Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

couple of places that stayed open for us I would have saved every penny. My favourite, Tommy Duck’s on Barbirolli Square, used to wait until the actors had arrived after eleven then lock us in. It felt so naughty and, I admit, it was a nice boost for the ego that they went to such trouble for us. But then trouble wasn’t exactly a stranger to Duck’s. The owner, Tommy Duckworth, was an ex-wrestler, I think. If only half the rumours about him were true then he was quite a handful, but he bent over backwards for us and was a real character. You just had to look at the ceiling with its ladies’ knickers pinned to it to realise that.

George Best had his club at the same time, so we went there as well.

It was such a fun time. Tony was a great raconteur – he’d tell us all about working with Joan Littlewood and even persuaded her to come and have a chat with us. My parts got bigger and better. That season he gave me Iras in Antony and Cleopatra, Fran in The Poker Session, Deidre in How’s the World Treating You? and Leanthe in Love and a Bottle (played ‘with charm’, according to one review). Then, after the summer break, I got the big one. Tony wanted to do Othello – and he wanted me to play Desdemona. What an honour! I don’t think I appreciated how lucky I was, even when the reviews came in (‘Elisabeth Sladen’s final scene with Emila (Linda Polan) was a little gem’ – The Observer). If I’m honest, I was more delighted that Brian was playing Iago.

Another big play for me was The Promise. It was a gloomy affair, set during the German occupation of Russia in 1942. I played Lika and Brian and Paul Webster were Marat and Leonodik. Our characters were just trying to survive – my raggedy trousers were held up by a tie, not a belt; it was that sort of look. So when they find a can of food, of course, they fall upon it.

It was Brian’s job to open this thing – it was Fray Bentos corned beef – and then mash it up for us to share. One night his hand slipped and raked against the tin’s sharp edge. It was as if he’d cut his jugular. Blood just spurted out – all down his arm and over the corned beef. I thought, He’ll have to go off to get that looked at, but he didn’t flinch. He looked at the tin, then at me and said, ‘Well, it’s only me.’

Couldn’t you have thought of a different line? I wondered.

But he had to be the consummate professional, didn’t he? So there we were, eating the bloody stuff and trying not to vomit.

Of course, the bleeding didn’t stop, so I remember taking the tie off my trousers and winding it around his hand to stem the flow. I was not happy. Brian had gone with it so I followed, but when we came offstage I said to the stage manager, ‘You make damn sure that tin is opened properly in future!’

*   *   *

I shared a dressing room with Sara Kestelman, Jeanie Boht and Maria Aitken, who’d also both come over from Liverpool. Jean had got to know David Scase because she was an amateur operatic performer, but she was a natural comic. The pictures of her in my scrapbooks are hysterical. Maria, on the other hand, was like a creature from another planet. When she first turned up we said, ‘What do we call you?’

‘Maria – as in Black.’

She used to saunter in, wrapped in expensive furs, and just drop them wherever she stood. Jeanie and I would dive down, scoop them up and dust them off. We couldn’t bear such exquisite things getting dirty but Maria didn’t seem to mind – or notice. Maybe people had always picked things up for her. She was a sweet girl but coasting on a different plane to the rest of us.

My mum and dad, bless them, used to come over on the train to see every single play (eight a season) and every weekend I would go home with Brian. The station was very near Manchester Library Theatre – it’s not there any more – and we’d wait for the final curtain on a Saturday before flying out the door. If we missed the 10.30 it was hours until the next one. Of course, we’d both be in full stage slap and it took most of the journey to get it all off. God knows what the other passengers thought.

It was worth the effort just to walk into Mum’s house and smell her cooking. Wonderful memories! She used to send me back with a big cake every week – that was our little treat.

Living with Brian in Whalley Range might have been inconvenient as far as seeing my family went, but it opened up other opportunities. Manchester was a thrilling place to be in the 1960s. So much of acting and the media is based in London these days that it’s hard to imagine a time when the capital didn’t dominate so much. It was still the centre of theatreland, of course, but other cities were a lot more important then. Leeds had a strong radio scene under Alfred Bradley and Alan Ayckbourn, and there was a buzz about Granada TV because Jack Rosenthal and the Stables Theatre Company had begun doing great work there for the drama department. I hadn’t been at the Library long when I began to hear of work going there. Warren Clarke got his first TV role in Coronation Street, as a lad called Barry, and every other day someone else would be popping over to film this or that. You could just jump on a train when you weren’t busy and record for a day then get back to your own bed. Granada loved that because they didn’t have to pay you subsistence.

A lot of actors today can’t wait to get onto television. And then when they get there, telly is just a stepping stone to film, which is then a way of getting to Hollywood. Theatre seems to have been left behind slightly. That’s why it was so impressive to see David Tennant take on Hamlet while he was still the Tenth Doctor. An RSC old boy, he didn’t want to forget his roots.

Obviously I’m known today for my work on television but at the time telly wasn’t a road I particularly wanted to go down. My only ambition was to work, and so far the theatre had been very good to me. But when Margaret Crawford, the delightful Granada casting director, rang and offered me a day’s filming on a Sunday – my day off – I leapt at it. Why act six days a week when you can work all seven? Just remembering that makes me feel tired – I’d do anything for a day off now!

The programme was an ITV Playhouse episode starring Patrick Wymark. (Patrick had been considered as a replacement for William Hartnell on Who at one point, so, once again, there are the connections.)

I don’t know if it was the arrogance of youth or plain naivety but I turned up at the Granada drama department without a care in the world. I knew I could act. I knew theatre production inside out. And I’d been filmed on Search for a Star, even if I was too nervous at the time to take much of it in.

Whatever you throw at me, I’m ready.

Or so I thought.

‘Can I see a script?’ I asked the director.

‘You won’t be needing one of those.’