I saw George a few years later when I was doing a radio play in Leeds. Martin Jenkins was directing and I played a prostitute from Liverpool in period setting. As soon as I saw George I bounded over, hand out, and said, ‘Hello, George. Nice to see you again.’
For the second time in my life I saw that look of fear in his eyes.
‘Oh no,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘you never go up to someone and say that.’
It wasn’t a particularly happy job, actually. I really had a handle on my character but Martin wanted me to play it a different way – a completely different way. There’s only so far you can go before you lose the voice of the part and start to sound a bit fake, and so we fell out over that.
George watched this whole argument unfold, then at the end just said, ‘I would have played it your way.’
Now he tells me? So exasperating! But he’d made an effort so I thought that was an invite for a conversation. Wrong. The wall had gone back up. Such a shame as there are so many delicious stories I’m sure he could tell.
Anyway, I made the most of my run at the Mayfair. I saw the sights of London and in the evenings I’d wander over to meet Brian. We’d get the Tube back to Ealing or often Robert Morley would take everyone out for supper. It was a pleasant life, and quite a starry one because of the success of How the Other Half Loves, but professionally I was coasting. When The Philanthropist finally closed I got a few parts up in Leeds on the odd radio play, but the only other sniff in London was a brief job working on a showcase of new work at the Royal Court. I played ‘The Girl’ in Pretty Boy, the first big play from Stephen Poliakoff. That was a weird one – all that work for one night. Poliakoff used to come to rehearsals, sit cross-legged on the floor and click this biro all the time we were working. Very off-putting. Jill Mears was in it as well, who I later worked with on a Who audio. We got on very well and both laughed when one of the other actors, a guy who thought he was a bit grander than the rest of us, said, ‘Don’t worry – I usually try out a lot of different things on opening night.’ We were only doing it for one night!
Ironically, I think my lack of work in London theatre probably shaped my television career. As far as Todd Joseph was concerned, I was a blank canvas, so he began to send me out for all sorts of telly roles. I wasn’t picky at all – I just wanted to work.
The first one he lined up was for a show that had been running almost as long as Coronation Street. Z-Cars was the first police serial to show the real side of bobbies on the beat. It was meant to be everything that Dixon of Dock Green wasn’t. The episodes were two-parters, which meant a decent bit of screen time, but best of all it was set in Merseyside.
Threshold House was where the BBC did all its casting in those days. It was an old building next to the Bush Theatre on Shepherd’s Bush Green and I can still remember the thrill of walking up to the front door and seeing the words ‘Threshold House – BBC Television Service’ above the door. It might have been just another job but look who it was for!
The Beeb don’t use that building anymore, which is a shame because the feeling inside back then was electric. Corridors warrened off all over the place and people kept popping out and shouting across to everyone else. There was an energy – I could sense it even as a visitor – and I really wanted to be a part of it.
I was there to read for a small part for that episode’s director, Derek Martinus, who had just finished working on the first colour Who serial, Spearhead from Space with Jon Pertwee (not that I was aware of this at the time). We chatted for a while and I thought I’d blown my chances when Derek said, ‘I’m not going to give you this part.’
That’s a shame, I thought, but I’ve had a nice day.
Then he pulled out a script and threw it across the table. ‘I’d like you to read for this instead.’
The bugger!
In fact the new part was actually the lead guest for two episodes, which was fantastic. I couldn’t wait to get back and tell Brian – and Todd. On the way out Derek introduced me to Ron Craddock, the show’s producer. I wouldn’t know for a while just how serendipitous that encounter would prove to be.
My character was called Valerie, a sixteen-year-old runaway.
I thought, I’ve played old women – there’s no reason why I can’t go younger.
Annoyingly she was from Northumberland and not Merseyside, so my local advantage was lost. Eager to please, I went down to the BBC Library – it’s not there any more, sadly – and asked if they had any tapes featuring Northumberland accents. They had one – an eighty-year-old talking about her butter-making days. It wasn’t ideal, but better than nothing, so I took it away then listened and copied and listened and practised until I was perfect. It was a funny old accent, a great mix between Geordie and across the sea to the Scandinavian countries. I was pretty pleased with myself when I arrived on set but the second I opened my mouth everyone just stared.
They couldn’t understand a word!
‘I think you’ll have to take it down a few notches,’ Derek laughed.
That’s not the effect I was going for.
I was always trying to do new things, suggesting different touches I could do. This is how you workshop a play, after all. After yet another bright idea Derek sighed, ‘You’re a real thinker aren’t you? But we haven’t got time for any of this.’
I’d learned a lot on Corrie but I was still very green where filming was concerned. The fact you shoot out of order takes a bit of getting used to, obviously, but it’s something that never gets any easier. Sometimes you can film a character’s death scene before they’ve even been introduced in a show. You don’t yet have any relationship to react to. That’s why the continuity people in TV are so important – always running around with Polaroids or digital cameras these days to capture how you look and where you’re standing so it tallies with everything else. (Jon Pertwee really struggled with this sort of thing, so we invented a sort of shorthand for scenes – which I’ll tell you about later.)
Even though the show had been running since 1962, there was none of the ‘them and us’ vibe that I’d got from Corrie. Z-Cars was a great working environment, actually, very friendly, like a proper company. If I’m honest, most of the cast probably enjoyed it a little too much – some of the regulars could have phoned in those performances. But for a new girl they all made it a lot of fun and I was sad to leave.
My next job was Doomwatch, a science-fiction series which was the brainchild of Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler – former Who writers who also happened to have created a breed of villain I would soon become very familiar with.
The Cybermen!
I don’t know how to say this, but I was never a sci-fi fan – and I’m still not! But I’d heard of Doomwatch because Robert Powell was making a bit of a name for himself in it. I was looking forward to meeting him, but sadly he wasn’t in my episode. I did meet Anthony Andrews, though.
I had a decent part in the episode Say Knife, Fat Man. My character, Sarah Collins, was a university girl suspected of hiding plutonium, so she was on the run from the police. The problem was, she wasn’t just running – she was driving.
I’d struggled to handle our old Anglia – and the Saab was a no-no – but they wanted me to drive this large van. At night! All I had to do for the shot was drive, at speed, down a hill and stop where the soundman and the lights were but do you think I could get the hang of it? After half a dozen attempts Hugh Ross, who was in the van with me, said, ‘Look, you do the pedals and I’ll do the gears.’