. Those have more or less stepped away from our world, but The Archers is still there. I listen to it more religiously, rarely missing an episode, much more when I’m abroad than when I’m at home. Because it always takes me right back to England. And, like England, it can be as banal, embarrassing and ridiculous as it can be charming, brave and lovable. The people of Ambridge are for the most part sound, well intentioned, friendly, forgiving and kind. It is always the same, but it changes with the times without one quite noticing. There’s minimum tillage and mob grazing on the farm now, and Pat and Tony’s yogurts are kefirs. Alan Titchmarsh Thirty years ago, my wife told me that she would only consider that I had “made it” when I’d appeared in The Archers. I thought there was no chance. Then I was asked if I would judge the Ambridge Best Garden competition – as myself. I got to meet Lynda Snell and was driven around the village by Joe Grundy (actors Carole Boyd and Edward Kelsey, right) in a pony and trap pulled by the legendary Bartleby. The fact that the “trap” was one table upturned on another with two broom handles placed between them to allow movement mattered not a jot. What a fun day. But I can’t for the life of me remember who won! Still, my wife now admits I’ve made it. David Mitchell My mum has been listening to The Archers for as long as she can remember, almost since it began, and I think she still does. So I heard a lot of it during my childhood. I haven’t entirely kept up, but I’m very glad it’s still going. And in a frightening and changing world, I think it’s great that some things continue. And it’s the original soap opera, isn’t it? Congratulations to it! Emma Freud My favourite characters have to be the Grundys — not because they’re easy to like (they’re not), but because they’re written without flattery. They’re flawed, often irritating, and test our sympathy, but even when they’re horrendous, I find myself rooting for them. I want them to win, to prosper. Maybe I want them to take over Ambridge? The Rob and Helen storyline was a slow, devastating depiction of coercive control. Each episode contained so much thoughtfulness, research and creative discipline. The writers didn’t hold back: scenes were as uncomfortable as they were impactful. But for every Rob and Helen storyline, there’s delightful eccentricity – such as the “soiled pants” competition, where characters buried their underwear to test the soil. Only The Archers. I love the low dramas – precious episodes when life just potters on with its moments of sweetness, meanness, small wins, small losses, long-term love, loneliness, Clarrie’s arthritis. It’s life… and it’s gently talked about in a way that only happens behind closed doors. I know some villagers better than my own family but I never have to buy them Christmas presents. I also love the lack of money. We rarely hear details of salaries, house prices, rents or the cost of a gift. This means we can exist in a world where we aren’t constantly looking through the lens of finance for status or position or value. It’s a subtle but welcome omission. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Audio coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The real-life father-and-son duo William and David Troughton on The Archers, dream storylines and giving each other acting advice
The Archers is on Sunday to Friday 7pm Radio 4 and The Archers: Truth and Lies is on New Year’s Day Radio 4. David Troughton and his real-life son William have played father and son Tony and Tom in The Archers since 2014. They are the son and grandson of the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton. As father and son, is it easier to play that relationship? David At the beginning it felt odd, because Tom and Tony don’t get on! Tony is still hankering after his dead son, John. Tom’s never lived up to John. William Tom’s constantly chasing his father’s praise, wanting him to be proud of him... David And that is so unlike our real relationship. William It really is. It’s great that I get to spend this time with my dad. And because it’s outside the rest of the family, it’s special. Does that make other family members feel a bit jealous? David They’re probably thankful not to be part of Tony and Tom! William There’s no competition. My brother Sam is also an actor and the other one, Jim, is a cricketer. David That’s performing, too. It has to be in the genes. Have any of your storylines made you gasp? David Not yet… But remember your audition, Will? You came to see me [as Tony] in hospital when I seemed to be dying because I’d been hit by the bull. After the audition, Sean O’Connor, the editor, rang me up and said, “David, how would you feel if a member of your family joined The Archers?” William Growing up watching him onstage, there were quite a few of those moments. I remember watching you get poisoned and die in one production… David And before that, in 1989 when I played Bottom at the RSC, I stabbed myself fairly dramatically, and all I could hear from the front row was, “Bye bye, Mr Dad.” Isn’t that sweet? William Growing up watching you die – not the most usual of childhoods. David, have you ever given William any acting advice? David When we started, I gave him a bit of advice about the microphone. On stage you look at each other but in radio you use it as the person. Although I’m always being told [does huge voice], “YOU’RE TOO LOUD.” Stage actors like me, we’re constantly trying to hit the back of the stalls. I like being BIG, you see. William I’m constantly being told to quiet down, too. Any dream storylines? William I want us to fall out. Furiously. Big argument. Conflict! David Yes, nobody wants to listen to us being happy. We need crises! What would you give each other for Christmas, in character? William Tony likes his train set, so something for that. David Something for his tractor. William Tom’s constantly searching for acceptance, so maybe just a “Well done, son” would do. How about in real life? David We do a Secret Santa, because it got too expensive. William I’d give you a gadget, you like those. David I gave you a drone last year – you’ve not used it once! William Still a sore point, is it? David It is!
The Archers stars David and William Troughton talk being father and son in iconic radio soap and in real-life
David and William Troughton on life as father and son – on The Archers and at home.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. David Troughton and his real-life son William have played father and son Tony and Tom in The Archers since 2014. They are the son and grandson of the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton. As father and son, is it easier to play that relationship? DAVID: At the beginning it felt odd, because Tom and Tony don’t get on! Tony is still hankering after his dead son, John. Tom’s never lived up to John. WILLIAM: Tom’s constantly chasing his father’s praise, wanting him to be proud of him... DAVID: And that is so unlike our real relationship. WILLIAM: It really is. It’s great that I get to spend this time with my dad. And because it’s outside the rest of the family, it’s special. Does that make other family members feel a bit jealous? DAVID: They’re probably thankful not to be part of Tony and Tom! WILLIAM: There’s no competition. My brother Sam is also an actor and the other one, Jim, is a cricketer. DAVID: That’s performing, too. It has to be in the genes. Have any of your storylines made you gasp? DAVID: Not yet… But remember your audition, Will? You came to see me [as Tony] in hospital when I seemed to be dying because I’d been hit by the bull. After the audition, Sean O’Connor, the editor, rang me up and said, “David, how would you feel if a member of your family joined The Archers?” WILLIAM: Growing up watching him onstage, there were quite a few of those moments. I remember watching you get poisoned and die in one production… DAVID: And before that, in 1989 when I played Bottom at the RSC, I stabbed myself fairly dramatically, and all I could hear from the front row was, “Bye bye, Mr Dad.” Isn’t that sweet? WILLIAM: Growing up watching you die – not the most usual of childhoods. David, have you ever given William any acting advice? DAVID: When we started, I gave him a bit of advice about the microphone. On stage you look at each other but in radio you use it as the person. Although I’m always being told [does huge voice], “YOU’RE TOO LOUD.” Stage actors like me, we’re constantly trying to hit the back of the stalls. I like being BIG, you see. WILLIAM: I’m constantly being told to quiet down, too. Any dream storylines? WILLIAM: I want us to fall out. Furiously. Big argument. Conflict! DAVID: Yes, nobody wants to listen to us being happy. We need crises! What would you give each other for Christmas, in character? WILLIAM: Tony likes his train set, so something for that. DAVID: Something for his tractor. WILLIAM: Tom’s constantly searching for acceptance, so maybe just a “Well done, son” would do. How about in real life? DAVID: We do a Secret Santa, because it got too expensive. WILLIAM: I’d give you a gadget, you like those. DAVID: I gave you a drone last year – you’ve not used it once! WILLIAM: Still a sore point, is it? DAVID: It is! The Christmas double issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. You can listen to The Archers on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Check out more of our Soaps coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what else is on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
For her latest role, Sheridan Smith is playing Ann Ming, the indefatigable woman who, after her daughter’s murder, fought to get an 800-year-old law overturned – and won
Add I Fought the Law to your watchlist Sheridan Smith throws herself into parts with almost reckless emotional openness: cabaret divas, community campaigners, women fabulous or flawed. But the true story portrayed in ITV1’s new four-part series I Fought the Law, about a mother’s 15-year battle to overturn the ancient double jeopardy rule, created a particular bond with the woman she plays. Sheridan and Ann Ming are nearly 40 years apart in age, but there’s visible kinship between the star and the octogenarian from Billingham on Teesside. At the press screening they hugged and held hands, and it wasn’t the West End queen but the retired nurse from the industrial North East who eased the mood to laughter. In a dryly mocking aside towards the screen she observed: “When southerners come up to make programmes they always have lots of shots of cooling towers. They’ve been redundant for years!” Talking to me afterwards, both women tumble out their thoughts and experiences of the story, blinking tears, laughing, close and easy together. Following Ann’s book, For the Love of Julie, and a BBC documentary, Sheridan was keen to take the role, “but nervous. I didn’t want to let Ann down, I wanted to make her proud.” Ann remembers their first meeting: “I thought she’d be right posh, designer clothes and handbag. And there she was with a Tesco plastic carrier… She’s dead ordinary!” “We couldn’t stop hugging,” adds Sheridan. The drama is more than a crime story: indeed, the scriptwriter Jamie Crichton has quietly said that he dislikes “harrowing” true-crime drama and was drawn to it because he likes superheroes. Certainly the name of Ann Ming MBE will stand in British legal history – a citizen who used grief and anger to reform the 800-year-old law of double jeopardy, which prevented prosecuting someone twice for the same offence. She fought police, the Crown Prosecution Service and contemptuous lawyers; enlisted a Home Secretary and the Law Commission; and addressed the House of Lords without notes. “Well,” she says now, “nobody’s better than you, so if you see something that’s not right you have to try.” Sheridan shakes her head in wonder: “I am completely in awe”. The story begins starkly. In 1989, Ann’s daughter Julie was viciously murdered in her Billingham home by William Dunlop, a local, who was drunk and fired by porn. Ann and her husband Charlie were looking after Julie’s three-year-old son Kevin that night, and the next morning – when Julie didn’t turn up at court, where she was due to apply for a leave of separation from her husband – reported her missing. The police fobbed them off for days, saying that 22-year-old Julie probably “hitched down the A19 to London”. To this day, Ann feels rage at their presumption that her daughter would walk out on her child. “What goes around comes around. Years later after the court case, I’d lost my purse and a policeman came. He had his cap pulled right down on his face, but it was him again. I said, ‘I know you, community relations extraordinaire! You lot should have been sacked. Your attitude was disgusting – I was telling you about my daughter, but you knew better!’ ” Worse still, when the police finally checked Julie’s house, they said that, “highly trained forensic officers” found nothing suspicious: “No dead bodies here, if that’s what you mean”. Weeks passed, an empty Christmas, still hoping. Then the family got Julie’s house keys back, and her husband – with whom she was still close and who had moved into the house to take care of Kevin – complained of a terrible smell. Ann came round and pulled back a bath panel. There was her daughter’s body, two months’ dead. The screaming horror of that moment closes the first episode: discreetly shot but vivid. Ann, who was involved and consulted on the script, watched much of the filming distantly on a monitor. Had Sheridan asked her advice about playing that life-shattering moment, or her distressed outbreaks in court that followed? They look at each other… “No, your book said most of it.” Ann nods in agreement. “You thought it might upset me?” she asks. It wasn’t just that. Sheridan, whose performance is frighteningly electric in these scenes, simply says, “No, I didn’t want to get caught up in the detail – asking, ‘Was her hand here or there?’, all that. If I get too much in my own head about acting – over-rehearsing, over-thinking – it doesn’t work. So, I just tried to feel how you’d feel, Ann. Not beat myself up over detail.” Her own son, Billy, is five now: her scenes with little Kevin felt heartbreakingly real. “It’s changed me a lot, having Billy,” she admits. Dunlop, already known to police, was an obvious suspect, but juries twice failed to agree and he was acquitted. The family struggled, says Ann. “When we sat round that closed coffin, Charlie and me and my son and daughter, the funeral director said, ‘You’re together as a family now’. But we can’t ever be. Never.” Then, in 1997, Dunlop was jailed for attacking another young woman, and in prison he bragged about killing Julie. But the double jeopardy rule meant that someone couldn’t be tried twice for the same offence. His admission was recorded, but he could only be tried for lying at the first trial: six years for perjury. And so, Ann’s campaign began, arguing that if compelling new evidence turns up (often it’s DNA), a killer can be retried. Eventually she won the argument and the law was amended, coming into effect in 2005. In 2006, William Dunlop was sentenced to life in prison for Julie’s murder. Since then, several other killers have been brought to justice as a direct result of the amendment, including two of the men who murdered Stephen Lawrence. “Scotland and Australia have changed the law, the safeguards are stringent. Mr Trump, if you’re listening, think about it,” says Ann. Nor had she finished with Dunlop: he was up for parole last year and the family argued against it, thinking him still dangerous. Every advance and frustration is detailed in the drama, taking a heavy toll. Colleagues talk about Sheridan’s unusually intense “process” as an actor – as the show’s producer says, “she goes into every scene completely immersed, and she was in virtually every scene and shot.” Ann says that it’s like watching “a tornado”. “Well,” Sheridan admits, “those nine weeks were the hardest thing I’ve ever done. When I do make-believe, fiction, I can turn off. But with a massive, true, courageous story and someone trusting you, if I don’t let myself feel that raw emotion it’s not doing Ann justice. I did relax just a bit, at the end of the day – when I took the wig off!” (She ages, very convincingly, over the two decades of the story.) “But,” Ann observes, quietly motherly now, “you were a right mess by the end.” To which Sheridan agrees. “I was fried and exhausted, living on my nerves, thinking about all that trauma. But having Christmas with my Billy was lovely. And I do yoga now; I meditate.” And actually, having interviewed her before, over the past 16 years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sheridan Smith so centred and happy. Dramatising real lives is tricky: I ask whether there are any moments in the series that Ann disputed, but she says not many. It doesn’t show where she finally got therapy for her PTSD. “A place called Ticehurst. That was important; it helped me to cope with my anger towards the police.” Her trauma, though, is deftly indicated in odd moments – when she seems to see her daughter or, terrifyingly, thinks a patient is Dunlop. “For [the series] they make me a ward nurse, really I was a theatre nurse. But it’s fine.” Sheridan relates another change she made. “There was a moment when they put a beer in my hand. And I suddenly thought, ‘No, hang on – Ann Ming wouldn’t!’” “I would not!” agrees Ann. “It would have been a gin and tonic!” There is also decent care for others involved in the tragedy, like Julie’s siblings, who were obviously hugely impacted by what happened but were not part of the legal fight. The real Kevin came unobtrusively to the press launch. “He likes to look after his nan!” Ann says. As for her late husband Charlie, played by Daniel York Loh with truthful, stricken pathos, recoiling from the public battle, Ann is happy with how he is shown. “He was a man of few words. Never got a chance with my big mouth! But he said once in the middle of the night that if he’d been the one to find Julie, he’d have dropped down dead, couldn’t have borne it. You realise how emotionally weak men are.” Did she never hesitate? Perhaps at the last hurdle, insisting that the law was made retrospective, to cover Dunlop? “Never thought about it. It was common sense. Told them so in the Lords.” Sheridan, after years dealing with the spotlight, finds that moment awesome – “I could never have done it.” Indeed, says Ann, Lord Mackenzie told her that “he hadn’t thought an ordinary northern woman could [do it]; he said hardened speakers dry up in that chamber. He offered to send me a Hansard copy, signed. I didn’t know what Hansard [the official report of all parliamentary debates] was.” Her MBE is for services to the criminal justice system; she still addresses police training conferences. “I do West Yorkshire, I do national police. I don’t pull any punches, don’t skirt around the fact that they didn’t get it right, didn’t search the house properly, didn’t find my daughter.” “Just completely in awe,” says Sheridan again. “I wish I had your strength and determination.” “It was just common sense,” replies Ann, “and that’s part of love.”
I Fought the Law’s Sheridan Smith “couldn’t stop hugging” real-life subject Ann Ming: “I am completely in awe”
For her latest role, Sheridan Smith is playing Ann Ming, the indefatigable woman who, after her daughter’s murder, fought to get an 800-year-old law overturned – and won.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Sheridan Smith throws herself into parts with almost reckless emotional openness: cabaret divas, community campaigners, women fabulous or flawed. But the true story portrayed in ITV1’s new four-part series I Fought the Law, about a mother’s 15-year battle to overturn the ancient double jeopardy rule, created a particular bond with the woman she plays. Sheridan and Ann Ming are nearly 40 years apart in age, but there’s visible kinship between the star and the octogenarian from Billingham on Teesside. At the press screening they hugged and held hands, and it wasn’t the West End queen but the retired nurse from the industrial North East who eased the mood to laughter. In a dryly mocking aside towards the screen she observed: “When southerners come up to make programmes they always have lots of shots of cooling towers. They’ve been redundant for years!” Talking to me afterwards, both women tumble out their thoughts and experiences of the story, blinking tears, laughing, close and easy together. Following Ann’s book, For the Love of Julie, and a BBC documentary, Sheridan was keen to take the role, “but nervous. I didn’t want to let Ann down, I wanted to make her proud.” Ann remembers their first meeting: “I thought she’d be right posh, designer clothes and handbag. And there she was with a Tesco plastic carrier… She’s dead ordinary!” “We couldn’t stop hugging,” adds Sheridan. The drama is more than a crime story: indeed, the scriptwriter Jamie Crichton has quietly said that he dislikes “harrowing” true-crime drama and was drawn to it because he likes superheroes. Certainly the name of Ann Ming MBE will stand in British legal history – a citizen who used grief and anger to reform the 800-year-old law of double jeopardy, which prevented prosecuting someone twice for the same offence. She fought police, the Crown Prosecution Service and contemptuous lawyers; enlisted a Home Secretary and the Law Commission; and addressed the House of Lords without notes. “Well,” she says now, “nobody’s better than you, so if you see something that’s not right you have to try.” Sheridan shakes her head in wonder: “I am completely in awe”. The story begins starkly. In 1989, Ann’s daughter Julie was viciously murdered in her Billingham home by William Dunlop, a local, who was drunk and fired by porn. Ann and her husband Charlie were looking after Julie’s three-year-old son Kevin that night, and the next morning – when Julie didn’t turn up at court, where she was due to apply for a leave of separation from her husband – reported her missing. The police fobbed them off for days, saying that 22-year-old Julie probably “hitched down the A19 to London”. To this day, Ann feels rage at their presumption that her daughter would walk out on her child. “What goes around comes around. Years later after the court case, I’d lost my purse and a policeman came. He had his cap pulled right down on his face, but it was him again. I said, ‘I know you, community relations extraordinaire! You lot should have been sacked. Your attitude was disgusting – I was telling you about my daughter, but you knew better!’” Worse still, when the police finally checked Julie’s house, they said that, “highly trained forensic officers” found nothing suspicious: “No dead bodies here, if that’s what you mean”. Weeks passed, an empty Christmas, still hoping. Then the family got Julie’s house keys back, and her husband – with whom she was still close and who had moved into the house to take care of Kevin – complained of a terrible smell. Ann came round and pulled back a bath panel. There was her daughter’s body, two months’ dead. The screaming horror of that moment closes the first episode: discreetly shot but vivid. Ann, who was involved and consulted on the script, watched much of the filming distantly on a monitor. Had Sheridan asked her advice about playing that life-shattering moment, or her distressed outbreaks in court that followed? They look at each other… “No, your book said most of it.” Ann nods in agreement. “You thought it might upset me?” she asks. It wasn’t just that. Sheridan, whose performance is frighteningly electric in these scenes, simply says, “No, I didn’t want to get caught up in the detail – asking, ‘Was her hand here or there?’, all that. If I get too much in my own head about acting – over-rehearsing, over-thinking – it doesn’t work. So, I just tried to feel how you’d feel, Ann. Not beat myself up over detail.” Her own son, Billy, is five now: her scenes with little Kevin felt heartbreakingly real. “It’s changed me a lot, having Billy,” she admits. Dunlop, already known to police, was an obvious suspect, but juries twice failed to agree and he was acquitted. The family struggled, says Ann. “When we sat round that closed coffin, Charlie and me and my son and daughter, the funeral director said, ‘You’re together as a family now’. But we can’t ever be. Never.” Then, in 1997, Dunlop was jailed for attacking another young woman, and in prison he bragged about killing Julie. But the double jeopardy rule meant that someone couldn’t be tried twice for the same offence. His admission was recorded, but he could only be tried for lying at the first trial: six years for perjury. And so, Ann’s campaign began, arguing that if compelling new evidence turns up (often it’s DNA), a killer can be retried. Eventually she won the argument and the law was amended, coming into effect in 2005. In 2006, William Dunlop was sentenced to life in prison for Julie’s murder. Since then, several other killers have been brought to justice as a direct result of the amendment, including two of the men who murdered Stephen Lawrence. “Scotland and Australia have changed the law, the safeguards are stringent. Mr Trump, if you’re listening, think about it,” says Ann. Nor had she finished with Dunlop: he was up for parole last year and the family argued against it, thinking him still dangerous. Every advance and frustration is detailed in the drama, taking a heavy toll. Colleagues talk about Sheridan’s unusually intense “process” as an actor – as the show’s producer says, “she goes into every scene completely immersed, and she was in virtually every scene and shot.” Ann says that it’s like watching “a tornado”. “Well,” Sheridan admits, “those nine weeks were the hardest thing I’ve ever done. When I do make-believe, fiction, I can turn off. But with a massive, true, courageous story and someone trusting you, if I don’t let myself feel that raw emotion it’s not doing Ann justice. I did relax just a bit, at the end of the day – when I took the wig off!” (She ages, very convincingly, over the two decades of the story.) “But,” Ann observes, quietly motherly now, “you were a right mess by the end.” To which Sheridan agrees. “I was fried and exhausted, living on my nerves, thinking about all that trauma. But having Christmas with my Billy was lovely. And I do yoga now; I meditate.” And actually, having interviewed her before, over the past 16 years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sheridan Smith so centred and happy. Dramatising real lives is tricky: I ask whether there are any moments in the series that Ann disputed, but she says not many. It doesn’t show where she finally got therapy for her PTSD. “A place called Ticehurst. That was important; it helped me to cope with my anger towards the police.” Her trauma, though, is deftly indicated in odd moments – when she seems to see her daughter or, terrifyingly, thinks a patient is Dunlop. “For [the series] they make me a ward nurse, really I was a theatre nurse. But it’s fine.” Sheridan relates another change she made. “There was a moment when they put a beer in my hand. And I suddenly thought, ‘No, hang on – Ann Ming wouldn’t!’” “I would not!” agrees Ann. “It would have been a gin and tonic!” There is also decent care for others involved in the tragedy, like Julie’s siblings, who were obviously hugely impacted by what happened but were not part of the legal fight. The real Kevin came unobtrusively to the press launch. “He likes to look after his nan!” Ann says. As for her late husband Charlie, played by Daniel York Loh with truthful, stricken pathos, recoiling from the public battle, Ann is happy with how he is shown. “He was a man of few words. Never got a chance with my big mouth! But he said once in the middle of the night that if he’d been the one to find Julie, he’d have dropped down dead, couldn’t have borne it. You realise how emotionally weak men are.” Did she never hesitate? Perhaps at the last hurdle, insisting that the law was made retrospective, to cover Dunlop? “Never thought about it. It was common sense. Told them so in the Lords.” Sheridan, after years dealing with the spotlight, finds that moment awesome – “I could never have done it.” Indeed, says Ann, Lord Mackenzie told her that “he hadn’t thought an ordinary northern woman could [do it]; he said hardened speakers dry up in that chamber. He offered to send me a Hansard copy, signed. I didn’t know what Hansard [the official report of all parliamentary debates] was.” Her MBE is for services to the criminal justice system; she still addresses police training conferences. “I do West Yorkshire, I do national police. I don’t pull any punches, don’t skirt around the fact that they didn’t get it right, didn’t search the house properly, didn’t find my daughter.” “Just completely in awe,” says Sheridan again. “I wish I had your strength and determination.” “It was just common sense,” replies Ann, “and that’s part of love.” The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. I Fought the Law arrives at 9pm on Sunday 31st August on ITV1 and ITVX. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Libby Purves celebrates Charles Collingwood’s half-century not out as Ambridge’s rogue with a heart, Brian Aldridge
The Archers is on Sunday-Friday at 7pm on Radio 4. Add it to your collection now The summons to Ambridge – actually a studio up a concrete tower in Birmingham – set me happily gossiping with Charles Collingwood. He’s celebrating 50 years since his first broadcast as Brian Aldridge, farmer and charmer, straying husband and tolerant patriarch, on 25 March 1975. He actually goes back a year earlier: “I was a crooked decorator, Dave Escott, who had a flirtation with Peggy. Producer Tony Shryane said, ‘We’ll get you back!’ and three weeks later my wife [Judy Bennett, who played Shula] came home and said, ‘You’re in!’ “I was overjoyed. Got the first episode, went for lunch, ran into Jack Holloway who played Ralph Bellamy. He was in a bad mood, saying, ‘I’ve just been written out of the bloody programme!’ Then back in the studio the others said, ‘Oh yes. You’ve bought his farm.’ No wonder he wasn’t pleased to see my ugly face!” In 1976, Brian married Jennifer, and took on her children by two fathers (she was the serial’s first scandal, a gesture to the free-love 1960s). “It was interesting, because in real life, I had proudly taken on Judy’s two little boys, Toby and Barney. Her real first husband was a Brian, and my first wife a Jennifer. How about that?” Collingwood is the jolliest company, and relishes his character’s adventures, which go beyond the tweed-capped practicality of farming. After a couple of years, the new editor, William Smethurst, told him he’d decided to turn Brian into a womaniser. “I suppose because it was me, he spotted a little bit of – er – Leslie Phillips naughtiness” (cue a stagey twinkle). “He wanted a bit of daring humour. Well, it kept me in the show for 50 years.” Hence Brian’s fling with posh Caroline Bone and flirtation with the flame-haired Pony Club temptress Mandy Beesborough. Another new editor, Vanessa Whitburn, told him, “Women of a certain age always ask me, ‘When will Brian have an affair?’” That became his explosive love affair with Siobhan Donovan, who died young and whose son with Brian, Ruairi, was taken on, heroically, by wife Jennifer. Collingwood loved it. “The joy of continuing drama on the radio is that we play to real time: this affair lasted jolly nearly three years.” Passionate scenes with Caroline Lennon had their problems: “At the peak I was just out from a hip replacement. There I was, wincing from post-op, manipulating reading glasses and a script, and there’s somebody beside me rustling the sheets. Taxing.” It had its effect, though. At Wendy Richard’s 40-years-in-showbiz lunch, she told him, “Angela Rippon and I think you are the sexiest b*****d in showbusiness!” “I went home after a few glasses of wine – Judy was ironing – and proudly repeated the line. Her reply was: ‘Only in showbusiness!’ That’s a good marriage.” Brian twinkled on, with more plotlines: criminally charged with polluting the River Am, he had to downshift from the grand farmhouse, while (with unaccountable devotion) letting his woo-woo stepdaughter Kate keep her “spiritual wellness” yurt field. His scenes with Hollie Chapman, as Brian took his alcoholic daughter Alice to rehab, were genuinely wrenching, all fatherly fear and gentle humility. “I hope so. When Brian turned into a real womaniser I said, ‘Delighted! Yes, there are men like that. But please don’t make him a one-dimensional dirty old man. Make him a good father, see the charm in him. And with scenes like that, or the death of Jennifer, you’re aware that a lot of people are going through it, so it’s important to get it right.” I do wonder how, after five decades, Collingwood feels about the ever-loosening sexual mores of Ambridge: from Brian’s adulteries to Ruairi’s foray into sex work. “Yes, the world changed. I remember David Blunkett in the 90s first going on about all this, and thinking, ‘Well, we’ve changed and we’re quite successful. Time the Labour Party changed and it might be successful, too.’ Then along came Tony Blair!” The Siobhan affair did create a long, intense scene – when Brian’s stepdaughter Debbie discovered his betrayal of Jennifer – that Ned Sherrin once said was “like Chekhov”. That scene was special to Collingwood because Debbie’s played by Tamsin Greig, now rarely heard in The Archers (“she’s got so famous Debbie had to move to Hungary”). “We had many scenes together. I find her a remarkable actress and human being.” Collingwood’s a veteran, worked in rep and shared a study at school with Richard Eyre. He’s especially intrigued by widower Brian’s latest conquest. “I am having a brief encounter with Miranda. Lucy Fleming who plays her is the daughter of Celia Johnson from Brief Encounter – how about that! She sounds like her, too!” He gets on fine with Brian’s rival, Justin, played by Simon Williams: “Wonderful hair. I said, ‘If I had silver hair like yours I’d be a major film star’. He said, ‘Mmm… takes more than the hair, darling!’” In his private life in Hampshire, does he mix with Brian’s real-life equivalents – harrumphers of mature years? “Hordes of them. It’s very naval down there, so it helps that I’m related to Nelson’s Admiral Collingwood. One plummy chap asked if I’d come down to retire? I said, ‘No, darling, I’ve been semi-retired ever since I left Rada!’ I think it was the first time any man had called him darling.”
The Archers icon: 'Wendy Richard and Angela Rippon thought I was the sexiest man in showbusiness'
Libby Purves celebrates Charles Collingwood's half-century not out as Ambridge's rogue with a heart, Brian Aldridge.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. The summons to Ambridge – actually a studio up a concrete tower in Birmingham – set me happily gossiping with Charles Collingwood. He's celebrating 50 years since his first broadcast as Brian Aldridge, farmer and charmer, straying husband and tolerant patriarch, on 25 March 1975. He actually goes back a year earlier: "I was a crooked decorator, Dave Escott, who had a flirtation with Peggy. Producer Tony Shryane said, 'We'll get you back!' and three weeks later my wife [Judy Bennett, who played Shula] came home and said, 'You're in!' "I was overjoyed. Got the first episode, went for lunch, ran into Jack Holloway who played Ralph Bellamy. He was in a bad mood, saying, 'I've just been written out of the bloody programme!' Then back in the studio the others said, 'Oh yes. You’ve bought his farm.' No wonder he wasn’t pleased to see my ugly face!" In 1976, Brian married Jennifer, and took on her children by two fathers (she was the serial's first scandal, a gesture to the free-love 1960s). "It was interesting, because in real life, I had proudly taken on Judy’s two little boys, Toby and Barney. Her real first husband was a Brian, and my first wife a Jennifer. How about that?" Collingwood is the jolliest company, and relishes his character's adventures, which go beyond the tweed-capped practicality of farming. After a couple of years, the new editor, William Smethurst, told him he’d decided to turn Brian into a womaniser. "I suppose because it was me, he spotted a little bit of – er – Leslie Phillips naughtiness" (cue a stagey twinkle). "He wanted a bit of daring humour. Well, it kept me in the show for 50 years." Hence Brian’s fling with posh Caroline Bone and flirtation with the flame-haired Pony Club temptress Mandy Beesborough. Another new editor, Vanessa Whitburn, told him, "Women of a certain age always ask me, 'When will Brian have an affair?'" That became his explosive love affair with Siobhan Donovan, who died young and whose son with Brian, Ruairi, was taken on, heroically, by wife Jennifer. Collingwood loved it. "The joy of continuing drama on the radio is that we play to real time: this affair lasted jolly nearly three years." Passionate scenes with Caroline Lennon had their problems: "At the peak I was just out from a hip replacement. There I was, wincing from post-op, manipulating reading glasses and a script, and there’s somebody beside me rustling the sheets. Taxing." It had its effect, though. At Wendy Richard’s 40-years-in-showbiz lunch, she told him, "Angela Rippon and I think you are the sexiest b*****d in showbusiness!" "I went home after a few glasses of wine – Judy was ironing – and proudly repeated the line. Her reply was: 'Only in showbusiness!' That’s a good marriage." Brian twinkled on, with more plotlines: criminally charged with polluting the River Am, he had to downshift from the grand farmhouse, while (with unaccountable devotion) letting his woo-woo stepdaughter Kate keep her "spiritual wellness" yurt field. His scenes with Hollie Chapman, as Brian took his alcoholic daughter Alice to rehab, were genuinely wrenching, all fatherly fear and gentle humility. "I hope so. When Brian turned into a real womaniser I said, 'Delighted! Yes, there are men like that. But please don’t make him a one-dimensional dirty old man. Make him a good father, see the charm in him. And with scenes like that, or the death of Jennifer, you’re aware that a lot of people are going through it, so it’s important to get it right." I do wonder how, after five decades, Collingwood feels about the ever-loosening sexual mores of Ambridge: from Brian’s adulteries to Ruairi’s foray into sex work. “Yes, the world changed. I remember David Blunkett in the 90s first going on about all this, and thinking, ‘Well, we’ve changed and we’re quite successful. Time the Labour Party changed and it might be successful, too.’ Then along came Tony Blair!” The Siobhan affair did create a long, intense scene – when Brian’s stepdaughter Debbie discovered his betrayal of Jennifer – that Ned Sherrin once said was “like Chekhov”. That scene was special to Collingwood because Debbie’s played by Tamsin Greig, now rarely heard in The Archers (“she’s got so famous Debbie had to move to Hungary”). “We had many scenes together. I find her a remarkable actress and human being.” Collingwood’s a veteran, worked in rep and shared a study at school with Richard Eyre. He’s especially intrigued by widower Brian’s latest conquest. “I am having a brief encounter with Miranda. Lucy Fleming who plays her is the daughter of Celia Johnson from Brief Encounter – how about that! She sounds like her, too!” He gets on fine with Brian’s rival, Justin, played by Simon Williams: "Wonderful hair. I said, ‘If I had silver hair like yours I’d be a major film star’. He said, ‘Mmm… takes more than the hair, darling!'" In his private life in Hampshire, does he mix with Brian’s real-life equivalents – harrumphers of mature years? "Hordes of them. It's very naval down there, so it helps that I’m related to Nelson’s Admiral Collingwood. One plummy chap asked if I’d come down to retire? I said, 'No, darling, I’ve been semi-retired ever since I left RADA!' I think it was the first time any man had called him darling." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. You can listen to The Archers on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The late June Spencer was the matriarch of Ambridge, but she liked to have fun too…
Add The Archers to your collection Martha Kearney, interviewing June Spencer on her 100th birthday five years ago, observed that the actress was “much warmer” than her Archers character, the formidable Peggy, mainstay of the soap through 70 years. Peggy nursed her second husband through Alzheimer’s, just as Spencer had her own husband in real life. Indeed at that time her steady human warmth was publicly deployed, as she talked courageously about the experience, enabled the writers to depict it with realism, and supported the Alzheimer’s Society as patron. Over the decades the Archer matriarch presided with an iron moral compass over her troublesome family (sexually wayward Lilian, Jennifer and comparatively blameless son Tony, on whom she was oddly hard) and their gradually modernising ways. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren flourished; at the centre of the web Peggy remained powerful – and in widowhood independently wealthy – deploying as strong a will as her savage cat Hilda Ogden (wittily named in honour of Coronation Street). She was pivotal in a recent plot, offering a grant for a rewilding project, that set family and village in competition. The prize was very on-message for the 2020s. Peggy’s morality twice saw her at odds with the clergy, boycotting a vicar for baptising the villainous Rob and demanding to fund a new stained-glass window honouring no actual saints but her own great-grandchildren. Great entertainment, and an elegant illustration of changing times. Jeremy Howe, taking over as editor in 2018, wondered how he could direct a legendary woman approaching her centenary, but her professionalism made it “a cup of tea! Flawless in technique, precision and delivery, always well prepared, scripts all marked up, and took notes like a dream.” She was also a living repository of the soap’s history. “If you went against the history of Peggy, she’d let you know. It’s a mark of good continuing-drama acting that the keeper of the keys is the actor.” Loyalty to a role can be double-edged: had she ever balked at monstrous Peggy moments: scorn of female vicars, an un-Christian attitude to evil Rob? “Oh no, she rolled with the punches. The most interesting discussion was about the rewilding grant: she thought Peggy would make herself too poor, having given away much of the fortune. We sat down and went through Peggy’s bank account and convinced her.” As to the character’s elderly barbs, “I remember once walking with her to the studio, and her saying, ‘What I’m really enjoying now is playing the comedy. Never done much of that…’ Rather than playing the barbs as malicious, she loved the comedy, could score a bullseye with a gently insulting cough as if it were a bon mot from Oscar Wilde.” In fact, Spencer in her younger days wrote and performed comic skits and material for the comedian Cyril Fletcher. And she once summed up Peggy as “a nice old thing but quite narrow-minded, unlikely to see a joke”. Howe remembers her now, “self-effacing at the back of the green room, taking everything in, immaculately dressed and made up”. Immaculate in every way: aged 102 she observed that infirmity meant she worked sitting on a chair, so if the script had her rising, she’d “fake the sound of trying to get up”. A radio-drama legend. The cast pay tribute Pat Gallimore (Pat Archer) "June was a wonderful actress and friend — my Archers mother-in-law for 50 years. As the matriarch of Ambridge, she taught us so much and was much loved. I’m so lucky to have worked with her for so long. I cherish the memories of times we shared on and off the microphone. Dearest June, I shall miss you greatly." Louiza Patikas (Helen Archer) "She was a phenomenon — a living legend. June embodied the poise and precision of the golden age of radio acting, yet felt ageless somehow and completely accepting of the modern world, including the many generations of young actors who joined the show after her and grew up on her watch. It was an honour to share the mic with her, and play Scrabble with her. Irreplaceable." David Troughton (Tony Archer) "She was an amazing woman, an ultimate professional, fun to work with, always interested in how you were getting on. It was daunting taking over the role of Tony [in 2014], but her kindness eased me seamlessly into Ambridge. I’ll always be truly grateful."
The Archers’ George Grundy made a terrible mistake and is now paying the price. Actor Angus Stobie reflects on being Ambridge’s bad boy
The Archers is on Radio 4 from Sunday to Friday at 7pm. Add it to your collection. Sign up for a soap and you never know what to expect. Two years ago, Angus Stobie, a quiet, thoughtful 24-year-old from Edinburgh, took a modest radio part as young George Grundy in The Archers and found himself in a melodrama of heroism, panic, lies, betrayals and a court appearance with five million listeners glued to the radio and social media aflame with anxious tweets. When he auditioned for the mud-stained jewel in Radio 4’s crown, he was fresh out of Manchester drama school – a year of that spent over Zoom during Covid, “doing animal impressions alone in my living room”. The Archers editor needed to introduce two rarely heard figures into the Ambridge landscape. “I had a commendation from the Carleton Hobbs radio bursary,” remembers Scobie. “I suppose that’s how I got an audition. Lots of boys my age were there, and it was actually for the part of Brad Horrobin. I only read one short bit of George at the end but then Taylor [Uttley] got Brad, and I got George! I was surprised, but excited.” Not a lifelong listener, he was briefed: “The editor Jeremy Howe filled me in on all the different storylines George was involved in, and how they might have shaped him. You have a duty to get it right in a show with such a rich history. You have to be grounded and truthful because it’s belonged to a lot of people, for years.” After a sedate urban upbringing – “I’m a city boy” – how did he set about evoking earthy rural life? “You don’t have to know a great detail, but you do ask questions whenever you’re vocalising your actions. For instance, this particular sheep, how heavy is it? How fast will it move?” Was there ever any ferret-training for the traditional Grundy hobby? “No. Never handled one at all, they’re all imaginary.” But, he adds wistfully, “I’d love to have some ferrets in the studio.” He worked carefully on the accent, far from his elegant Scottish tones. “I suppose it’s a sort of West Country/Midlands blend, not super-specific. But I listened a lot to Trevor [Harrison], who plays Eddie, he’s brilliant. And George is a teenager, so you have to modernise it slightly: he’s into social media, TikTok, American slang.” The other radio skill is finding a voice distinct from the other village lads, and he worked on this with Uttley’s Brad. “We naturally found places to position ourselves – he does this lovely, ever-so-slightly whingey, kind voice. I love their relationship. It started with George picking on him and getting him into trouble, but now he would admit a respect for Brad, going to his new life, university...” Indeed, before George’s trial there was a memorably sweet conversation Listen between the two that will have moved anyone with teenage sons. It was for that sort of scene that Stobie was hired. Jeremy Howe spotted his capacity for nuanced, emotional voice work, so the biggest Ambridge scenes for years have fallen to one of the newest and youngest cast members, and a non-Archer, too. Since George has now brought uproar, distress, confusion and fallings-out to nearly everyone in the fictional village, I should briefly remind less attentive listeners where he fits in. He’s the natural son of Will Grundy, but raised in his uncle Ed’s home after Emma Carter left one brother for the other. He’s rich in cousins, grandparents and half-siblings, with just an aunt-by-marriage in the dominant Archer clan because Alice, daughter of Jennifer, broke the class barrier long ago by marrying the local farrier, George’s uncle Chris. It was the divorced, intermittently recovering alcoholic Alice who set the ball rolling downhill. George found her drunk in her car and offered to drive her home (good chance to try such a fancy motor). On the way she drunkenly tried to climb out to be sick, distracting him into knocking a taxi-full of villagers into the river. He rescued three of them (“buckets of water, soaked bathmats to make squelching riverbank noises”, says Scobie happily). But in a panic, he then dragged the somnolent Alice into the driving seat. “A great day – looking through the script I saw that and I was shocked!” And disgusted? “No, as an actor you always ask, why? I mean, he’s done a half-decent thing to drive her, then put his life at risk amazingly. But then... well, I suppose being used to receiving blame and having fingers pointed at him, George’s visceral reaction is to remove blame for the crash from himself.” After weeks of being uneasily hailed as a hero, George confessed the truth to his mother – a big scene – and was arrested. But during his weeks of lies, the rescued Fallon lost her baby and Alice hit the bottle again out of supposed guilt, losing custody of three-year-old Martha. So everyone was furious with him, and there were more big scenes: with mother, father, uncle, grandparents, unforgiving Archers, Brad’s mum Tracy, Fallon’s vengeful policeman partner Harrison and Alice herself. It must have been quite a challenge, playing a surly 19-year-old with an uneasy conscience followed by big confrontations? “I just tried to get into the head of a teenager experiencing all these things. He’s just a boy, it’s monumental, there’s weights and layers, he knew what he did was wrong, but he’s someone who lives from moment to moment.” Did he question why George didn’t, like some hard-hearted listeners, blame the spoilt and sozzled Alice for making him crash in the first place? “No, family means a lot to him. Not blood family, but she’s his aunt. He’s got a good conscience. I loved the scenes with her.” She memorably confronted him with her victim-impact statement. “It’s powerful and devastating, as she calmly tells him the impact on her and Chris and especially the infant Martha. In that moment he realises what he caused; he’s got younger sisters himself. That’s the final piece of the puzzle for him.” It’s perceptive: even the most rough-cut teenage boys often have special tenderness for small children. Now we know the sentence. Unlike the aristocratic Freddie Pargeter, who got sent to a Young Offenders institution for drug dealing, George gets adult prison, and was last heard breaking off a phone call home. The current regime means he can’t be out till haymaking 2025. How does Stobie think George will fare inside? And will the scriptwriters manage to create some interesting prison scenes? “Nobody has told me! I’m partially relieved, but sad it’s over for now, I’ve very much enjoyed it. Prison will have an interesting effect on George in one of two ways – either completely reformed, or bad influences worsening his issues and making him resentful. It could be interesting. Change is always exciting to play.” Would he prefer to be a reformed character or a villain, like his occasionally heard Bad Uncle Clive? “You never know. It’s always fun to play parts when your character’s not at ease.” In the long term, might George find love? Stobie smiles: there is a girl George fancies, often mentioned but not yet heard. “That’s the question – will Tilly Button ever show up on the radio? Guess we’ll see.” Bring it on, scriptwriters! Somewhere there’s a gifted female drama graduate needing work and able to do a Borsetshire twang. Let her visit George in prison then crowdfund in the Bull for an appeal against his sentence. Just to upset the whole village again. Well, we all have our private Archers fantasies, don’t we?
The Archers' Angus Stobie on George's fate: 'Prison might make him worse'
George Grundy made a terrible mistake and is now paying the price. Actor Angus Stobie reflects on being Ambridge's bad boy.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Sign up for a soap and you never know what to expect. Two years ago, Angus Stobie, a quiet, thoughtful 24-year-old from Edinburgh, took a modest radio part as young George Grundy in The Archers and found himself in a melodrama of heroism, panic, lies, betrayals and a court appearance with five million listeners glued to the radio and social media aflame with anxious tweets. When he auditioned for the mud-stained jewel in Radio 4’s crown, he was fresh out of Manchester drama school – a year of that spent over Zoom during Covid, "doing animal impressions alone in my living room". The Archers editor needed to introduce two rarely heard figures into the Ambridge landscape. "I had a commendation from the Carleton Hobbs radio bursary," remembers Stobie. "I suppose that’s how I got an audition. Lots of boys my age were there, and it was actually for the part of Brad Horrobin. I only read one short bit of George at the end but then Taylor [Uttley] got Brad, and I got George! I was surprised, but excited." Not a lifelong listener, he was briefed: "The editor Jeremy Howe filled me in on all the different storylines George was involved in, and how they might have shaped him. You have a duty to get it right in a show with such a rich history. You have to be grounded and truthful because it’s belonged to a lot of people, for years. After a sedate urban upbringing – "I’m a city boy" – how did he set about evoking earthy rural life? "You don’t have to know a great detail, but you do ask questions whenever you’re vocalising your actions. For instance, this particular sheep, how heavy is it? How fast will it move?" Was there ever any ferret-training for the traditional Grundy hobby? "No. Never handled one at all, they’re all imaginary." But, he adds wistfully, "I’d love to have some ferrets in the studio." He worked carefully on the accent, far from his elegant Scottish tones. "I suppose it’s a sort of West Country/Midlands blend, not super-specific. But I listened a lot to Trevor [Harrison], who plays Eddie, he’s brilliant. And George is a teenager, so you have to modernise it slightly: he’s into social media, TikTok, American slang." The other radio skill is finding a voice distinct from the other village lads, and he worked on this with Uttley’s Brad. "We naturally found places to position ourselves – he does this lovely, ever-so-slightly whingey, kind voice. I love their relationship. It started with George picking on him and getting him into trouble, but now he would admit a respect for Brad, going to his new life, university..." Indeed, before George’s trial there was a memorably sweet conversation between the two that will have moved anyone with teenage sons. It was for that sort of scene that Stobie was hired. Jeremy Howe spotted his capacity for nuanced, emotional voice work, so the biggest Ambridge scenes for years have fallen to one of the newest and youngest cast members, and a non-Archer, too. Since George has now brought uproar, distress, confusion and fallings-out to nearly everyone in the fictional village, I should briefly remind less attentive listeners where he fits in. He’s the natural son of Will Grundy, but raised in his uncle Ed’s home after Emma Carter left one brother for the other. He's rich in cousins, grandparents and half-siblings, with just an aunt-by-marriage in the dominant Archer clan because Alice, daughter of Jennifer, broke the class barrier long ago by marrying the local farrier, George’s uncle Chris. It was the divorced, intermittently recovering alcoholic Alice who set the ball rolling downhill. George found her drunk in her car and offered to drive her home (good chance to try such a fancy motor). On the way she drunkenly tried to climb out to be sick, distracting him into knocking a taxi-full of villagers into the river. He rescued three of them ("buckets of water, soaked bathmats to make squelching riverbank noises", says Stobie happily). But in a panic, he then dragged the somnolent Alice into the driving seat. "A great day – looking through the script I saw that and I was shocked!" And disgusted? "No, as an actor you always ask, why? I mean, he’s done a half-decent thing to drive her, then put his life at risk amazingly. But then... well, I suppose being used to receiving blame and having fingers pointed at him, George’s visceral reaction is to remove blame for the crash from himself." After weeks of being uneasily hailed as a hero, George confessed the truth to his mother – a big scene – and was arrested. But during his weeks of lies, the rescued Fallon lost her baby and Alice hit the bottle again out of supposed guilt, losing custody of three-year-old Martha. So everyone was furious with him, and there were more big scenes: with mother, father, uncle, grandparents, unforgiving Archers, Brad’s mum Tracy, Fallon’s vengeful policeman partner Harrison and Alice herself. It must have been quite a challenge, playing a surly 19-year-old with an uneasy conscience followed by big confrontations? "I just tried to get into the head of a teenager experiencing all these things. He’s just a boy, it’s monumental, there’s weights and layers, he knew what he did was wrong, but he’s someone who lives from moment to moment." Did he question why George didn’t, like some hard-hearted listeners, blame the spoilt and sozzled Alice for making him crash in the first place? "No, family means a lot to him. Not blood family, but she’s his aunt. He’s got a good conscience. I loved the scenes with her." She memorably confronted him with her victim-impact statement. "It’s powerful and devastating, as she calmly tells him the impact on her and Chris and especially the infant Martha. In that moment he realises what he caused; he’s got younger sisters himself. That’s the final piece of the puzzle for him." It’s perceptive: even the most rough-cut teenage boys often have special tenderness for small children. Now we know the sentence. Unlike the aristocratic Freddie Pargeter, who got sent to a Young Offenders institution for drug dealing, George gets adult prison, and was last heard breaking off a phone call home. The current regime means he can’t be out till haymaking 2025. How does Stobie think George will fare inside? And will the scriptwriters manage to create some interesting prison scenes? "Nobody has told me! I’m partially relieved, but sad it’s over for now, I’ve very much enjoyed it. Prison will have an interesting effect on George in one of two ways – either completely reformed, or bad influences worsening his issues and making him resentful. It could be interesting. Change is always exciting to play." Would he prefer to be a reformed character or a villain, like his occasionally heard Bad Uncle Clive? "You never know. It’s always fun to play parts when your character’s not at ease." In the long term, might George find love? Stobie smiles: there is a girl George fancies, often mentioned but not yet heard. "That’s the question – will Tilly Button ever show up on the radio? Guess we’ll see." Bring it on, scriptwriters! Somewhere there’s a gifted female drama graduate needing work and able to do a Borsetshire twang. Let her visit George in prison then crowdfund in the Bull for an appeal against his sentence. Just to upset the whole village again. Well, we all have our private Archers fantasies, don’t we? The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. The Archers airs Sunday-Friday at 7pm on BBC Radio 4. Check out more of our Radio coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Nearly 20 years since she left EastEnders, Tracy-Ann Oberman jumped at the chance to revive the notorious Chrissie Watts
Add EastEnders to your watchlist Stand by at the Queen Vic: Chrissie Watts is back. “I can’t give anything away about what happens,” says Tracy-Ann Oberman demurely, “but she has fabulous hair. Less curly than it used to be.” It’s 19 years since the celebrated EastEnders scene when Chrissie killed her husband “Dirty” Den and Oberman hints that the character had a long time in prison to think about things and become “even more of a survivor”. “When Chris [Clenshaw, EastEnders’ executive producer] rang and asked me to come back and described an explosive storyline, I said: ‘Oh yes, I’m coming back for that!’” Following her debut in 2004, Oberman’s 218 episodes of the soap fixed Chrissie firmly in the national consciousness: hacking off her rival’s hair, hurling a chair through a window, finishing off Den with Pauline Fowler’s iron doorstop, then being pushed into his open grave by Barbara Windsor as Peggy. “That was fun. Something very old-Hollywood about it all. I got a big gay following.” She also had another accolade: “I made it into Vogue, [for getting] a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress into Albert Square.” Not that great hair and outfits are the point: “I loved Chrissie because she’s complicated, victim or villain. Soaps are brilliant for these big women’s roles. They were revolutionary back in the day – Coronation Street and EastEnders, working-class characters in recognisable worlds with strong matriarchs. Chrissie, Bet Lynch, Hilda Ogden, Dot Cotton – nothing was based on their looks or high glam, just real, proper, breathing, strong women keeping family and community together.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/08/3717-LI362401Eastenders-copy-dcfd1aa-e1725028254383.jpg" width="1229" height="820" alt="Tracy-Ann Oberman Wk. 37" title="Picture Shows: LESLIE GRANTHAM as Den Watts and TRACY-ANN OBERMAN as Chrissy Watts. Generic. WARNING: Use of this copyright image is subject to Terms of Use of BBC Digital Picture Service. In particular, this image may only be used during the publicity" /> She loved going back to the Albert Square set (“Some of the crew are the same!”) but had slight qualms about being Chrissie again after so long. “But within two minutes there she was, like finding a coat you’d put in the attic that still fits.” Oberman has always revelled in playing tough women in both light and darker parts, notably in the radio plays she has written about famous figures: she has played Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn, and was Anne Bancroft in her play about how casting Bancroft as the older seducer of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate revolutionised Hollywood conventions. She planned another about Bill and Hillary Clinton in the weekend after the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “Fiery, intense, a political deal-making conversation. Actually, Hillary was my way into Chrissie Watts: that idea of a powerful, intelligent woman who stayed with a man who had a fatal flaw and couldn’t keep it in his pants. She forgave him endlessly, so her fatal flaw was how much she loved him.” Now 58, she studied classics once and loves those echoes, too. “I’ve been twice on Celebrity Mastermind, on the women of Imperial Rome. Women in a patriarchal society who knew to look subservient but also how to control their men: persuade, seduce or poison. They were the templates for female power with seething anger underneath, having to be potent in a society that makes them impotent. Most women probably have a huge amount of rage, don’t they? We’re all brought up not to show it. And you don’t see it on stage or screen very often.” Where you certainly do is in The Merchant of Venice 1936, her radical version of Shakespeare’s play, re-set in London at the time of Oswald Mosley’s fascist campaign and the marches against Jews in the East End, culminating in the Battle of Cable Street. Performed to plaudits at the RSC, then on a tour including Wilton’s Music Hall (adjacent to Cable Street, the hall is said to have acted as a base for anti-fascist campaigners), the play now returns to the West End and a national tour. The Venetian nobles who insult Shylock become fascist acolytes of Mosley, and Oberman herself plays the Jewish money lender as an “immigrant matriarch, like the ones I grew up with, my great-grandmother from Belarus; my aunties, one who smoked a cigar, another in the schmutter [clothing] trade. My grandma was on the front line at Cable Street; Grandpa Alf was thrown through a plate glass window. But when the fascists marched in to tell the Jews they weren’t welcome here, the local working-class who fought for them – cockneys, dockers, Somali sailors – all said: ‘If you’re coming for the Jews, you’re coming for us all!’” Six years ago, when the project began, she had no idea that it would prove horribly topical today, with a surge in not only antisemitism but an “othering” hatred towards Muslims and immigrants. “I had never liked The Merchant of Venice, Hitler’s favourite play for good reason. It was taught very badly at school, nobody pointing out the racism, the hypocrisy, church and state working for the elite. As a Jewish girl I was made to read Shylock, and then at breaktime… Well, since then I’ve seen it done both with pity for Shylock and hate. “But rather than join people who say it should never be done, I wanted to reframe it. Show an immigrant matriarch who wants her daughter’s life to be better than hers. A strong woman who’s perhaps dislikeable, but villains are never born, they’re made. And that links nicely into Chrissie – if you villainise someone, they’ll be a villain!” Indeed, one of the most arresting moments in the production is Oberman as Shylock in court insisting on the “pound of flesh” in the contract the arrogant Antonio signed, demanding her due even if it kills him. As a result of the current demonstrations targeting British Jews, Oberman has had 24-hour security during the run of the play. “It’s become normalised, but it’s wrong. The play is not about the legitimacy of a state of Israel founded centuries later. Of course, it’s important to be able to be critical of the Israeli government and put terrible wars under scrutiny. But when you start using Nazi vocabulary – ‘Zios’ is what Nazis called Jews long before the State of Israel existed – it’s dangerous.” She sadly says she is “an accidental activist, as well as an actress and a writer who has long spoken up against misogyny, bullying and racism”, who never wanted to be in politics, but publicly left the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn after a woman who spray-painted pro-Gaza messages on the walls of the Warsaw ghetto was invited to speak at its conference. “That’s my family’s grave, where my great-aunt and her whole family died.” She adds, “As the late, great Rabbi Sacks said, antisemitism is not just about Jews, it’s about a sickness in the larger society. Any society that allows its Jewish community to feel under threat, history shows all other evils will follow. That’s why The Merchant of Venice 1936 ends with such a positive message, of all different communities pulling together at the Battle of Cable Street against others who seek division, because we are stronger together, better together, prouder together.” EastEnders filming fitted neatly between runs of the play, and I wonder about future parts. She would love to be Lady Macbeth, and likes moving between comedy and dramatic tragedy. “All good writers know that within every comedy is tragedy, and every tragedy has comedy.” Her teenage daughter Anoushka is following her into acting, so what advice does she offer to young women in this often spiteful world? “Get a training, keep your head screwed on, and don’t buy into the fame and fortune. Do it because you need to tell stories, embody characters and feel the alchemy of the first day of rehearsal. There’s no room for narcissism.”
Vanessa Redgrave reflects on 10 years of Call the Midwife: "It's passionately human"
Vanessa Redgrave is the quiet voice of humanity on Call the Midwife, but at 84 the theatrical legend remains as fiery as ever about politics, God and women. Just don’t call her a feminist…
Vanessa Redgrave does not waste words on idle chat. I dive in with the inescapable first question about lockdown – was she good at coping with it? “Yes.” Was it frustrating? “No, I’ve been writing a lot.” A memoir? “No. Won’t tell you more. But it’s not a play, and it’s not a TV series.” By the time our Zoom conversation ends, I form a private suspicion that it will be political. Or even religious. We’re here to discuss 10 years of Call the Midwife, in which she plays a small but vital part. Each week, after the title frames evoke 1950s London docklands, a soft, wise, elderly voice talks of change and love, humility and endurance. TV screens more accustomed to cop-show violence and vapid celebrity gently ease us into the deep simplicities of birth and death; as each story ends, the voice speaks again of humane values. It could be sentimental, but its sincerity holds you: it represents Jennifer Worth, a retired lay midwife working in the old, poverty-stricken East End alongside Anglican nuns. When the series started in January 2012, it was a slight shock to recognise the voice. This was not the sort of gentle veteran you’d think of casting as an aged nurse, this was Vanessa Redgrave: scion of an acting dynasty, whose birth 84 years ago was announced onstage at the Old Vic by Laurence Olivier, as Hamlet, declaring: “Laertes has a daughter!” He was, of course, referring to his co-star, Michael Redgrave. View oEmbed on the source website More than a star, she is a lifelong firebrand: CND, Workers’ Revolutionary Party, anti-war protestor, supporting a Guantanamo captive, demonstrating outside HMP Pentonville about a prison book ban. She isn’t cosy, yet that voiceover brings a tear every time. As Jane Fonda, her co-star in the 1977 film Julia, said: “Her voice seems to come from some deep place that knows all suffering and all secrets.” When Redgrave talks, you do feel that her furious activism is fuelled by compassion. She liked Worth’s memoir: “I really love narratives told by people who can bring us the period they lived, worked and struggled in. And I like the down-to-earth way that the script approaches these histories.” Nobody expected the series to run for 10 years. “The early director didn’t think it would get any attention at all – nuns, midwives, the East End, the 50s..!” But it gripped viewers, even if it rarely received more than a patronising nod from the critics. For each episode, Redgrave says, “I see my introduction, and we look at the themes and the footage that’s been shot, and a wonderful hands-on producer fills me in. It’s about times I can remember: I put myself into it. They’ve got some lovely actors, not only the nuns in Nonnatus House who are brilliant, but all the characters. I believe in them, I trust them. It is passionately human about the rights and dignity of the poorest and least regarded.” But what about Sister Julienne and the rest? Not to mention the retired eccentric Sister Monica Joan? After a life of stardom and political activism, can Redgrave relate to their austere vows and devout daily prayer? Does she understand nuns? “I have had plenty of contact with nuns! As for prayer, it is central. It just is.” Does she pray? “Can’t say yes to that, can’t say no. Lots of people in my family were religious. I had a great-aunt, Mother Superior of a convent, my grandfather’s sister. He was a Catholic, and wrote his life in two volumes, typed out. I’ve gone through it. I went to church a lot when very young; I still go now and then. It’s too big a subject to talk about now. If you want to go deeper into why people need to pray and go to church, talk to them.” Call the Midwife shows social and medical change affecting the small world of Poplar and the bicycling midwives who serve it. From bomb-sites and the working docks to rock ’n’ roll, miniskirts, changing sexual behaviour and the last years of illegal abortions, it becomes a miniature chronicle of Britain’s growth and its crises. “Like [the prescribing to pregnant women of] Thalidomide, “which has never really been expiated,” says Redgrave. “And the Windrush people coming. And homelessness and evictions, the terrible way poor people were treated, which” – she adds sharply – “I can’t help pointing out and remarking to you is much worse today. People living in sheer poverty in this country – women, especially, have the toughest time. I’m shivering now, because it’s pretty cold, but I’m one of the lucky ones – I can turn my boiler up. We still need change; I’d like to change this awful Universal Credit, and make sure there’s decent social support for the huge numbers who live in dire circumstances. Especially women, single mothers with children.” But she shows irritation when I bring up the f-word. “I am not a feminist! If you’ve read anything I’ve ever said you know that! Being equal to men, that’s different. But not everybody who was a suffragette was a feminist. Emmeline Pankhurst was a socialist before she was a feminist. She worked hard for women, because of their suffering under that legislation. It still horrifies me today when I think of what they went through, and how they were treated, by men and by women. Women always keep things together for both women and men, and the worst is always suffered by women! But it’s socialism: equality, not feminism.” I ask about modern activism, and whether she welcomed the #MeToo campaign. “What is that? You’ll have to tell me, what is it?” I try, but she bats it away: “I’ve been busy, doing a lot of writing.” She is, however, more aware of the campaigns around the history of slavery. “The way that history is taught in schools is terrible, and it’s dropped much too soon. Thank God things are coming up now. No, I don’t think they should pull down the statues. We need more statues, different ones, not just commemorating men who made money out of slavery. But I don’t think they should go: we’ve got to keep on taking on board the fact that we are a country that has done terrible, cruel things. We still are, when we refuse to give visas to asylum seekers, put them into prison, into barracks, and deport them back into an area we destroyed way back in history. We’re still doing the horror. “And look at the slavery going on now: sex slavery. It’s happening in cities and towns, not tucked away in caverns in the mountains. There’s plenty going on.” We turn to her work. She is a cinema legend all the way from Antonioni’s Blowup, which conjured up a much groovier 1966 London than Call the Midwife’s latest storylines. I have seen her onstage, majestically quirky in Driving Miss Daisy (2011) and an angry lioness of a Queen Margaret in Richard III (2016). In her 78th year, a bizarre but beguiling Old Vic rendering of Much Ado about Nothing had her and James Earl Jones playing the young lovers (he was then 82 and taking nips of oxygen in the wings). For the latest news and expert tips on getting the best deals this year, take a look at our Black Friday 2021 and Cyber Monday 2021 guides. Redgrave is a known maverick: after he had directed her in A Song at Twilight in 1999, Sheridan Morley told me: “She never did the same performance twice, and if I tried to say, ‘Keep that in,’ she asked, ‘What did I do?’” But her causes burn through any topic. She veers off from her own career to speak warmly of Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s TV films about West Indian immigrants, and to praise Ken Loach. “I’m proud that people in my profession are doing this, showing the injustices.” Distressed by the refugee crisis, in 2017 she made Sea Sorrow with Ralph Fiennes, Juliet Stevenson and Emma Thompson. Redgrave’s directorial debut used poetry and had a great deal of heart, but had mixed reviews. So is she an optimist, believing like Martin Luther King that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”? “It’s a little bit useless to think in those terms,” she says. “I wouldn’t dream of rebuking you, but, no, I am not.” Why not? “If one wants things to get better, one has to work for them. I don’t feel I should go around holding my head up if I wasn’t doing something to help.” Redgrave is said to have once sold her house to fund a documentary about Palestinians and in 1971 used her fee for Mary, Queen of Scots to pay for a nursery school in her neighbourhood. “Most people I know do what they can, but what’s going on at the top, in government, isn’t tolerable.” Though restlessly engaged with the griefs of the world, she is reluctant to talk about her own. Ten years ago, she suffered a triple loss within 18 months: first her daughter Natasha Richardson was killed in a skiing accident, and then both her siblings, Corin and Lynn Redgrave, died. Does such hard experience enrich an actor’s work? “I’m not sure. Maybe you cross into a place most people haven’t… life has taught me a great deal, I suppose.” Did she, though, share the sense that, as Judi Dench expressed in widowhood, “more of me went to work”? “No, I don’t think that happens. I have to keep going, anyway. To pay my way. There’s the nitty-gritty of the council tax, the VAT, the income tax. How is one going to keep one’s home otherwise? I’ve been a long time in this block of flats. Then when my mum [Rachel Kempson, Lady Redgrave] was living with me, she had a stroke, so she couldn’t climb stairs. “I managed to move to a ground-floor flat, which I’m in now, with a ‘backyard’ as the Americans call it, but actually that’s a good description: masses of trees and bushes all around from other gardens. I knew what it meant to her to sit in the fresh air and see friends. It’s terrifying to think that most people have had to endure the last year without that.” Our time’s up. She is tired. But looking forward to work. “What’s good about theatre, radio and television, is that once in a blue moon something wonderful comes along like Call the Midwife. Something that makes everybody think and feel and be more human and genuine. Something that hasn’t got false.” Call the Midwife concludes tonight on BBC One at 8pm. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our handy TV Guide. This edition of The Big RT Interview originally appeared in the Radio Times magazine. For the biggest interviews and the best TV listings subscribe to Radio Times now and never miss a copy.
Michael Palin looks back over his famous travels ahead of Himalayan adventure
Michael Palin talks to Libby Purves about how a year without travel has affected the globetrotter.
What happens when you stop a traveller from travelling – for a whole year? Would I find Sir Michael Palin snappy, resentful? Nope. Turns out he’s quite enjoyed lockdown. He refers to the restrictions of 2020 with the same boyish optimism with which we watched him encounter many a slippery ice floe or heaving deck. Comfortable in his grandfatherly chair by the bookshelf of diaries and maps – a pose now familiar from his Travels of a Lifetime that cheered us through October and returns for Christmas – he explains his benign mood. “The great surprise is that I’ve been extremely content to be in the same place for some time. "I had heart surgery last September and was told to have rest and recuperation – then lockdown came along. I accepted it rather happily, it’s been like a huge doctor’s note. Anyway, coming home has always been the best part of the process. We live near Hampstead Heath in London and near friends.” He even had some work. “I did an extract of Waiting for Godot with Robert Lindsay for Lockdown Theatre [in aid of the Royal Theatrical Fund] and now there’s a series of theatre readings. It’s as if the entertainment world became a cottage industry this year: no studios, no cars waiting outside, everyone at home.” Then came the recent BBC series looking back at over 30 years of his TV travels. “The BBC were desperate for any archive material that didn’t involve coming into studios. It’s turned out better than we expected.” It has: he sits with old diaries and tapes, while fans like Sir David Attenborough commend him for his warmth and originality. It’s oddly comforting, even as we all chafe for a chance to travel again. Is he, though, a natural looker-back? “No! I thought I was no good at it. All my life everything was about moving on to the next thing. But it’s been a rewarding process. Remembering it made me see that we covered an enormous amount of ground, saw wonderful landscapes, were let into people’s lives in a way few people could do even before the pandemic.” Watching highlights from those four series –Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle and Sahara – it was certainly driven home that Palin’s travel programmes broke the mould in their informality, spontaneity and willingness to be uncomfortably diverted round war zones (as in Sudan). There were real dangers from bandits, pirates, train roofs, even the Chernobyl fallout (the Russian guides wouldn’t accompany him to a blighted maternity hospital). Was he ever afraid, even resentful of what was asked of him? He’s a family man, married 54 years to his teenage sweetheart Helen, with three children then growing up. “Fear, yes. Sometimes I did question on camera why I was on light planes in vast open spaces feeling I had no control. At the North Pole we had to land on a moving ice floe, and then get off and then fly to Svalbard for the night. I just felt the whole thing was hideously wrong and I should have been safe in, I don’t know, Peterborough or somewhere. We didn’t have enough fuel. But that meant a rather wonderful ending: we had to land on the nearest base at the tip of Greenland in the middle of the night. We went into a hut and one of the soldiers stared, blood drained from his face. They had the DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the table…” Now, a 90-minute special for Christmas covers his travels in the Himalayas. There’s a kidnap, much trekking and another memory of his previous career when the Dalai Lama says: “I know your face; your face very famous from BBC.” The other famous moment is starker: “In Nepal the Gurkha officers looking after us were abducted by Maoist guerrillas. Quite frightening at the time, though one looks back and thinks ‘storm in a teacup’. But it was a remote village, and these gentlemen took our director, plus the officer and one other person, into the woods, and we didn’t see them for hours. The officer, Adrian, wasn’t released for three more days and nights: no British officer had ever been taken before by the Maoists. “The sad bit was that then the village really wanted rid of us, quickly. Normally, everywhere we went, people were welcoming. But the tension was high.” After all that, this year of compulsory self-coddling must have felt odd: BBC producers must have been terrified at the idea of infecting a 77-year-old national treasure recovering from a life-saving heart operation. “Oh yes!” He laughs a bit. “But I suppose it was right to take care. The interviews and the commentary were done under strict BBC regulations. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything they had touched. The microphone transmitter was sent first and I would put it on myself. My temperature was solemnly written down at the beginning and end of every session. Actually at one point my thermometer went wrong and came up as 34.2. No one seemed to notice, so it was only later that I realised that if it was accurate I’d be dead of hypothermia.” Watching the old clips alongside shots of the 2020 version of Palin is poignant. He was only 45 for Around the World in 80 Days but, with his friendly, innocent manner and curly, dishevelled hair, looks more like a gap-year kid seeking adventure: nice lad, well-mannered and hopeful, but a bit lost. Is that odd for him, too? “I don’t usually look at myself, because immediately after any programme I get hyper-critical, why did I get that line wrong, why am I sitting like that? But years later you’re just a figure in beautifully shot landscapes. But yes, I was young, and watching it I just want to be that person. Who is that man without a grey hair on his head, not a wrinkle on his brow? I want to speak to him, know what the secret is. I still feel pretty fit, and I am the same person. But…” A slight sigh. “I suppose for a long time I felt I was 27, until suddenly I was 76, the heart problem came along and I felt older, and vulnerable – though the surgery didn’t worry me. I had implicit faith in the team.” There’s a parallel he doesn’t notice: all through our conversations about the TV series he has spoken with respectful admiration of the director and cameraman. He’s a team player. “But yes, the heart thing made me think about vulnerability, and how we work. This little device inside you, your heart! You’ve got to look after it. Like your kettle.” Palin is at pains to acknowledge the privilege he feels at being allowed (and paid) to undertake these adventures. “I felt fortunate, still do. Nobody knows when we’ll be able to travel the world again in relative ease. I really feel for the adventurous young, who for some time won’t be able to experience it. But I didn’t even leave England until I was 19, or really travel until I was 45. They’ve got years.” But did he feel guilty about the “Palin effect”, which saw tourists flooding places like Machu Picchu? “It’s a difficult one. But it mainly applied in fairly remote destinations: I didn’t send enormous cruise ships or 747s. It was more adventurous travellers to places like North Africa where UK tourists are few, and that sort of travelling I thoroughly applaud. Mass tourism is a sort of deception: wanting British three-course meals wherever you are and meeting people from your own country. That’s not opening yourself to the world, more increasing suspicion of it.” The trips meant long times away from home, “In Pole to Pole I came back for three days, then off again for four months”, and he was homesick. “The first week was always the worst, comparing the bed, the food, the people, with the comforts of home. But then… the newness!” Ah, wanderlust doesn’t wear off. That began in his Sheffield boyhood, looking at trains: “I still get a thrill when I see a railway line. There’s a selfishness innate in motorists which you can’t have on trains and boats. On trains everywhere you get a complete mix of people, from professionals to people carrying crops or animals. I travel by train whenever I can.” I tell him that when possible I have made several train journeys from London to Brighton, and he cries, “Oh, how is it? Are they still running all right?' as if I had told him I’d trodden the golden road to Samarkand. I reassure him: it’s OK, trains are running. It’ll be all right. We talk about the more terrible journeys of today, for refugees. “People dying on refugee boats is one of the most horrible things we have to deal with. All the people on my travels were hospitable, shared anything they had. They wouldn’t be doing this unless they were really desperate, doing for their family what I would do. There’s got to be a better way. They are not threatening our country. I hate branding those people as “them”, foreigners. They’re people, same as we all are.” Is he a worrier? “I’m an optimist. I love life, and where I’m living, and our friends, family, books, television programmes, box sets, galleries when one can go… so many things we can enjoy that people couldn’t when I was growing up. Life is better in most ways now. I still keep a diary in longhand and I like letters and old telephones. But the way people talk about, and understand, each other is better, kinder than it used to be. Of course there are dreadful things, and sometimes you feel like going down to the basement to hide. But”... a thoughtful pause... “We haven’t got a basement!” Finally, how about Christmas? “We don’t know… it was our middle son’s 50th birthday, we postponed celebrations. I suppose if it’s dangerous for the nation’s health we’ll have a minimal one. I’ve got four grandchildren…” He brightens up. “So we might have a rolling Christmas, like a relay race!” Very Palin: everything can be a good game, so get out and play it. This interview originally appeared in the Radio Times magazine. For the biggest interviews and the best TV listings subscribe to Radio Times now and never miss a copy. Michael Palin's Himalaya: Journey of a Lifetime airs on Sunday 20th December on BBC Two. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide.
Cleaning Up star Sheridan Smith: 'My skin is paper thin'
The Care actress talks tattoos, mental health, and her starring role in ITV's new drama about insider trading
In the first episode of Cleaning Up, Sheridan Smith – as Samantha, an office cleaner – sneakily tries to cover up the stubborn stain of someone’s careless al-desko lunch. From that moment you’re on her side all the way, as she necks the leftovers in wine glasses on a conference table, begs for extra shifts and heads home through the glass jungle of Canary Wharf, worrying about her kids and her debts and playing roulette on her phone. Not perfect, not a squeaky-clean role model; a problem gambler, but crackling with intelligence and mischief. The writer Mark Marlow’s heroine is one of the invisible: a humble cleaner in a tabard, the woman swanky bankers don’t notice, but who might beat them at their game. Meet the cast of Cleaning Up Sheridan Smith on her return to the limelight: “I’m trying to be a bit more grown up nowadays” RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox Sheridan enthuses, “She’s someone you immediately fall in love with: massively flawed, but you’re on her side. Morally there’s a lot she does wrong,” says the 37 year-old, “but it’s for her family – she doesn’t want to lose her girls and her house. She’s got a gambling head on her, so might get that big win. And there are these big rich companies cheating – why should they get away with it, and not some poor cleaner?” She wins your heart quickly, Sheridan Smith. I met her first in 2011, when her star suddenly rose. She moved from her Lincolnshire village at 16, had a well-noticed debut appearance at the Donmar Warehouse and then a run of sitcoms like Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Gavin & Stacey. “Chavs and slappers a speciality!” she cries. View oEmbed on the source website The leap to West End stardom was a hilarious performance in Legally Blonde, in which a chihuahua jumped into her pink handbag with flawless timing, seven shows a week: “I had bits of meat tucked down my bra. I smelled!” Trevor Nunn spotted her for a stunningly moving part in Flare Path, and that was when I found her in her flowery dressing room, with a second Olivier on the shelf and reviews she did not dare read: “Superb… Impish charm… Stunning… Brilliant technical acting”. That nonplussed her: an ongoing anxiety is that she never went to drama school. “Learning on the job for me is like trying to be a sponge, taking it all in. I’m really grateful to directors, and actors. Like Dustin Hoffman saw me in Flare Path, and put me in his film [Quartet] with Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith… acting royalty. I was so, so nervous, but Maggie took me under her wing. I like taking direction… nuggets of genius, they’ve got!” She grew up dancing and singing with her parents, a country and western duo, which feels relevant – the music is about simple, strong emotions, hearts that break and women who soldier on: “My mum always says the show must go on.” Alongside stage stardom, there were plum TV parts in the Great Train Robbery drama Mrs Biggs and as Cilla Black in Cilla, a Bafta, then an OBE. But soon after her visit to the Palace in 2015, her father Colin was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She had lost a brother the same way, and always felt her success could help make up that loss to her parents. The diagnosis knocked her sideways, just as she was starring in Funny Girl. Again she had audiences on their feet, turning easily from brash jokey confidence to self-doubt and anxiety that was, in fact, close to her real state. “I’ve always had impostor syndrome: ‘Oh God, what if I can’t do it, what if this role is the last one?’” Those interludes of desperate anxiety, unseen by audiences, had haunted her for years, and in 2016 broke down her composure entirely. The impending loss of her dad was too hard a blow, not least because she was working flat-out 170 miles away. She faltered during Funny Girl, and withdrew for two months with stress, exhaustion and grief. “My anxiety levels started getting a lot higher; it was that fear of failing, I guess. It came out of nowhere and got gradually worse and worse and came to a head. And Dad dying. It wasn’t that I chose to take the time off, but you know, it was better that I had time with him. No one’s as good as your dad, are they? He used to say, ‘No one’s good enough to take you up the aisle, I’ll take you up the red carpet!’ Every event, he was my date. Since he passed away I don’t go to many things any more.” Throughout her rise she had no long-term partner, and family is vital. “I lost my eldest brother when I was eight, my other brother Damian’s in a band now and plays up north. I’ve always got that solid family and go home as often as I can.” There were snide press reports about her collapse, and in a flurry of unwise, unhappy tweets, she protested. Sometimes angry: “They don’t give a f*** about my dad!” More often regretful and loving towards her fans: “Sorry I’m not strong enough”. Being open to heartbreak, anxious to learn and unsure of her abilities are the qualities that make her so mesmerising to watch. But they leave her vulnerable. “When I was in Hedda Gabler, the director Anna Mackmin said my skin was paper thin. And it is, yeah.” Less mentioned in the reports of her collapse during Funny Girl is something she proudly reminds me of now. “I came back after caring for Dad, and finished the run. Then I did the tour. I wanted to do the tour, I felt I had let people down. It was cathartic to finish it that way.” View oEmbed on the source website Meanwhile, though, she had taken one eccentric route in defiance of all the grief and shame. She has a mass of tattoos: a Daddy’s Girl, a This Too Shall Pass, a C’est la vie. “I was not in a good place. My mum went berserk! Maybe in my head I just wasn’t going to act any more. I was in this mad little world. Why should the whole world have a right to look at me? But then I got better and thought: ‘Oh, I’m an idiot! Of course I’m going back to acting!’ Now my make-up artist has ordered a product from America that covers the tattoos. And I wear cardigans a lot!” Psychiatric care has helped her: “Various specialists. It took a couple of years to get right, and to get over the social phobias. I recently got a great doctor, and I think I’m finally back. I decided to talk about it because it’s an illness like any other illness. I was ashamed and embarrassed and now I need to be an advocate, to say: ‘It’s OK to not be OK. Ask for help.’” She’s frequently approached by fans experiencing similar struggles: “Girls come to gigs, message me, talk to me about anxiety, being too fat or not pretty enough.” Music is growing more important – she’s just released a second album, and sang a song she wrote for her father at the British Legion Festival of Remembrance in November. “Such an honour! Music is therapeutic, I can get all my emotions out, tell a story in three minutes, not three hours.” We talk some more about Cleaning Up, and how they sent her “for office-cleaning lessons – I learned that you don’t rub a stain, you dab it, and there are lots of different cloths for different jobs.” As for Sam’s gambling addiction: “Well, I know people who’ve had similar situations. Look at telly now, every ad is gambling. And women, at home with kids, no chance or time to go out and get more money. Why wouldn’t you?” The gamble of her own career is gradually paying off in a calmer, more level way. “I don’t have big ambitions any more – as long as I’m working and my mental health’s good. I’d like to get married, have a kid.” She told me back in the summer that she was engaged. James Horn, reports say, is a quiet and courtly city worker. “I need to come home to someone caring, understanding. Normality. But someone who’ll put up with the madness of this industry.” I rang her recently and asked about a wedding date; she responded with a torrent of happy giggles. “No rush! I’m booked up filming all next year, we’re just enjoying the engagement.” Other plans, however, move fast: she at last has what she’s longed for for years, “A little farm out in the country. I’ve just got four donkeys. Got another dog now, too. My fella wants chickens, fresh eggs. I’ve realised how much I missed the countryside.” The other 2019 plan is setting up her own production company. “I’m super excited about finding people I want to work with all the time, looking for fresh talent, maybe giving some young people who don’t have the money to train a chance to perform. I’d love that.” Any New Year’s resolutions? “No more dogs, no more tattoos, I promised my mum. But I will probably break it. More dogs, anyway.” And she is still resolved on a hen party at Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park in Tennessee. We had shrieked together at our first meeting when she found out I’d been there. “Hen party! Yes! With all my girls! You coming?” Too damn right I would, if still wanted when the day dawns. This article was originally published in the 5-11 January 2019 issue of Radio Times
BBC radio is no longer top dog in the digital age
Eddie Mair and Chris Evans could be the first of many to wave goodbye to the broadcaster, warns Libby Purves
When we heard that Eddie Mair was leaving for LBC, I pursed my lips. Rumour said it was for money, and I got judgemental. Wrong: turns out he was truly pixilated by a fresh start. Sorry, Eddie. But no sooner had we digested this worrying idea that life could be more fun outside Broadcasting House than Chris Evans was heading off to Virgin. Chris Evans to join Virgin Radio in 2019 after announcing BBC departure Eddie Mair: why my accidental exit at the BBC was the perfect ending RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox Who next? Now that commercial radio offers both good money and nationwide reach online, is it no longer axiomatic that the best, proudest place to be in radio is the BBC? Commercial bosses like James Rea of LBC speak bullishly of “breaking the BBC’s stranglehold”, which is a bit unfair since the “stranglehold” was due to the pre-digital need for huge transmitters funded by a licence fee, and to a Charter underpinning the public service seriousness of Radios 3 and 4. View oEmbed on the source website It was streaming that changed the landscape, not heroism. But now the commercial stations’ tanks are on the lawn, with a move towards talk and “Leading Britain’s Conversation”. Rea says, “We are closing the gap… we’re in the business of expansion.” His audience is led by ABC1s, like Radio 4’s: but is younger. Expansion is always exciting. More than retrenchment and fiscal shrinking, from which BBC radio suffers. Only its few superstars and top managers operate in the mad-money area that sparked the gender pay row. Its skilled, faithful core of programme-makers and freelancers are little rewarded or respected. The BBC is always embattled: criticised for its anxious over management and recent stupidities, its TV limb wincing from a losing arm wrestle with Netflix and Sky. Morale is fragile. Dismayingly, it could be that Mair and Evans are the first flakes of gilded plaster falling off the grand old structure. Harbingers of a sense that actually, dammit, the BBC is not the proudest, happiest, most comradely place to do radio. I don’t want to think that. Lord Reith was right about offering people something “better than they thought they wanted”, and in his poignant “There are two kinds of loneliness: insulation in space and isolation of spirit. These are both dispelled by wireless.” Radio 4 embodied that faith in mind-to-mind connection; even outside the news department, nearly half its programmes still do. There is still craft, dedication and curiosity, a civil assumption of listeners’ intelligence but not scholarship. And it’s properly inclusive: you don’t need a smartphone or wi-fi, even your nan’s old tranny with the bent aerial will do. You can be in a shed or up a mountain, in a lorry or a cardboard box on the pavement, and still be offered Peter Hennessy and Neil MacGregor, drama, careful reporting and The News Quiz. I like that thought. It isn’t universal, though. I’m no Luddite, and podcasts of existing programmes are a boon, but I raise an eyebrow at BBC Radio boss Bob Shennan’s panic at the supposed two million who “only listen to podcasts”, and his appointment of a special commissioner for stuff never intended to be shared on air. Especially when, to be honest, podcasts so often are unstructured, rambling, overlong and self-indulgent. That studio clock has a purpose… Will that digital-or-die feeling feed a sense that BBC radio as we knew it is over? Are Mair and Evans the advance guard? Are the cleverest people thinking of jumping ship to surf the online wave? I long to be wrong. Libby Purves is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author
Too white for comedy? There must be a place at the BBC for future Monty Pythons
"Every one of us fights some battle, not all visible. And there are areas where the pious, reverse discrimination becomes plain potty," writes Libby Purves
Insulting people for being white, educated, straight, affluent and male is increasingly fashionable now, especially with powerful white blokes on £200k a year. You can argue that this particular bigotry is quite useful when it reminds appointments committees to vary the sex, background and shade of FTSE executives, pay women properly and shake out remnants of racism, sexism, xenophobia, disablism etc in society. But it’s hard on those who do get insulted for things they can’t help, and ignores the less visible diversities of family security, personal griefs and troubles. Every one of us fights some battle, not all visible. And there are areas where the pious, reverse discrimination becomes plain potty. So my heart sank when I saw that BBC comedy boss Shane Allen said that the Monty Python team wouldn’t be commissioned today because “six Oxbridge white blokes” were insufficiently “diverse”. Michael Palin explores North Korea in new travel series Monty Python’s John Cleese is so fed up with Brexit and the British press he is moving to the Caribbean Michael Palin on David Attenborough, travelling the world and his Python pals View oEmbed on the source website Is there any spectacle more depressing, more Dad-dance and David Brent, than an artfully stubbled BBC commissioner smugly bigging up his “diversity” cred? Worse still when he is the controller through whom all new comedy must pass. For him the “metropolitan, educated experience” is out, also the “male middle-aged life crisis” (hard luck Hancock and Reggie Perrin). Instead he promised “an authentic Muslim experience”, mental health issues and the all-black Famalam. John Cleese did remind him that the Pythons included “three grammar-school boys and a poof ” and that the targets of their jokes were mostly men. Indeed, if you want a good takedown of the much-maligned “stale pale male” establishment, look back 50 years at the Pythons’ businessmen, generals, bosses, doctors, sillywalkers and nudge-nudge lechers. But we all need to laugh, and the idea that we can only be made to do so by people exactly like us is just weird. For the gift of provoking laughter (the main point, even of the most barbed satire) is elusive. It follows no strict social or moral laws. Comedy can be darkly shocking or featherlight joy, intricately clever or deliberately daft, sophisticated or potty, borderline offensive or benign. It’s Wodehouse and Miranda Hart, Victoria Wood and the Goons, Meera Syal and Ken Dodd, Michael Frayn and Shappi Khorsandi, Omid Djalili, Stewart Lee and Alan Bennett. It’s bawdy at working mens’ clubs and Iolanthe at the Coliseum, Les Dawson dissing mothers-in-law and your own mother-in-law with a well-timed putdown. Not everyone laughs at all of it, some are offended, but it has no race, tribe, gender or age; whenever that helpless snort or bark of laughter comes, we see the joke of flawed humanity in an unpredictable world. Comedy creeps up on you, bites you on the bum, defies formulae and rules, jumps fences. But we are, with the kindest of intentions, building a world of rules and formulae and fences. Even around laughter. And I suspect the Commissioner of Comedy is just virtue-signalling in some internal PC panic. This is after all the man who two years ago announced a “landmark sitcom season” with remakes of old shows, and banged on about comedy being “evergreen” and a “rich legacy”. In his new schedules there is indeed Famalam and Lenny Henry, but also a new Motherland (white, north London women with jobs and ample money for cafés), Ghosts (white couple running a hotel) and a BBC3 thing about white male bloggers. Apparently, funny white guys are OK as long as you pretend to despise them…
A toast to the Today programme at 60 years
Libby Purves lifts the lid on BBC Radio 4's real office celebrations: "a boozy lunch, rife with memories, catch-ups and amiable disrespect"
As you read this, we’ll be doing it again. In a Turkish restaurant somewhere in London, a couple of dozen of us will be celebrating the Today programme’s anniversary. Not like the formal 60th birthday event in October in the Wigmore Hall, under the smiling eye of senior management: more of a boozy lunch, rife with memories, catch-ups and amiable disrespect. It happens every few years and the spirit of that late-1970s cussed and spectacularly messy 24-hour office, with its whisky bottles in the filing cabinet, revives as we remember the high spots and the low, Gloria the cleaner, the canteen in the small hours and the unfortunate bookings. “I wasn’t to know he was just a wallpaper manufacturer... same name... I thought he was Montgomery’s aide.” Today presenters talk Brexit, diversity and Thought for the Day Kirsty Young on swotting for Desert Island Discs and how she winds down from “intense” interviews Some have long retired, some moved on in radio or TV, perennial freelances for hire like me. Some producers and editors rose into management. One happy memory is of Jenny Abramsky, one of us in the 80s but by then the godlike Director of Audio and Music, crawling out under the table during pudding because it was the only way to escape the merriment for a meeting with the D-G. Some who rose look back and shake their heads in envy at us freelance underlings, regretting the distance they travelled away from the front line. One much-promoted chap observed, when I asked what had become of him between our outside-broadcast adventures and his retirement, “Basically, I talked b******s for five years and fired people.” I was lucky to be there as a trainee producer, reporter and finally presenter, because those were good times. That messy office was home; indeed, it founded our home: Paul [Heiney] and I met in a spell as “forward-planning reporters”, fought over editing machines, bonded at the editor’s party and married in secret because he was on That’s Life by then and we dreaded publicity (today we’d have had agents urging us to sell it to Hello!). It was Brian Redhead who announced it for us once we were safely hidden in Norfolk. By an equal stroke of luck, leading to even more boisterous lifelong reunions, before Today I was on the newish BBC Radio Oxford. This is another office that rebuilds its old atmosphere in minutes every few years as we crowd round pub tables by the Thames. We drink to losses, of course, as time passes: like Humphrey Carpenter, both an impressive intellectual and on his DJ show a sort of less restrained Kenny Everett. Or older figures like our first manager, Donald Norbrook. He gathered staff round his piano to sing carols at Christmas, and during the IRA letter-bomb campaign wandered in at dawn to open the post so the receptionist didn’t have to. It was also revealed, at one reunion after the dear man had died, that he never noticed his secretary’s lush crop of cannabis plants on his office windowsill. I was lucky to grow up in two such office communities. There are fewer now; daft flirting is verboten in our prim age, and the banter is more cautious. And it’ll probably be a lot more so now, after some ghastly snitch grassed up John Humphrys for teasing Jon Sopel about his salary on the office phone. But maybe there are still some workmates in the Corp who, 40 years on, will still want to gather for lunch. I hope so.
Former Radio 4 host Libby Purves: "vain and greedy" men are to blame for BBC gender pay gap
"It’s men who drive pay to insane levels," says Purves
The Carrie Gracie affair is awful. The BBC loses a top China expert, gets barracked by the equality watchdog and is exposed for “Byzantine” grievance procedures – and trying to buy Gracie’s principles for £45k. Even within the general row about equal pay it is a low point. None of it had to happen. Some complain that the pay gap exists because women don’t negotiate. I would say that it’s more about men being vain and greedy. With few exceptions (mainly in the shiny-floor-and-spangles world, inhabited by, for example, Claudia Winkleman) it’s men who drive pay to insane levels. It’s men, not women, who flick their carefully tended hair and purr, like a L’Oréal ad, “Because I’m worth it!” Today host John Humphrys slammed for "base, smug and condescending" off-air jokes over gender pay gap Former BBC China editor Carrie Gracie presents Today programme amid BBC unequal pay row BBC News said they couldn't get anyone from the BBC to comment on the Carrie Gracie row I told one 400k colleague that he was overpaid. He said, “It’s because I came from newspapers when they paid a lot, so the BBC had to match it.” “Why?” I asked, and he sidled away to talk to someone richer. But really, why? He can’t act, sing or dance, isn’t pretty and – until briefed – knows no more than hundreds of other journalists. The BBC has a problem with inherited contracts. I accept that. One would like the director-general of the BBC to spend a week reading the BBC’s payroll and noting the gender inequality. The DG could then weigh the importance of the top earners and tell their agents that their next contract will shrink, because the BBC must budget carefully and equably. If they threatened to go, the DG could gently say, “If you must. But remember how much of your ratings depends on our Rolls-Royce production values and international reach. We’ll build another you.” To news stars the DG could add that BBC News itself is the real star, respected for the rigorous work of hundreds of others who are less well paid. That this never happens is because of two things. One is that managers like to talk of “handling multi-million-pound budgets”, because that makes their own inflated pay seem good value. The other is a craven fear of losing “talent”, and a failure to hunt widely for more. They get fixed on the idea that there can only ever be one Norton or Winkleman or Feltz or Lineker. They cling on, like frightened toddlers to their teddies. In fluffy showbiz it’s a bit understandable. But news and good documentaries aren’t showbiz. Evan Davis tweeted over Gracie, “I don’t think the idea that there should be equal pay for the same work makes sense in showbiz. No junior actor working alongside Tom Cruise should expect to get the same pay.” Mate, you’re not in showbiz! It may be harsh to say, but nobody wants you on a red carpet! You’re an economist who did a bit of Today! Davis says he wouldn’t expect to earn as much as John Humphrys, but let me share a little secret: having known the Humph for decades I bet he would do it for half the rate. Or less. He loves arguing into BBC microphones at dawn. There’s nowhere else he’d be as happy. That applies to more presenters than you’d think. It certainly applied to me as a Today presenter, and for 34 years hosting Midweek. I never negotiated, or used an agent. As a Reithian I consider Radio 4 to be a service: a unique network of intelligent programmes. It was an honour. I earned enough. There are others who think that way – even some men, even in telly. The BBC’s current wounds, caused by prodigality and glaring inequalities, are pure self-harm.
Meet the stars playing Barbara Windsor in Babs – Jaime Winston and Samantha Spiro talk working with the screen legend
The two actors mined the EastEnders and Carry on star for information when she was on set for the BBC One biopic – and were utterly charmed by her
The two actors who play a young Barbara Windsor in the BBC's biopic Babs tell Libby Purves what it was like to tell the life story of the screen legend. Jaime Winstone: "Barbara Windsor was a sex symbol, but did it with innocence and grace" I knew the Carry On films and EastEnders but didn’t know Barbara had a really good theatre background! It was tempting to read her story, but I was playing her in a time where she was naive about the industry. So I sat down with her and started to fill in those gaps, and she really opened up. I found it really heart-breaking, that little girl being sent away… Finding theatre and dance and building her confidence. And she’s still so quick… She’s 80 in August and she’s got a razor-sharp sense of humour. It’s easy to play into this iconic character as a sort of pin-up, Carry On Barbara. But she’s a real, amazing woman: so strong. Women in showbiz in that period were looked at as though you couldn’t be the lead; you had to be the sexy little blonde and show a bit of leg, “Oh, right, a nurse’s outfit”. She was a sex symbol but did it with innocence and grace, and she’s so brave. View oEmbed on the source website I loved doing the Carry On scene! And there’s one moment where I’m sitting in the café with her and [first husband] Ronnie Knight and I look across to my older self — real Barbara! — that was very emotional. You don’t often get moments when you’re playing a real person and act in a scene with her. I could call her at any time, and she would guide me through things and make me laugh, so I felt safe. To be honest, the singing was hard, when I had to rehearse with her and work on songs… I’ve never done much singing before in front of people, so to belt it out on stage for the scene of her first audition! She really guided me through that and unlocked something. I overcame a thing I’d been scared of for quite a while. She’s just amazing, completely amazing. Samantha Spiro: "She's every woman's best friend" I’d played her before in the play Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick [National Theatre, 1998], which became the ITV film Cor, Blimey! [2000]. Actually, people used to call me Babs at drama school — my background is East End, it’s in my DNA. So I’d loved getting into it last time round, and when I heard they wanted a middle-aged woman to play her at 50, it had my name on it! I read the script and loved it: this was a point in her life when things weren’t going well, end-of-the-pier, a second marriage had left her nearly bankrupt. It’s a wonderful challenge to play her at that moment, and in conversations with the father, like a ghost of Christmas past, because that relationship was one of the really great regrets in her life. There’s a melancholy there. But the extraordinary thing is that she is loved by so many generations: my children know about her, my parents’ generation adore her, she’s fancied by men and liked, but she’s every woman’s best friend who’ll cheer you up. You want to hang out with her. She’s never adopted any airs and graces. On set she remembers everybody’s name, she’s got time for every runner, every person at the stage door. She was round quite a bit while we were filming, and extremely positive. It was an honour to play her, trying not to overdo the impersonation, just understand how it was in that hard time. When she’d seen it, it was a great relief when her husband Scott texted — he does the texting in that relationship! — and he said she was overwhelmed and thrilled.
Acting legend Glenda Jackson on playing King Lear and her fight against ageism
The former MP wowed the West End playing Lear at 80, now Glenda Jackson wants older people to stand up and be noticed
Glenda Jackson does not do things by halves. After 35 years on stage and screen, she stepped away in 1992 to become a Labour MP. Then last year, at 80, she came back to the stage: not cautiously dipping a toe in the water, but as King Lear – not only one of Shakespeare’s great male characters, but one of theatre’s most immense, strenuous, emotionally and physically draining parts. She filled the Old Vic with emotional power and blew the critics away. Now she’s a hot tip for the best actress Olivier Award – it will go down in history as one of the great unlikely comebacks, as if Ronald Reagan at 80 had suddenly returned to the screen and triumphed as Annie Oakley. Jackson’s vigour in Parliament was legendary, first as a passionate anti-Thatcher activist, then calling for Tony Blair’s resignation over Iraq, accusing him in Shakespearian language of “the insolence of office”, and savaging Iain Duncan Smith over welfare. Add her storming Lear and you expect to meet an aura of power and anger: thrilling but unnerving. It doesn’t happen. Glenda Jackson is no diva: arriving by bus, submitting to “hair-and-makeup” for the photoshoot without bothering to look in a mirror, then settling down in a spare dressing room, emanating relaxed friendliness. The ferocity was for Parliament, the high emotion for the stage. And self-importance is rarer in actors than you’d think: “The egos you meet in the corridors of power would not be tolerated for 30 seconds in professional theatre,” she reflects. “They simply wouldn’t.” View oEmbed on the source website Perhaps her sunny mood is pure pleasure in being back in her old tribe, the theatre community she renounced in 1992. When the Critics’ Circle gave her the best Shakespearean performance award in January many of us expected her acceptance speech to be a bit political. Not a bit of it: graceful and witty, she seemed more like someone coming home. “One of the amazing things about theatre people,” she says now, “is that you might not see each other for years, and then when you do it’s as if you’d just walked into the room again on the same day. Maybe it’s the vagaries of being rarely employed – and castigated as well as praised. “I have yet to meet an actor who is not firmly convinced that the moment the present job finishes they will be unemployed. Vulnerability is always there.” Did she go to the theatre in those Parliamentary years? “No, there were late-night sittings, and the constituency. I wasn’t ever a big go-er to the theatre. I liked working in it and the people in it, very much. But I always used to be irritated by the interval. Acting for me exists only when you’re doing it, so there was nothing to miss. “I didn’t expect to be selected but I was, and had to learn to be a Member of Parliament. For months I would be stopping and saying, ‘Where am I?’ And the actual business of the chamber had to be learnt, as well as the really important stuff, which was the constituency. Constituents are the only people I miss.” View oEmbed on the source website That sense of togetherness recurs all through the conversation. The part of King Lear is central, and her journey through it was breathtaking: archly parental at first, pompous and kingly, swaggering and cursing in rage, tender with the Fool, writhing in madness then finally helpless – “a foolish fond old man”, valiant and loving in defeat. I wondered whether Parliament taught her Lear-ish qualities. She demurs. “You’re powerless, lucky as a backbencher if you get caught for a question or a speech. Even as PM you have to be able to bring people together, not just party political opposites but people with completely different and deeply held views about how the world should be run. Not that you’d know it right now.” The party she served is now changed and fairly chaotic under Jeremy Corbyn: would she not want to be part of the moderate cadre? “No, the political landscape is so dystopian that it is difficult to think how you can positively engage with it, even as a citizen. It’s just bizarre. And I don’t know whether that’s true exclusively of the Labour Party. “For a long period of time all politicians simply were not listening to what people were telling them. So now the electorate starts to say, ‘Oh, a plague on all your houses, I’m not bothering’. “The issues we were hearing on the doorstep were not being even acknowledged by all the political parties – with the possible exception of Ukip – and that’s where we are now. Nature abhors a vacuum, it will always be filled with something worse. And now it is being. “In a way, the best politics and best theatre are trying to answer the same questions – who are we, why are we, how do you create a society where there is genuine acknowledgement of the individuality of every single person on this Earth? How can we work and live together with those differences between us as individuals? The really good end of both theatre and politics is just trying to show us how difficult it is.” View oEmbed on the source website The age of Brexit, Trump and terrorism is “a new landscape,” she says, “and I get the feeling nobody knows what to do. Not at all.” But the idea of pessimism and “remoaners” meets an appalled snort. “No! I was raised by women who knew that things happen and you just suck it up! If you didn’t work you didn’t eat, so you just go on. What’s happening in the world is going to be difficult, but we’re not all going to disappear. We will have to adapt. “And I don’t have any truck with this mindset that says, ‘Oh, we will be going back to a better country.’ I remember what it was like in the 50s, and I don’t have rose-tinted spectacles. You can’t reinstitute the limited priorities of those decades. But picking at the same scab and moaning isn’t going to do anything.” View oEmbed on the source website Lear is a daunting part to do seven times a week at the age of 80. “Yes. What really worried me was that I wouldn’t have the physical or vocal strength. But the best gym in the world is Shakespeare. What really kicks you into shape is the play itself: there’s such energy in it that it sort of feeds you. The times I felt most tired were Sundays when we didn’t have to do it.” Playing Lear, by the way, did not seem to her to be about gender-bending. More about age. “What I find really interesting about getting older is that those gender-defining barriers begin to fray. They get mistier, less absolute. We are not stuck in the business of how men and women react differently.” On the general subject of parts for women she is saltier. “I cannot understand why creative writers do not find women interesting. Even contemporary ones. Men are still almost invariably the dramatic engine, women on the sidelines. In film, there was a period when really the only reason to have a woman was to show that the guy wasn’t gay.” View oEmbed on the source website She can’t be bothered with romantic plays and novels (except Jane Austen “because that is about economic and social things”) and gets impatient with tales of young love: “Why don’t they just get on with life. One loses patience as one gets older.” As for future roles, I urge her to go for Shylock (“But I hate the play!”) or Prospero. But she just says: “It would be nice if someone sent me a contemporary play with an old person in it that wasn’t just about old age.” Being an octogenarian, though, has its compensations. “I once said blithely that when I finished being an MP I was going to form an old people’s robbery group. Everybody ignores old people so we could shoplift and burgle till the cows come home. It still comes as a shock to me when somebody stands up and offers me their seat on the bus or the Tube.” Does she accept? “If I’m not getting off at the next stop I gracefully say thank you. But two things I find amazing about being old. One is realising how little I know… it just astonishes me. The more you live, the bigger the library of stuff you don’t know. The other thing is that the internal you doesn’t change. It’s the external envelope that won’t obey orders as quickly as you would like. You bend down to pull up a weed and your knees don’t want to get up.” She is horrified when I suggest the House of Lords – “I don’t believe in an appointed Lords.” As for the backbench, frustrating years when her talent was lost to theatre she robustly claims: “No regrets. Anything I could have done that was legal to get rid of Margaret Thatcher, I was prepared to do. And it is an incredible privilege to be a member of Parliament. People put their X next to your name, give you that trust, hand over to you, it’s a great and humbling thing.” She pauses, thoughtful, and then laughs. “Of course, you then have to tackle the reality of people, and regulation and laws, and things you deeply, deeply disagree with. You have to acknowledge the fact that people you thought were on the right track are going down the wrong one. But you get on with the job. I was brought up with a very strong work ethic.” You bet she was. Glenda Jackson isn’t done yet. The Olivier Awards Sunday 6.00pm Magic Radio (London), Tuesday 8.00pm ITV
Lenny Henry on Shakespeare, his knighthood and the need for more diversity on screen
As Danny and the Human Zoo airs on BBC1, Lenny Henry reflects on his early days in Dudley – and his nights with the Black and White Minstrels
A tall, lean, imposingly bearded figure strides through the hotel lobby exuding an air of gravitas. He’s a knight now: Sir Lenworth George Henry, ennobled for services to charity and comedy. But within a moment he’s just our Lenny from Dudley, off on a cheerful fantasy riff. “No, I haven’t received the knighthood, yet. Do they give you cake, and a special hat? And a castle?” He’s delighted on a lot of levels: not least for his late mum. “She sat on the same balcony as the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance and kept waving at her. She’d have come [to the investiture] and worn a very, very big hat and hardly have believed it of the boy who couldn’t tidy his room and was difficult at school.” Another delight is that it’s awarded partly for his Comic Relief work. “I feel as if it’s for the whole country. I keep expecting everyone in Britain to turn up demanding some of the cake, and a turn with the special hat.” So, altogether thrilled. “I feel as if they’d filled me up with lemonade and shook me,” says the performer who will turn 57 this week. That irrepressible cheerfulness has been his trademark and in some ways, a limitation. “For instance, the character Delbert, at the Brixton riots, could articulate something. But then he’d better do silly jokes. Audiences don’t want a 20-minute rant from me.” But Henry’s a serious man, thoughtful and acutely aware – not least as co-founder of Comic Relief – of how popular celebrity and an aura of good humour can be used for good causes and understanding. Danny and the Human Zoo [below], the first TV drama he’s written, is a story drawn from his childhood in a Jamaican household in Dudley in the 60s. Danny is a little boy who loves doing impressions and makes it into showbiz. Kascion Franklin, who plays Danny (a character loosely based on Henry) has to impersonate figures from a bygone era, such as the PM Harold Wilson and Tommy Cooper, and, in a glorious opening sequence, he sings My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small, a breakthrough black pop superstar of the day. A tall order for a 21st-century boy? “Yes. I told Kascion to do what I did to catch the impressions – watch Mike Yarwood!” The young Henry’s career was founded on winning the talent show New Faces by doing those kinds of impressions 40 years ago, and has never flagged since. He admits that on many levels he knew it could be “a big life raft”. It floated him out of repeating the working-class life his taciturn father led, toiling in a foundry, and “coming home to switch on the TV, tell us to shut up, and become the Daily Mirror with arms and legs”. But it also freed him from deciding who he himself was as a teenager. “When people said, ‘Lenny, just be yourself’, I’d say, ‘Who’s that?’” The drama based on that teenage time is a “fantasy memoir” he says, because he has used it as “a parallel universe, to make some things better”. He plays Danny’s father, so that with his screen son he can have, “conversations that never happened, because my dad never had them with me. Conversations that should have happened.” And his young hero can also, importantly, take firmer action against being contractually forced into appearing in a touring stage version of The Black and White Minstrel Show alongside blacked-up white performers, which is what happened to Henry between 1975 and 1979. “I think I was having an extended sad period...depressed, didn’t know it, so just working on, cos my family had a work ethic. "And I didn’t realise I was being used as a political football: the minstrel shows were under fire then for blacking up white people, and it meant they could say, ‘Oh, but we’ve got that black kid from the telly so it’s all right.’” It was an uneasy time in race relations, and Henry is reflective that on New Faces, too, he was partly adopted as a novelty because he was a black teenager cheekily imitating important white characters. “I was only made aware of that afterwards, that strange anomalous nature of it, that I was black…” But he was good. And the career rolled on, driven by his vigorous good humour and sharp intelligence. TV comedy, standup, Tiswas and Comic Relief [below]: by the 90s he had achieved a status as the cheery, unresentful black British Midlands comedian who kept off politics, but whose very presence showed up the absurdity of anyone fearing or disliking black men. “I did what my mother always said – ‘Integrate! Fit in!’” Yet, he says levelly, “for 35 years I never once had a work meeting with anybody who looked like me. I was often the only black guy within five miles. And as a creative that means you continually have to translate and interpret ideas and experiences. "And if you’re working class as well, it’s a double whammy.” That came later in the conversation, when we moved on to his present crusade about racial diversity in broadcasting. More psychologically important to Henry has been his breakthrough into straight drama on stage. “For years I kept turning down theatre – you’re not paid much, you’re stuck somewhere for weeks on end… I was bound up in that semi-rock ‘n’ roll world, touring and TV. "I was a bit arrogant. People had told me years ago, when I was in [1970s ITV sitcom] The Fosters, that I ought to act. ‘Train, learn to use your voice, move, move, sing.’ I’d just say [cue a heavy Dudley accent], ‘Ya joking!’” But then came a Radio 4 programme What’s So Great About…? and he – who didn’t get Shakespeare – was hauled in to ask what’s so great about Shakespeare. And he was persuaded. He had to do a speech from Othello. “Oh, a massive journey. Barrie Rutter of Northern Broadsides showed me, did ‘O for a Muse of fire’ from Henry V down the phone. It was extraordinary.” Henry was hooked enough to agree to play the Moor for Rutter. “The rehearsal process was completely new. In comedy, they trust the comic intuition to the performer, it’s like catching the moment, lightning in a bottle. "But we would rehearse for hours, asking the questions about every word, every feeling. I’d never done that before. And suddenly I was in it! Not like school. Shakespeare ought to be taught properly, to be dextrous, sexy, funny, exciting. You need to build on-ramps: take the boys for football then come in, still in sweaty strip, and do the Senate scene from Julius Caesar… It needs to be empowering!” His advance in this new field has been extraordinary. There was the Othello for Rutter, then Comedy of Errors at the National, and then August Wilson’s great American classic Fences. I cheekily addressed him in The Times review with: “Lenny, three strikes and you’re in! … Henry joins the ranks of great stage actors. Troy Maxson is immense, volatile, eloquent and rarely offstage… a flawed and furious patriarch, noble yet sly, loving, damaged. He is magnificent.” And so he was, and everyone agreed. “As comedians, we tend to be living with our filing cabinet of jokes, always ten pages ahead, as long as the laughs are there it’s OK, but we aren’t in the moment. Onstage it’s about listening, reacting to lines that land on you. I’ve been very very humbled in rehearsal rooms, working with these people" He had a notable glitch in his otherwise warmly reviewed role in Educating Rita, when he “dried” on the press night at Chichester in June, calmly apologised, and re-started the scene. “Alexei Sayle said, ‘You coulda done 20 minutes ad lib!’ but of course you mustn’t step out of character. Still, because I’m a comic, I didn’t feel bad about it! Barrie Rutter never made me feel bad when I made mistakes. He’d say tomorrow’s another night! “The stage is where you learn. I don’t see a career without it. The rehearsal room, all of it, has been mind-blowingly wonderful. I had to say yes. I thought, if I do another stand-up show, how creatively interesting is that going to be?” But TV still matters to him: he named his production company after Douglas Road, where he grew up, and is writing more. He’s also crusading, as in last year’s barnstorming Bafta speech, for more diversity in casting “BAME” (black, Asian and minority ethnic) people on screen and in writing, producing and directing. He’s on BBC director-general Tony Hall’s working party on diversity, and wants to promote “ring-fenced” resources in the same way money is ring-fenced for regions. “It’s a good thing. It says to the post-Windrush group that if they choose this employment, there’s a chance. There’s elbow room – something middle-class, Russell Group, white university kids take for granted. BAME kids get discouraged – too many glass ceilings to break through. You need to be able to pitch, and have ideas turned down. Commissioning editors do tend to say, ‘Mmm, have we already heard your story?’ as if there was only one story from each ethnic group.” It’s not, he says, just a matter of, “another black or Asian person in Coronation Street or EastEnders. It’s about hearing different perspectives on life. Which is great. But as my MA tutor said [Henry’s now working on a PhD on diversity in media], ‘You don’t eat an elephant all at once.’ Yes, there’s a wall. But what happens is either so many people run at the wall at once that they tip it over, or someone pokes a hole in it, climbs through and drags others behind them. We’re testing the stresses in that wall.” He’s through the wall all right, and reaching back to give others a hand. Danny and the Human Zoo is on Monday at 9.00pm on BBC1 Read more: It's official: TV has fallen in love with the 70s David Oyelowo: "It’s saddening to see opportunities for black actors dwindling instead of increasing"