Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

by Sladen, Elisabeth

  That wasn’t the last laugh he had at my expense either. I had to wear this big fat-suit for one of the plays and all I had to do in this scene was put an apron on. That was all. But I dropped it and because of the costume I took an age to pick it up again. You try picking something up when you suddenly can’t see your own feet. It was a complete accident, but Alan thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

  Laughs were never far away when Alan was around – even when the joke was on him. He’s a very sweet, very generous man and the first time we all went for a drink at the pub, he said, ‘I’ll get these.’ While he was rooting around in his pocket for his wallet all these crumpled old bits of paper fell onto the floor. They were cheques he hadn’t cashed!

  When it came to directing his own work, Alan was like a machine. He never looked at the script – even when he’d finished it – but he knew instantly if you’d deviated. There’s such a rhythm to his writing that if you’d said an ‘and’ instead of a ‘but’ he could just feel it.

  When Jeremy Franklin, the guy playing my husband in How the Other Half, slipped a disc, there was no understudy. Because Alan knew the script so intimately he said he’d do it. He used to be an actor but even so I think he was a bit shaken by the ordeal.

  As he walked offstage he muttered, ‘Who the bloody hell wrote this!’

  * * *

  Scarborough is a very healthy place, full of old people climbing its hills, and both my own and Brian’s parents came up to stay. Working there, though, had the opposite effect on one’s blood pressure. The theatre really was in a library, and it was in the round, so everything was terribly compact and you were exposed to the audience on all sides. There was just one room for all the actors to change in, with the curtain down the middle – girls one side, boys the other. It felt like being back in school again. Brilliant. But Alan’s sitting-room dramas always have a lot of door action and this stage just wasn’t built for it – especially if you’re carrying a tray of tea props, another staple of his plays. One exit from the stage took you straight into the dressing room, which was the ‘safe’ side. But if you had to go out the other door, this led straight into the vestibule. If you were running out and someone was returning from the toilet, there was always that moment where they tried to talk to you. More than once I flung the door open just as an audience member was coming in. There were teacups everywhere.

  I loved working with Alan, especially on How the Other Half Loves, because I was playing a complete menopausal bitch. A bit of a stretch for a 23-year-old, but what fun, and something I could really get my teeth into, even if I did have to wear a daft blonde wig. The funny thing is, now I really am like that character no one will give me those parts – I’m stuck with Sarah Jane!

  When I heard the show was to transfer to the West End the next summer, I didn’t hold my breath that I would keep my part, even though the Guardian reviewer said I ‘flourished as the cut-glass Fiona’. Obviously Alan was planning to take on an actress closer in age to Fiona for the London run. But Brian, the jammy bugger, had been perfect as William Featherstone and so he was invited back, with Elizabeth Ashton as Mary Featherstone. I couldn’t wait to see it, especially when I heard that Robert Morley had the lead. Morley was a big box-office draw at the time, but he was known for shaping scripts to suit him. It might start as an Ayckbourn play but it would finish as a Morley one, I was sure of that.

  ‘Ands’ and ‘buts’ will be the least of Alan’s worries by the time Morley’s finished, I thought.

  * * *

  While Brian toured the show prior to the move to London, I moved back to Manchester. But instead of heading to the Library in St Peter’s Square as usual, I went to a different address.

  Coronation Street.

  The producer was looking for a new barmaid for the Flying Horse pub and had seen me at the Library. She was also meant to be Len Fairclough’s young new girlfriend, because they wanted to spruce his character up a bit. I didn’t hold out much hope. I thought, Well, age is on my side but I’m not exactly built like your classic barmaid, am I? But they liked me and I was invited down for six weeks’ work to play Anita Reynolds.

  These days Corrie is an institution as much for its longevity as anything else. But even at ten years old, it was already firmly established. Walking onto the set that first day I was made very aware of the fact that I was an outsider. I went to sit down in the green room and someone said, ‘Not in that chair, chuck, it’s Albert’s.’

  ‘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 wer
e 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.

  Bob Monkhouse was up there with a different company. He was a great film fan and always carried a projector and reels of old movies around with him. There wasn’t much to do by way of entertainment in Scarborough, so every Saturday after work we used to join forces with his company and Bob would put on a film for us. It was such a nice thing for him to do – he was a very considerate man.

  Alan was extremely considerate as well, although one of his grand gestures I could have done without. Hull has a maximum security prison and he offered the company’s services as a treat for the inmates. Obviously this had to be on a Sunday, which was the only day we weren’t already working, but it meant Brian could come and watch. This wasn’t one of my finest moments. I’d decided my character should have a little dog, a bit like the fashion today, so I spent a lot of the play with my arm up this fake pooch’s posterior, making it nod like Rod Hull working Emu. But worse than that, I was dressed in a ‘mein hostess’ style low-cut dress! We were told only the best behaved prisoners were allowed to see us, but even so, I didn’t like the look of some of them as they filed into the hall. Brian being Brian, he just pulled up a chair in the middle of them. I could see him chatting to one guy and afterwards I asked him what he’d been talking about.

  ‘I asked him what he was in for.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He’d murdered his wife.’

  ‘Oh.’

  It wasn’t our first time in prison. When Brian and I were doing The Promise at Manchester – with our tins of Fray Bentos – someone had the brilliant idea to take it into Strangeways. Somehow that was even worse. It’s such a depressing play, all those starving Russians, and even as we were ploughing through it I was thinking, These poor buggers are miserable enough without watching this! Can’t we give them a bit of can-can instead?

  After Scarborough, I wasn’t short of work offers in the North and in hindsight this was another opportunity to capitalise on my name up there. But once Brian had opened at the Lyric in London, it made sense to move down to be with him, especially since the reviews had come in and it was obvious he was in a hit that could run and run. Our old Manchester and St Helens friend Jimmy Hazeldine had already given Brian use of the sofa in his Hammersmith flat, and when I arrived to join him no one raised an eyebrow. (I think most actors with a sofa or a spare bit of floor will always offer it to a fellow thesp – you never know when you’ll be the one asking.) Once we’d got our bearings, we took a flat in Ealing after visiting our friend, Chris Raphael and his wife Pam, who lived there. We’ve stayed in the area ever since – even Sarah Jane lives there now!

  There was a tremendous fanfare around the opening of How the Other Half Loves and Robert Morley milked it all. Poor Alan, I think, was quite shocked by it. He’d been very fortunate on Relatively Speaking with actors like Celia Johnson and Michael Hordern. Famous as they were, they promoted the characters. Morley promoted himself. On paper he must have seemed like an ogre.

  But, my God, I loved him to bits.

  The joy of the man was immense. I’ve never met anyone like him. Robert was truly one of those larger-than-life people, but he really was so big-hearted with it. He could have the most important person speaking to him and a child might come over and he would switch all his attention to them. Everything about the man was expansive and open-hearted and fun. He was always throwing open his country house on Sundays. Anyone could go to eat, swim, drink, you name it, and take whomever they liked. If the weather was nice, he was the one saying, ‘Let’s have a picnic today. I’m taking you all to lunch!’

  Of course he was exactly the same onstage and that’s why audiences flocked to see him. The show was Alan Ayckbourn’s biggest London success because of Morley, but boy, was he a handful! Brian once returned home and said, ‘Robert came on stage at the matinee in the middle of a scene he wasn’t in again.’ Apparently there was this big fuss coming from the wings while Brian was onstage, then Morley burst on, mid-conversation with someone, and said, ‘
Ooh, you’re busy, dear. I’ll come back later!’ And off he went again.

  It’s always nice to be associated with success, so Brian stayed with How the Other Half Loves for two years. Like so many of our decisions, we probably got that one wrong as well. In hindsight, he perhaps should have left to capitalise on his hard-earned cachet. But we don’t do that, do we? It was work, well-paid work, and we thought, Why leave something so successful?

  While Brian was busy I had plenty of time to kill. There was no way I fancied taking the Saab around London so I dived into the Tube or walked for miles every day. I spent days wandering around Covent Garden, popping in to see the ballet whenever I could. I even got a walk-on part in Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev. I was only part of the background but it is still fresh in my mind today. Really, though, I needed work, but I hadn’t been there long before I got a call from Barry Hines, who wrote the Ken Loach film, Kes, and was a big player at the time.

  ‘We’ve got some parts that were made for you, Lis. Get the next train back to Manchester! You’ll regret it if you don’t.’

  You’re probably right, I thought, but I had to say no. I wanted to be with Brian and if I just had the first idea how to find proper work in London I’d be happy. Suddenly I remembered the agent who had come to see me in Manchester. I dug out the number and booked an appointment with Todd Joseph of Joseph and Wagg. A day later I was on their books, although in twenty years I never once saw Wagg – I don’t even know if he existed.

  Todd was very good to me and I had a position by the end of the week.

  ‘It’s not much,’ he said, ‘but if you’d come to me after Coronation Street …’