The teacher would put you at the back of the
class with all the smelly kids. You were just
like a no hoper. But actually, it was dyslexia.
Marks, and she started the Brighton
Combination. Brighton, I’ve only just
thought of that link to the city too good
god! They started here in the 70s and
there were three of them and I spoke to
her about being an actor.
drama classes and started acting. To me
it meant everything because it was a way
I could express myself and the way that I
excelled and people started saying “wow,
you can do this.”
I went to youth theatre after school. I
longed to go to stage school but there
was no way that my mum could afford
to send me to a stage school, so I used
to go to evening classes three times a
week and then I’d go at the weekends as
well. I did anything I could to do drama.
I remember having to give up the netball
team for something to do with drama and
I had to have fights with people because
they were going, “well, how can you let
the team down?” I’d have to be really
tough and go, “because I am doing this.
This is what I want to do.”
I went to a college and I did drama there
and there was a wonderful teacher, Ruth
Also I was political - my mum, my whole
family were. My grandmother was one
of the founder members of the Women’s
Movement in the Labour Party and my
mum was in the Young Socialists and she
fought against the fascists and stuff like
that. So I was always political as well and
at that time in the early 70s the theatre
was changing. We’d had the change in
the 60s because everything was very
middle class and working class people
- all they were, were like the servants
and stuff like that. We actually had,
with John Osborne (English playwright,
screenwriter, actor and critic of the
Establishment) and things like that, we
had stories about working class people
and in the 70s we wanted to go further
and we wanted to take the theatre out
to a whole new audience, which was
working class people. And that was the
birth of the Fringe Theatre movement
and I was one of those people involved
with that. And, as I say, my friend Ruth
Marks who ran this fringe company down
here said, “That’s what you need to do.”
And she introduced me to a company
who saw me and I joined them and so
started travelling all round the country
doing shows. My first professional show
was in Belfast when I was 17 or 18, I
was just starting out and a bomb went
off during the show! It was the weekend
of a Royal wedding; Princess Anne was
getting married so there was a lot going
on. I was singing and this explosion
happened. I carried on trying to sing but
nothing came out because I was standing
there shocked. The audience were great,
after they had regained themselves, they
laughed and I carried on – the show must
go on!
Then my television debut was in Softly,
Softly, that was the first bit of television
work I did which was a spin off of Z-Cars.
Softly, Softly Task Force it was called.
Was the whole progression quick for
you or did you have periods where
you were thinking, “am I going to
make it or not?”
Because