Things I Couldn't Tell My Mother: A Memoir

by Sue Johnston

  Ricky was always playing practical jokes. One day we had a new make-up girl on set. Ricky, with a very straight face, began to tell her his tale of woe.

  ‘I’ve been having a shocking time recently, girl.’

  The poor girl looked concerned as one does when it looks like someone is about to impart something from the heart.

  ‘They’ve been giving me murder,’ he said, nodding down at his nether regions.

  The make-up girl’s eye widened in horror, I could tell she was feeling terribly sorry for Ricky but really didn’t want any further information.

  Then he put his hand down his pants and began to rummage around. Her mouth fell open. ‘Honestly, me poor nuts!’ he said, pulling his hands out of his pants and producing two walnuts. The poor girl nearly died of embarrassment.

  Mickey Starke was always trying to put me off when I was going through an emotional scene. I was once midway through a heartfelt speech outside the Grants’ house when I saw the privet moving. I looked over to see Mickey’s cheeky grinning face poking out at me. I had to ask for him to be removed from the set so I could finish my lines without laughing.

  We soon all settled into our new lives and roles as actors on Brookside and began to come to terms with the show’s success and the difference to our lives that it was making.

  One of the biggest storylines during my time at Brookside – which happened a few years in – was when my son in the show Damon was killed. It even got its own spin-off episodes, Damon and Debbie, where we followed the two of them to Yorkshire where Damon was tragically stabbed. It was a huge hit and teenage girls all over the country mourned the death of Damon.

  The day before the funeral, the Grants gathered around the coffin in their living room with a priest. It was a sad affair because it meant that Simon O’Brien would be leaving the show.

  I was the distraught mother at the front, but I had thought it would be funny to bring Simon along. We hadn’t been able to fit him in the coffin, so he hid behind the curtains underneath. As we all stood around the coffin, straight-faced, trying to convey the gravity of the situation, a hand curled out from under the coffin lid and grabbed the priest’s leg. The poor guest actor let out an almighty yelp and jumped in the air. We all looked as Simon fell out from beneath the coffin howling with laughter!

  The poor priest, I think we nearly gave him a heart attack. He needed a lie down in a dark room after that and I bet he never stood that close to a coffin again.

  One day I was introduced to an actress who was being brought in to play Marie Jackson. Her name was Anna Keaveney and she was brilliant in the script readthrough. I thought, ‘My God she’s a proper actress!’ To tell the truth, I was a little intimidated.

  The Jacksons and the Grants became enemies, rowing over the kids. Barry was having an on–off affair with Marie’s sister and all sorts of acrimony ensued. One day it all got out of hand and Sheila and Marie had a fight in the street – hair pulling, fists flying, the lot. As Sheila and Marie grew to hate one another, Anna and I grew closer. She was a great friend.

  I was very much learning on the job, things that hadn’t been a problem when working in theatre were suddenly evident now that the camera was on me. In one of the early episodes of Brookside I remember a director saying to me that I didn’t blink much. He didn’t tell me whether this was a good or bad thing so I took it to be a bad thing, worrying that I was staring blankly at the camera. After forcing myself to blink my way through a scene the following day he asked me what I was doing. I must have looked like I had something in my eye. It was then that I discovered that not blinking too much on camera is actually a good thing.

  One of the great things about working on Brookside was working with some of the great writers and directors who have since gone on to be huge talents in their field. One of them was Jimmy McGovern. His writing just seemed to get better and better and we were all excited to see what he had written when we were handed one of his scripts. He loved writing for the Grants and we loved performing his work. I once asked him how he wrote so well for women. He said in typical droll Jimmy McGovern style, ‘Eileen tells me.’ Eileen being his wife. But then he went on to say that emotions are emotions in everyone and it’s how you react to them and deal with them that sets the sexes apart. I thought that was such an interesting observation. He has since gone on to create Cracker, The Street and The Accused and I’m proud to say that I worked with him on Brookside and again on The Street alongside Jim Broadbent.

  Frank Clarke is another writer who springs to mind. Frank went on to write the excellent film Letter to Brezhnev. Frank wrote an episode for Karen and Sheila where Sheila’s Catholic faith was called into question by her daughter who just believed it was utter hypocrisy. It culminated in Karen throwing a lighter from Lourdes with a picture of the Virgin Mary at Sheila, asking if this was really what her faith was about. I then had to slap Shelagh who played Karen straight across the face. The poor girl. We retook the scene a number of times and her face was red raw and covered in finger marks by the time I had finished.

  Whenever there is a slap or a punch on TV it is real, or at least that has always been the case in my experience. I used to wallop Simon and Paul across the heads as if I actually was their mother. There was one episode when Sheila had a night out with her friend in town. We didn’t often venture off set but this time the producers thought that the audience should see Sheila and her friend Kathy, played by Noreen Kershaw, leave the confines of the close and head into town. This was to be the culmination of months of acrimony between Sheila and Bobby.

  On Sheila’s return, Bobby was waiting for her and after an almighty row he went for Sheila, actually hitting her. The director was Ken Horn and he promised me that they would do it in one take. So Ricky flew at me and thumped me in the face. As he did I saw my earring fly out and hit the floor and I knew that if Ken saw this the scene would have to be taken again as the previous scene and the next scene had me wearing an earring and the continuity would be spoiled. My face was really smarting so I thought ‘I’m not saying anything!’ But someone on production said, ‘Sue’s earring fell out!’ And we had to do it again.

  Bobby and Sheila were always having heated and sometimes violent arguments. Ricky would say to me, ‘Sorry about that, love, do you want your hair back?’ And he’d be standing there with a clump of my hair in his hand.

  *

  Sheila being raped was perhaps the biggest storyline that I undertook at Brookside. I was asked to go and see Phil Redmond. I sat down and he looked at me seriously. ‘Sue, we’re thinking of doing a storyline where Sheila is raped.’

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. ‘Right,’ I said slowly, trying to gather my thoughts.

  ‘I know it’ll be a hard thing to pull off but I think we can make it work. What do you think?’

  Until then rape wasn’t something that had really been broached on primetime TV. But that wasn’t my main concern. I’d never talked to anyone other than close friends about when I had been attacked in my twenties. I thought for a moment; I looked at my hands, feeling nervous, guilty and embarrassed about what I was about to say.

  ‘I think you should know, Phil, that I was attacked when I was younger,’ I confessed.

  Phil was visibly taken aback.

  ‘And if we’re going to do it, I need to make sure it’s done with the sensitivity it deserves.’

  Phil listened as I told him that if we were to go ahead with the story then I was adamant that we shouldn’t just produce a sensationalist piece of television. What we screened had to be representative of what women who had been raped went through. I knew the shame and the trauma that stemmed from such a violation, I wanted to make sure that we treated the subject matter carefully.

  We went along to the Rape Crisis centre in Liverpool and heard first-hand some of the awful attacks that these women had suffered. And more often than not they were at the hands of someone they knew. We also witnessed the great work that was car
ried out by the people who ran the centre. The fact that there was somewhere where women could access support after such a terrible event was a step in the right direction, although then, as still today, rape was a crime with a shockingly low conviction rate.

  The day of filming came and I was very nervous. I had carried this anxiety around with me for years and I was about to relive it again. The one thing that bothered me was that the attacker was to come at me from behind, something that was still my biggest fear. We filmed it and I managed to get through the day without losing control and being overcome. It turned out to be a great release for me in the end. Acting and performing a rape scene allowed me to get rid of a lot of fear I had carried around for years. When it was over I had a real sense of relief.

  When the episode aired there was a huge response from people who had been through the same thing. We received hundreds of letters from women who wanted to share their own experiences; many of these women had been raped and kept silent about it for years.

  It is not often as an actress that you get to perform something that you feel directly affects people. Knowing that when I was attacked there was nowhere I could look and think, ‘other people know what I’ve been through’, then I felt that this storyline really reached out to women who had first-hand experience of the horror of rape.

  Chapter Eleven

  IT WAS DURING my time on Brookside that I became involved with the miners’ strike. On 5 March 1984 the Yorkshire miners came out on strike at the proposed closure of Cortonwood Colliery. This sparked the national miners’ strike.

  Throughout the seventies there had been a number of miners’ strikes and we had grown used to power cuts and everyone making a dash for the candles. In the eighties, though, when the miners went on strike to protest against what they saw as the plan to systematically shut down mines across the country it became a battle of wills: Margaret Thatcher versus the miners. It seemed that Thatcher’s wish was to smash the miners’ unions at all costs as an example to all other workers’ unions. Coal had been stockpiled so that there would be no power cuts and the government and the miners fought a bitter war. It always seemed to me that what Thatcher seemed to forget was that she wasn’t battling a theory. It wasn’t just Arthur Scargill or the power of the unions that she went about destroying; she decimated communities right across the country.

  As the government used more heavy-handed tactics and pitted the police against people from their own communities, support for the miners grew. I was incensed at the way these people were being treated. Ricky had always been heavily involved with the trade unions and he wanted to show his support in any way he could, as did I. So the two of us began to make collections from the cast and crew and take the proceeds to Sutton Manor colliery near St Helens.

  From these visits I got to know some of the women whose husbands were striking. I was taken by how strong these women were. It seemed to me that they were the heart of the strike. Without the women making ends meet and holding their families together I felt that the spirit of the miners may have been broken far sooner.

  One woman, a lady called Sylvia, told me how she had worked in the kitchens at the colliery. When the miners had gone out on strike she had crossed the picket line every day.

  ‘I worked alongside my sister,’ she said. ‘I knew in my heart of hearts that we shouldn’t be crossing the picket line when our husbands and sons were standing on it. But we kept being told by our union that we were doing the right thing. In those early days, the miners were allowed across the picket line for breakfast and lunch.’

  Eventually, she realised that working there was sending out the wrong message and that even though they would have no money coming in she needed to stay away from work. Her husband Ken said, ‘We’ll turn you away from the picket line today.’

  ‘And it was a huge relief,’ she confessed. ‘I wanted to show my support, to do what was right.’

  So Sylvia set up a social kitchen where the community could meet. It was meeting people like Sylvia that made me realise that these weren’t hardened lefties out to score points against the government. They were ordinary people, families like my own, who just wanted the opportunity to earn an honest wage.

  The papers soon got wind that Ricky and I were visiting the striking miners and that we had begun to attend meetings and rallies. It didn’t bother me that it was public knowledge, I was proud to be involved. I attended a rally in Manchester with Jimmy McGovern. Dennis Skinner, my political hero, was there, and I watched in awe as he walked past me. He muttered something to the person he was with and the only words I could make out were ‘Sheila Grant’. Recognition of sorts from my idol! He went on to speak and it was extremely moving; he was an amazing orator and had been a miner himself so knew exactly how the miners were feeling. It was around this time that I met Neil Kinnock and began to attend Labour Party events with him. He was always great company and a fantastic politician. I thought it a great shame that he never got to be prime minister.

  The miners’ strike continued, growing increasingly bitter by the week. I remember very clearly driving into work at Brookside one morning and seeing three vans of police parked on the motorway bridge. The policemen were sitting in the vans, no doubt chatting amiably to one another, but they were parked there because they were prepared to go down to the picket line. The altercations between the police and the miners had become increasingly aggressive and I saw these vans as a malignant presence, waiting to stir up trouble. A lot of policemen were as torn as the miners. They were trying to earn a living and this was the job they were given. But this split families. Men who were police officers and men who were miners from the same family found themselves pitted against one another on the picket line.

  Eventually policemen were bussed in from different areas, as feelings were running so high on both sides. I had always been brought up to believe that the police were there to protect us, but at that time I had the sinister feeling that the police were there not to protect the citizens of the country, i.e. the miners, but to maintain the status quo.

  The strike was long and hard fought. Eventually the miners were returned to work, those who had work to go back to, and the process of closing down the coal industry in this country was begun. It was a very sad time and there was such an air of defeat among mining communities across the country. But when the miners went back, they did so with their heads held high, displaying a dignity that I feel was never shown by the government of the day.

  I had quite high hopes for Margaret Thatcher when she came to power. She was a Conservative and nothing in her political viewpoints chimed with my own, but I naively thought that as a woman she would represent women. She was a mother and a wife and surely she would step up and represent the needs and voices of women? How wrong could I have been?

  I think that the lampooning of Margaret Thatcher by Spitting Image was very clever and summed her up to a tee. Her puppet was dressed in a pinstripe suit and constantly smoking cigars. Essentially, she was a man! I think many women felt let down by Thatcher. She had entered a man’s world and proven herself to have a harder edge than any of her male counterparts.

  A few years after the miners’ strike, in late 1987, Clause 28 was introduced into the Local Government Bill by the Conservative MP, Dame Jill Knight. It banned ‘the promotion of homosexuality’ as a ‘normal family relationship’. The following May the bill was passed. There was outrage from gay rights campaigners, of which I was one. As far as I was concerned it was regressive policymaking and thinly disguised homophobia. Two members of my extended family were gay, I had lots of gay friends and colleagues and I knew what a struggle it was for people to come out. When I was younger, of course, it had been illegal, so I knew how hard fought the battle for gay rights had been. For a few years it had felt that society was progressing forward in its acceptance of homosexuality but now Clause 28 had been passed in to law, which legitimatised discrimination in my opinion.

  I met the actor Michael Cashman, an ardent ga
y rights campaigner, through this. It is also where I met Ian McKellen. It was Ian’s involvement with the fight to abolish Clause 28 that forced him to come out. This was the case for a lot of people, it made them come out and say they were proud to be gay. The very opposite reaction to the one the government were hoping for, I’m sure!

  I went along with Michael to a large demonstration in Manchester. I hadn’t intended to speak but as I stood at the front it was suddenly noted that I was there and I was hoisted up on to the platform. There I was looking out over this large crowd. ‘Bloody hell,’ I thought, ‘I’d better say something and quick!’ The famous speech by Pastor Martin Niemöller came to me:

  First they came for the Jews, but I did not speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

  Then they came for the Communists, but I did not speak out because I wasn’t a Communist.

  Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

  Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

  I went on to say that we all had a responsibility to speak out where we saw injustice and that what the government was doing to the gay community was deeply unjust.

  The movement to abolish Clause 28 galvanised people. Rather than push people into a corner it made them come out and be proudly gay or support the gay community. Of course, there was a large number of people in the country who agreed with it, who were delighted to have some actual legislation to give legitimacy to their bigotry. It would take a further twelve years for Clause 28 to be abolished by the Labour government in 2000.

  I continued to be a supporter of the Labour Party. My aunty Jocelyn used to say, ‘You’ll vote Conservative when you get older, mark my words!’ Well, I can confirm that at the age of sixty-seven I might be slightly disillusioned with party politics but my pen has yet to put a cross beside the blue party.