by Sue Johnston
There was a government enterprise scheme that had just been introduced at the time that Phil took full advantage of. Employers were encouraged to take unemployed people and train them up, and were given a government grant to do this. Phil Redmond and Mersey TV employed people as heads of department who had worked in TV before with the remit that they would be training up the people under them who hadn’t, and therefore were eligible for the grant. Apprenticeships are common practice in most walks of life but they were unheard of as a way of producing a TV drama. At the time Liverpool was beleaguered by unemployment and most of us from the area felt that the city had been cut adrift by the southerncentric Conservative government of the day.
This new drama was an opportunity to show the world that life might be hard in Liverpool but it wasn’t all destitution, unemployment and poverty. It was a city like anywhere else, with people moving up and down the social ladder. This was something that hadn’t been seen before in popular, long-running drama. Long before the new builds arrived on Coronation Street, or Ian Beale had a yuppie apartment in EastEnders (which hadn’t even started at the time) Brookside was to show a cross section of society that was more representative of the streets on which most people in the country lived.
There were people who were trying to improve where they lived, like the Grants who thought all their birthdays had come at once moving into somewhere like Brookside Close. Or upwardly mobile couples like Heather and Roger who saw the close as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. It felt fresh and new and in tune with what was going on in the country at the time. Most notably, the action didn’t revolve around a pub.
My first audition took place at the Liverpool Playhouse studios on Matthew Street, where the Cavern had been. It was strange to return to my old stomping ground so many years on for what may or may not be another different adventure. I was invited to sit down and was introduced to Phil Redmond and three other people. It wasn’t an audition, I wasn’t asked to read any lines. It was more like an interview. I talked at length about my work in TIE and Phil really picked up on my political views and pushed me on them. I was happy to get in the ring with him on social issues and only realised later that he was being contrary because he wanted a reaction, he wanted to see what kind of spark I might be able to bring to a character. I left the studios still not knowing what this project was going to be but liking the energy of Phil so much that I wanted to be part of it.
The second audition was at the set of Brookside. It was still only half built. The houses were up but there was no road as yet. I traipsed through the mud to the house that was to become the canteen. I was interviewed by Phil and the other producer Colin McKeown and Chris Clough the director.
I was then called back a third time and this time other auditionees were there. As we were all sitting in reception waiting to be called through to read, a big hairy man came in. Everyone seemed to know him; he was shaking hands with all around and cracking jokes. It was, of course, Ricky Tomlinson. He was in a band that played around Liverpool and people knew him as ‘Hobo Rick’. I recognised him from somewhere, and then I realised where from. In 1972 Ricky – who had always been heavily involved in the Labour movement – had gone along to support a strike at a building workers’ dispute as a flying picket. He was sentenced to two years after being found guilty of ‘conspiracy to intimidate’, alongside Des Warren who was sentenced to three years. There was a countrywide demonstration to free the Shrewsbury Two, as they came to be known. I joined it when it reached Coventry where I was living at the time. To think that I marched to free someone who would become my future husband, not once but twice!
Eventually, we were all divided into family groups and asked to improvise. It was a very sparky and exciting process, acting as different family members. We then moved around to audition with other actors to see who fit well together. I went home when we were done and prayed that I would get a role. There had been a real buzz about the new show and I really wanted to be part of it. We were told that the series would initially run for three months and then, if it was popular, a view would be taken by the new channel – Channel 4 – as to whether they would extend the run. To have some regular money coming in, even for three months, would be great.
I spent the next few days biting my nails down to the quick. My friend Veron was staying at my house with her young daughter Gemma.
‘Will you sit down?’ she said as I paced nervously past her for the umpteenth time.
‘I haven’t got it,’ I said despairing, hovering over the phone. ‘They’d have called by now. I’ve blown it.’ I plonked myself down on the settee.
Suddenly, the phone began to ring. I leapt to answer it.
‘Hello!’ I barked breathlessly.
‘Hi, Sue,’ my agent said. The pause was agonising. I held my breath, ready for the bad news that you always expect as an actor. But instead I heard, ‘You’ve got it!’
I screamed and dropped the phone, then I picked it back up again, thanking her over and over. This telephone call had just changed my life.
‘I’ve got it!’ I shouted at Veron. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got it!’
Veron fell about laughing. ‘Well, whatever it is then, let’s celebrate.’
We didn’t have any alcohol in the house so I went in search of a shop that would sell me a bottle of champagne, not the easiest thing to procure in Rochdale in 1982. I managed it, though, and Veron and I celebrated in style. As we were toasting my success my agent called back in a flap. ‘I’m not meant to have told you!’ she said. ‘It’s meant to be a surprise. Keep it to yourself.’
So the next day all the successful actors were called back on set, put into our prospective families and asked to perform some more improvisations. Everyone was still wondering what their chances were of getting a job while I was trying hard not to pop with excitement. Then Phil Redmond came in, looked at Ricky, me and the kids and said, ‘You’re our Grant family.’ My jaw fell, then I began to jump around with glee, hugging the others, appearing totally shocked; best bit of acting I’ve ever done! I was to play Sheila Grant and Ricky would be my husband Bobby.
In order to have a speaking role on TV you still had to have an Equity card. Barry Grant was actually meant to be played by Joe McGann. Joe was a member of the musicians’ union, but he was refused an Equity card because so many cards had been issued to new young actors for Brookside. So Paul Usher was brought in to replace him, and was brilliant in the role.
Having spent years acting in theatre productions I remember getting something of a mental block on what I should be doing. I sat down on Sheila and Bobby’s bed and thought, ‘How do I act to camera?’ Even though I had been acting for years, I felt like a complete novice. When you act on the stage it’s very important to be bigger than you are, to project the character to the audience. TV is different. It’s more intimate. The camera picks up on everything, so I realised I just had to be as natural as possible. In those first few weeks we learned so quickly because we had so much to get through before the show aired. I love learning, so the fact that all of this was new was thrilling to me. Even now I love to learn new things and I’m still open to new challenges. I think that if you give up learning you give up living, or at least give up the opportunity to be part of the changing world.
*
We had been working on the show for weeks and it felt like a comfortable family bubble. There was me and Ricky, our on-screen kids Paul, Simon O’Brien who played Damon and Shelagh O’Hara, who played Karen. Then there was everyone else in the cast, rehearsing and filming together and then socialising afterwards when we had the chance. It was almost like we weren’t filming a real TV show.
Because both the show and the channel it was to be aired on were new, we had no preconceptions of what lay ahead. As the transmission date neared, Channel 4 held a press conference. We were to be the second-ever show on Channel 4 after Countdown. The press conference seemed to be a big deal and the fact that we were about to s
tick our heads above the parapet was beginning to dawn on all of us.
Amanda Burton was also an original cast member of Brookside, playing Heather. She and I went into town one day when we had a break from our scenes and found ourselves trying on clothes in a communal changing room, as most ladies’ changing rooms were at the time. As we pulled various tops over our heads we began to discuss the fact that there might be a remote possibility that once the show started we might not be able to freely swan around shops without being recognised. After all, you did hear about it happening to people who worked on other series. We quickly dismissed it, as if that sort of thing would happen to us! We didn’t grasp the popularity and notoriety that Brookside would garner. How could we? No one had any idea how this new channel would fare. We didn’t even know if anyone would bother watching, it was all so new it had every chance of being overlooked.
*
The day finally came: 2 November 1982. The cast and crew went to a club in Liverpool. We all stood around, drinks in hand, looking at a big screen that had been erected for the occasion, and then the soon-to-be ubiquitous Channel 4 sign came on, the voice-over guy announced that the new channel was in business, and we all cheered.
There was nothing on between Countdown, the first show to air, and Brookside, not even adverts, just dead air. So we all sat there nervously with our drinks. When the Brookside theme tune began to play I got goose bumps. We all watched ourselves in trepidation – that was us up there! When it ended and we all cheered I felt a huge sense of relief.
I arrived home to pick up Joel, and nervously awaited my parents’ verdict. I knew that their opinion would go some way to represent how other people in the country had viewed it.
‘We liked it, me and your father, but we didn’t like the swearing,’ my mother said matter-of-factly.
Nobody liked the swearing. Channel 4 received an avalanche of complaints and the writers had to hastily rewrite the future episodes, while the editors took their scissors to the ones already filmed. All the ‘effing and jeffing’, as my mother would have said, was taken out and more palatable terms were inserted. Words such as ‘divvy’, a previously north-west colloquialism, were inserted instead of harsher terms of derision, and school kids all over the country adopted them as their words. Brookside might have caused controversy on its first outing but it had been bought into across the country and the controversy meant that the show had started with a bang. For the actors on the show, our lives were about to change dramatically.
Chapter Ten
I WAS SO pleased I had taken that leap of faith. When Brookside came along it was ideal from my point of view. It was local – based in Liverpool. The show aired twice a week and the hours, although long, were not as long as they had been in theatre. And the money was good.
My parents were well settled into their role as grandparents by now. My mum was absolutely great with Joel. My dad was like a dad as well as a grandad to him and that was a real comfort to me. My mother really relaxed a lot at this time. Probably because I’d finally come home and she was again involved in what I was doing.
They were always happy to have Joel as long as it was to do with work. But if my mother got a whiff of me socialising, then the Iron Curtain would come down and I would be treated to her frosty side, so I tried to keep my going out to a minimum.
When the contracts for Brookside were renewed it seemed sensible to buy a house near Mum and Dad’s. There was six weeks in between selling the house in Rochdale and buying my new house in Warrington so me, Joel and Woodbine (Bugsy had gone to live with Dave) moved into Mum’s dining room.
I don’t know how we survived for six weeks in that room without all throttling one another. My mother would stay up for me coming in, even if I was on a night shoot. I’d come through the door and she’d be bolt upright in the chair, scaring the living daylights out of me. It was like being a teenager again. But once we were in the new house it was comforting to be so close to my parents.
My father’s relationship with Joel was very special. Joel called him Gramps and idolised him. They spent so much time together and I used to watch my dad shower Joel with love and affection, always attentive to him, always on hand to answer his questions or show him how to do something. I have pictures of the wonderful vegetable patch that my father, with Joel’s help, put down in the garden at the house in Warrington.
I had weekends off, which would be unusual now working on a soap opera, but which was normal at the time. Life settled down for the first time since I’d had Joel and I was very content. I had a great job, a wonderful son and my family nearby.
*
As publicity for the show we started being asked to appear in magazines. It wasn’t anything like it is now. I didn’t run the risk of a photo taken through a long-lens camera popping up on the front of a magazine with me in a swimsuit, or my lack of make-up scrutinised. It was just the odd Radio or TV Times appearance and the occasional Woman’s Own.
Bits of tittle-tattle did surface in the tabloids but nothing too intrusive. That was, until a journalist began sniffing around asking about Dave, my ex-husband. I tried to keep a dignified silence; I didn’t want Joel or his father dragged into the papers because of my job. However, one of the papers decided that they really wanted to get to the bottom of the story of why we were no longer together and put an investigative journalist on him. Dave called me in a flap.
He had realised that someone was on to him and had been ducking and diving, trying to avoid them. His friends had been winding him up saying that it must be the bailiffs or the taxman. The journalist finally tracked him down to the university where he was working. Dave was so relieved that it was just someone looking to ask him about our marriage that he went for a drink with him and they had a long chat!
I was mortified, but he reassured me that he just wanted to put the whole thing to bed. Other than that I haven’t really been pursued by the tabloids, other than the time they put up a picture of myself and Doreen Sloan in Brookie under the headline ‘Middle-Aged Sex-bombs’. I was only thirty-eight at the time and was shocked to be called ‘middle-aged’ – I feel like I’ve been middle-aged for the past thirty years because of that article!
One of the first times I was recognised was in Kendals in Manchester. I was on the escalators travelling upwards and two women stood at the top, waiting for me to reach them. They were commenting on how I was dressed.
‘She doesn’t look as good off the telly, does she?’ one said, looking me up and down.
‘No,’ her friend replied, curling up her nose. ‘I don’t like that suit she’s wearing.’
I looked down at the trouser suit I had on. I could feel myself burning with embarrassment. Amazed at their audacity, I concocted exactly what I wanted to say by the time I was level with them. But then I panicked. I can’t say anything, I thought. They’ll tell people that that woman from Brookside was rude to them. They won’t mention that they were commenting on me and people will think that I’m obnoxious. I suddenly didn’t know how to behave. I had been thrust into a new world where I wasn’t sure of the rules – these women knew me, or at least thought they did. I didn’t know them and they were talking about me like I wasn’t even there. Before I had been ‘on the telly’ I would have told them straight, but now I was wondering what on earth I should say. I got to the top and powered past them, casting my eyes to the floor.
‘How rude!’ one of them said loudly.
I didn’t turn around to find out which one. What had she wanted me to do? Stop and pass the time of day after the running commentary I’d just heard on the escalator? I kept my head down and kept walking.
As the show’s popularity grew, I became more and more recognisable to people. I found it odd at first that someone would want my autograph or want to chat to me about the show, or get me confused with Sheila Grant. I think if I had gone into acting because I wanted to be famous, as a lot of young people do now, I would have felt differently. But I had been an actress for eight
een years, and this was all new to me. I did on occasion say, ‘It’s Sue!’ after being called Sheila for the fifteenth time that day. But after a while I got used to the fact that I was in people’s living rooms twice a week and couldn’t expect everyone to remember that I had a name aside from that of the character.
*
Working on Brookside really was unlike any other job I’ve had before or since. My memories of being on the show are of us having such a lot of fun. At first, although it was very exciting, it was also a little hairy as we didn’t know if the show would work and also we were all learning as we went along. Once it became clear that Brookside was a success we managed to relax a little. This allowed us to not only be more confident in our roles and our performances but also to bond as a team. We were working very long hours, sometimes finishing at one in the morning and then back on set for eight the following day. It felt like we were all in it together and as a result we had a lot of fun both on and off set.
We were always very naughty and would take the rise out of one another, especially when there was a group scene as it would mean that the pressure wasn’t on one person in particular.
Poor old Bill Dean who played perennial grump Harry Cross used to come in for a hard time. He had great difficulty remembering what he had to say and I would find him taping pieces of paper with his lines on around the set. Open a cupboard door, there were Bill’s lines, back of a toilet door, again his lines, a piece of paper taped to a bush on the close, flapping in the wind: Bill’s lines. Ricky and Mickey Starke thought it was great fun to remove them so that the poor man was left doing a fish impression into thin air.