‘Albert’s?’
‘Albert Tatlock’s.’
Oh God, I thought, they call each other by their character name!
No joke. They were deadly serious. The cast were treated like royalty by Granada and at four o’clock on the dot, the tea trolley arrived. It was pure silver service for Corrie – the canteen was for other people.
This was the era of Pat Phoenix. She was the Queen Bee and so proprietorial. Her character on the show, Elsie Tanner, was married to Alan Howard and she was dating the actor, Alan Browning, in real life as well. Who knows what they called each other at home. I felt so sorry for him – she wouldn’t let him leave her side, he was so hen-pecked.
I can’t say Pat was a favourite of mine. She came up to me one day and looked at my shiny white Mary Quant shoes (yes, I had to supply my own shoes). ‘Anita, love,’ she said. ‘How do you keep your shoes so white?’
Bloody ‘Anita’!
But in six weeks she never said another word to me.
I wasn’t really a Corrie watcher because it was always on while I was onstage, but I knew that Peter Adamson, who played Len, was the big star at the time. There weren’t so many celebrities back then so the major ones got a lot more coverage in the papers. In fact, he’d just confessed to being an alcoholic and going to AA, which the producers were spitting chips about. Peter confided in me a lot. He was really charming, and he got on well with Brian too. They’re both from Birmingham and they remembered the same cinema, and Peter remembered the shows that Brian was in when he was touring. When I left Peter bought both Brian and me presents.
Years later, when a Sunday newspaper accused Peter of assaulting young girls in a swimming pool – for which he was found not guilty in court – I just couldn’t equate it with the kind, thoughtful gentleman I knew. He had no airs or graces and the beautiful way he cared for his disabled wife was amazing.
The other person who went out of her way to make me feel welcome was Eileen Derbyshire, who still plays Emily Bishop – or Nugent as she was then – today. I was totally out of my depth, not having done much telly, but she was very maternal and ready with advice, a cuddle or just a smile. I think some of the younger regulars were getting a bit carried away with the fashionable drink and drugs scene at the time, because they were all on good, regular money, and Eileen was one of those trying to keep everyone on the straight and narrow.
You read how some characters are hired for a few episodes and are still with the show decades later. That was never going to be the case with me. I knew from the start that it was six episodes, end of story. I just had to get in, overhaul Len’s character, then get out again, which suited me fine.
Coming from a theatre background it’s easy to think you know it all, especially when you’re going into a soap, a genre which has never had the highest reputation. Actually I really struggled to get up to speed. In fact, without the lessons learned on Coronation Street, I think my career might have been very different. I understood theatre: you could be fairly free with movement and the other actors would respond. But on television, everything is blocked out. You’ve got a camera that can only accommodate certain angles without shooting off and showing backstage, so there’s a level of precision that I wasn’t expecting. On the other hand, theatre audiences can look wherever they like, so you always have to be on form. With telly, a director tells viewers exactly where to look, how long for, and by using close-ups or long-range shots, how intimate we should feel with the scene. The old hands always knew when they were in shot or not and you’d see them relax once the camera moved away, but I didn’t have a clue, especially when I was just background in the Flying Horse. I’d be pulling pints, polishing glasses non-stop, just in case. Those pint pots had never been so clean.
One of the other things I had to get used to on Corrie was the makeup. All stage actors do their own, unless you’re in something like Cats where it’s a bit full-on. You know how to get the most out of your face in the theatre lights, but on Coronation Street they knew best. So they sat us all down in a line and did a job lot at once.
‘But I know how to make myself up,’ I complained.
‘Not for telly you don’t, dear,’ came the reply.
Even so, I only needed to see how they did me once to be able to replicate it myself.
On the plus side, whereas a decent theatre run would pay around £20 a week, television usually earned you about five times that. So for a while I had a nice little income. What with Brian touring the country too we had quite a bit coming in, so we both took driving lessons and bought a second-hand Ford Anglia for fifty quid. Eventually one of the doors had to be held on by rope so after a while Brian purchased an old Saab, which had the gears on the steering wheel, like a Formula One car. I couldn’t get on with it at all, which means all these years later I’m not very roadworthy. I have to do a fair bit of driving on The Sarah Jane Adventures, which is always an interesting day on the shoot. I’m really good at going forward and turning but they won’t let me reverse. ‘Don’t let her back up!’ It terrifies them. And God help any passengers I have to carry!
Having the car meant that wherever Brian was in the country he could bomb up the A roads to find me after his Saturday night show, then charge back down again the following evening. It was so fantastic to see him but I worried about him being too tired to drive.
I wasn’t the only one.
Eventually I got a note from Peter Bridge – the adorable impresario whose money was funding the West End run and the tour – saying, ‘Could you please stop your husband driving. We’re really worried something will happen to him and he won’t be there for the performance!’
I agreed with him, of course, but Brian was furious. ‘They’re not going to tell me when I can see my wife!’ I’m sure he visited twice as often after that – and made a point of getting back closer and closer to curtain up on the Monday.
I think if you’re commissioned for half a dozen episodes on Coronation Street or EastEnders or one of the other soaps these days, you can pretty much expect a whole load of press and your pick of spin-off opportunities. It seems you only need to have half an hour in the Rovers Return these days to qualify for a feature in OK! or Hello! magazine. But I actually hated having my publicity photos taken to promote Anita’s arrival and I cringed when I saw my quotes in the local papers. My parents, of course, were thrilled. It meant a lot more to them, I think, that I was in the biggest show in Britain, and Dad framed one of the Granada shots on the lounge wall in pride of place so you could see it when you stepped through the door.
Maybe if I had had an agent I might have capitalised on my brief brush with national fame and got more well-paid telly work, but it just didn’t occur to me. Fifteen million viewers had seen me in their homes but you don’t worry about that at the time. I certainly didn’t think I was a celebrity, even though my mum kept telling me that such-and-such had seen me and so-and-so said to pass on their regards; it was just another job. In fact, no sooner had I finished than I was looking for my next one.
* * *
David Scase had taken over from Tony Colegate at Manchester so I did a few more plays with him. Then, come summer, Alan Ayckbourn invited me back to Scarborough. This time we did Wife Swapping – Italian Style (I was Flamina), The Shy Gasman, and that year’s new Ayckbourn original, The Story So Far (Family Circles), in which I played Jenny. Some things aren’t so good when you return to them – and I’ve certainly experienced that feeling in my career – but this wasn’t one of those times.