Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

In fact, why did I need an agent at all? I was doing all right, thank you very much. When we hadn’t been disappearing at weekends to plan our wedding or film at Granada, Brian and I had taken the occasional trip over to Leeds to record for the BBC’s Northern Drift strand. I loved radio. It was great work, and easy to fit in around downtime at Manchester, so ideal for a little extra income. No book, no makeup, no costumes nor any rehearsal really, just acting, script in hand. It’s so liberating, and that’s why I was keen to work with Jon Pertwee on the Doctor Who radio plays later, and why I love reading the Sarah Jane audio books: you can be anyone you want on radio.

Our producer at Leeds was Alan Ayckbourn, who was still starting out as a playwright. When he was appointed director of productions for the summer season at the Library Theatre in Scarborough, I thought we wouldn’t see him again, but he invited Brian and me up to join the company. The timing couldn’t have been better – with Manchester closed until autumn – so off we went.

There were three plays in rep. The Dynamic Death-Defying Leap of Timothy Satupon the Great and A Little Stiff Built Chap were funny little things, but the big one, the one everyone really cared about, was How the Other Half Loves. This was Alan’s first play since The Sparrow so there was a lot riding on it for him. Not that you’d have guessed from his behaviour. We were performing the second play at night and we’d started on rehearsals for How the Other Half Loves during the afternoons. For some reason Alan only gave us the first act to work on. A few days later he handed out the second. We had a week until opening and eventually someone said, ‘Alan, have you got copies of the final act?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I haven’t written that yet. I work better under pressure!’

Alan reminds me of a gnome at the bottom of the garden when he works. He is very insular, always thinking, always taking notes under the table. You know he is studying you, catching everything. I came in once wearing a nice new dress and Alan said, ‘That would be perfect for Mrs Featherstone’ – this ridiculous, mousey character. I still wasn’t a drinker at the time and so whenever we went out together I’d ask for a tonic water. ‘Just a tonic water, please’ became a bit of a catchphrase for the company, but I didn’t realise how much so until I saw the final draft of How the Other Half Loves and Mrs F was given my line! I know Alan must have had a good old laugh about it but I could have poked him in the eye.

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.’