Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

The second I walked onto the set I picked up another one of those Coronation Street us-and-them vibes.

The show in question was Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em and, while Michael Crawford is pretty much a national treasure these days, working with him every day as Frank Spencer’s long-suffering wife, Betty, would have driven me mad.

It was Crawford’s show, there was no doubt about that. The rest of us were ballast. I was really surprised at Mills for going along with it. Right from the start he spent the whole time huddled with his star. The rest of us virtually had to direct ourselves. So while the two Michaels went over and over Crawford’s lines and his stunts in the minutest detail, everyone else was abandoned on the other side of the room desperately trying to listen in to glean any nuggets of direction we could.

It was such a shame because I really could have done with some guidance. I was Judy, a greengrocer. Michael had to come into my shop to buy fruit for his pregnant wife and, of course, cause havoc. Everything was built around what he had to do – I don’t think he realised what the rest of us were going through. I remember being surrounded by these apples and oranges, rehearsing my lines to myself while Michael was saying his to himself as well. Suddenly he turned to me and said, ‘Well, if I can’t hear you, Elisabeth, the audience won’t.’

The bloody cheek! It wasn’t a tech run or even a proper rehearsal; I was just trying to fix it in my head.

Generally, though, Crawford wasn’t exactly unpleasant, just nervous – really, really nervous. He had been in those Hollywood musicals and Michael Winner films and I think his career was in a bit of a slump. He was desperate for this series to work and that was what made him so uptight. There was nothing you could do to help him, either: he had to deal with his demons on his own. I once saw him in makeup trying to open a carton of milk – he got through pints of the stuff, I think, to calm himself down. But on this occasion he couldn’t open the blasted thing and he was getting more and more irate. Literally shaking with nerves. I was just about to go over to help when another actor, Norman Mitchell, pulled me aside.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warned. ‘Don’t even offer. He’ll explode.’

He was a wound coil ready to spring at any moment.

Norman played Jackson in my episode. Years later, his son gave me a compliment to cherish. He said, ‘My dad always told me that you were the only person he saw who could get a laugh when Michael Crawford was on.’

Maybe that’s why he was so off with me?

After the Some Mothers experience I had another couple of adverts lined up but then a pretty empty diary. Something will come up, I thought. But as each job passed, I began to worry.

The last job on my books before I had to contemplate another stretch of unemployment was an ad for the liqueur Cointreau. Some people outside the business assume there’s snobbery where ads are concerned. It’s simply not true. The lunch we’d had with Morley and Paul Tomlinson in the spinning Skylon restaurant proved that. You couldn’t ask for better-connected thesps than those two but they called it as I do: acting is acting, whether it’s Pinter, Beckett or Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. You’re bloody lucky to get any job doing something you love. (The pay tends to be better with Corn Flakes, however …)

Adverts in the early 1970s were very ‘honest’. By that I mean that if you were promoting bacon, you ate bacon on the screen. If you were washing with Daz, that’s what you poured into your machine. All of which is fine.

Unless you’re advertising alcohol …

There was no pretending to drink the stuff. It was quite ridiculous. So from eight in the morning, it was sausage rolls for breakfast, a cup of tea then tipping real Cointreau into our glasses. We went through take after take after take and the ad’s star, a French actor, was getting more and more sozzled. In the end he had to go and sleep it off. By the time he returned it was six o’clock and then it was all dark coffees and coping with his hangover. He was obviously suffering, so it was impressive he got through it at all. On the plus side, union laws were so tight in those days I got overtime every day, which was always welcome.

Waiting for your lead to sober up is a time-consuming business. I didn’t get home until two o’clock in the morning! I’d been up for twenty hours and I never wanted to smell or taste Cointreau again. But, I realised with a fairly heavy heart, if Cointreau ads are the only offers on the table, then that’s what I’ll be appearing in. After all, my career wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire.

But I wasn’t going to dwell on that now. There was only one thought in my head.

Bed.

Brian was already asleep but I spotted a note in his handwriting. I was so shattered I considered leaving it for the morning. At that moment, I was in no state to do anything about anything. But I did pick it up and, through bleary eyes, could just make out that by the time I surfaced in the morning, Brian would be up and gone.

Fine, I thought. I could sleep for a week.

But that plan was put on hold the second I noticed the ‘P.S.’ at the bottom.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘there’s a message from your agent. You’ve got an interview with Barry Letts at Threshold House tomorrow morning.

‘It’s for Doctor Who.’

Chapter Four

What Would You Like To Drink, Katy?

DOCTOR WHO, EH?

I was aware of it, of course, although this was not something I would choose to watch. Science fiction, as I’ve said, just isn’t my thing. Sorry! If I’m honest, getting the call for Doomwatch, Corrie and Z-Cars meant just as much to me because all three were such popular programmes. So when I saw the note from Brian I reacted the same way I always did.

Oh, excellent – work! That should keep me busy for a few days. And not a Cointreau bottle in sight …

Little did I know how much that ‘work’ would change my life.