Still Standing: The Savage Years (42 page)

I’d interviewed Sheila a few times on the teatime show to talk about her books,
Just Me
and
The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw
, in which she dealt with widowhood and adapting to life on her own. The books are beautifully written without a shred of self-pity, which is typically Sheila, and a pure joy to read.

Over a lunch prepared by Sandi as Sheila doesn’t cook, sensible woman, we hatched out a plot line. Sandi came up with the title
Nellie and Melba
and slowly the characters
began to evolve. It was to be set in the late seventies in Hoylake on the Wirral. Sheila’s character, Melba, was an ex-chorus girl who had found herself up the duff after a liaison with a ne’er-do-well during the run of a panto at the Floral Pavilion before the war. She was a true blue southerner who hated living in the north, constantly lamenting her lost youth and theatrical career as she taught ballroom dancing in her conservatory to gentlemen with two left feet. Her son, Neville, in his fifties and still living at home with his mum, worked for the Department of Social Security while secretly harbouring a desire to go on the stage like the idols of the musical theatre that he worshipped. He kept a vast collection of LPs of musicals in a bedroom still very much unchanged since he was a boy.

Eventually, after a drunken night observing a talent show in a gay pub, he is inspired to enter himself, coercing his friend Maureen from work to join him in a double act. Originally we’d thought Neville would perform in drag singing ‘One Fine Day’ from
Madam Butterfly
and, unbeknown to him, his mother would join him wearing an identical costume. However, I wasn’t over-keen on this idea as it meant dragging up again, something I was anxious to avoid as it seemed a bit predictable, and so instead I had them doing Al Jolson’s ‘Sonny Boy’ with Neville as a ventriloquist’s dummy. In the story Maureen was supposed to act as the ventriloquist but come the night she loses her bottle and flees, allowing Melba to step in and save the day.

After that meeting with Sheila and Sandi I rushed home, fired with enthusiasm, and hammered away on the laptop in my bedroom until I had turned out a screenplay that was longer than Bergman’s uncut version of
Fanny and Alexander
. Sandi carefully edited it down, adding more dialogue, and by
the end of it we had a good workable script. I must say that during the entire process Sandi was a tower of strength, supportive, encouraging, considerate and full of sound advice. She helped me consistently throughout the making of
Nellie and Melba
.

Writing
Nellie and Melba
was extremely enjoyable and the more I delved into all the characters involved the more I became aware that the underlying theme was loneliness and the sadness and regret of a life unfulfilled. Melba’s career upon the wicked stage was cut short by an unplanned pregnancy that condemned her instead to a life scraping a living as a single mother at a time when such things were frowned upon and in a part of the country she loathed.

Dull, ordinary Neville earned his living being abused by the claimants he interviewed for the Social Security before going home to Mum at the end of a long day, when he’d sit down to a tea of tinned peas, boiled ham and chips followed by a solitary session listening to show tunes in his bedroom while Melba washed and ironed his pyjamas downstairs. Neville’s mate, Maureen from work, beautifully played by Rosie Cavaliero, who lived with her sick father and shared Neville’s obsession with musicals, was also a lonely character, secretly carrying a torch for Neville, a love left unrequited as I saw Neville as asexual, unable to express any emotions for a man or woman for fear of being exposed to rejection and ridicule. Even the drag queen, Patty O’Rose, was not your typical screen portrayal. Drag queens are normally written and played as bitchy predators, while Patty was tough but warm-hearted, showing her caring side as she gently admonished the elderly fire-eater, Flamin’ Nora, about the dangers of wearing polyester when performing. The actor who played Patty, Jonathan D. Ellis, did her proud.

Filming began in late January, during what must have been the coldest spell of the year, on location in a studio in Chertsey. The snow lay thick on the ground as Sheila and I sat wearing nightclothes in a room of a long-deserted unheated house, miraculously transformed into Melba’s 1970s kitchen by the highly creative team. As I was up at five every morning it had seemed practical to stay in a hotel near to the location to cut down on the travelling, so Joan had booked me into a hotel in Egham called Great Fosters, an outrageously beautiful former royal hunting lodge built in the 1500s. No doubt every American tourist who crosses the ancient threshold is overwhelmed to find themselves staying in an original royal residence.

I was put in the vast and majestic splendour of the tapestry room, sleeping in a bed the size of a front garden among beautiful furnishings and with a fireplace you could park a van in. Unfortunately, gratifying to the eye as this room was, it was also extremely cold but once those logs in that fireplace were lit, I thought, the room would be toasty in no time. I looked forward to lying in bed in the dark, watching the flames cast shadows among the ornate plaster carvings that adorned the ceiling. Health and safety put paid to that dream, declaring the fireplace that had warmed the room for centuries without burning the house down unsafe, thus leaving guests with a central heating system unable to cope with the extreme weather and with an inadequate fan heater.

I couldn’t get warm on that shoot, none of us could. I seemed to be permanently cold, a condition not helped by the blood-thinning medication I take that reduces the blood to the consistency of skimmed milk, leaving me chillier than Jack Frost on a holiday in Alaska.

The weather by now had turned incredibly bitter and the
bathroom at the hotel was akin to the temperature that I imagine is found in the bathrooms of those private boys’ schools in the wilds of Scotland that the royal family sent their kids to, so I gave a bath before bed a miss and made do with the fan heater and a hot-water bottle thoughtfully provided by an apologetic management. It wasn’t their fault, you can’t double-glaze grade 1-listed windows and the expense of ripping out walls and tearing up the floors would probably bankrupt the place. Regardless of my chilly stay, I intend to go back when the weather improves, to explore the gardens and enjoy the beauty of this magnificent building. It might have helped if I’d worn the long johns provided by the wardrobe department, but they itched, and anyway I’m far too vain to wear long johns. They make my skinny pins look like pipes that have been lagged for winter and the idea of having an accident, being rushed to hospital and being caught out wearing a pair in front of a posse of doctors and nurses is unthinkable.

The cabaret scene in which Neville and Melba enter the talent show was shot in my old alma mater, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. It was nice to be back and I felt comfortable, if not a little strange, being up on that stage and sat on a trunk with Sheila Hancock’s hand up the back of my jumper.

During a break in filming I stood on the stage and looked around the room, recalling the years I’d spent in this pub, able to evoke the memory of those long-dead men and women I’d worked with, drunk with, fought with, made friends with and even fallen in love with. All of them came vividly back to mind as I drank in the atmosphere and knew that the Vauxhall was part and parcel of me, a place as familiar as Holly Grove. This old boozer was cemented firmly into my psyche and preserved intact for ever.

Nellie and Melba
received excellent reviews and was the second-most-watched programme of all time on Sky Arts, according to an industry paper. I enjoyed making and writing it and I’m currently having a go at writing a series as I believe there’s a lot of mileage in the characters that’s worth developing. It seems a shame to waste the chemistry between Sheila and me, besides which I’d very much like to work with her again.

At last a read-through with the entire cast for
Street of Dreams
was announced, to be held at the Dominion Theatre. Former cast members Julie Goodyear, Brian Capron and Kevin Kennedy were sat around the enormous table along with Kym Marsh and Katy Kavanagh who plays Julie Carp. Katy was going to be the Angel of Death in a short scene I’d written as a comedy device to get Martha bloody Longhurst off.

I hadn’t even taken my coat off before Kieran Roberts,
Corrie
’s executive producer, and Tony Warren, the original creator of the show and a telly legend, pounced on me, unhappy about the opening monologue and insisting ever so nicely that I changed it.

I couldn’t understand the fuss, it was all about the
Street
after all. Instead of the sanctimonious drivel about broken hearts and strong women that previous scripts whined on about, in my opening I pointed out that
Street of Dreams
was perhaps the wrong title for a place that had more serial killers per square inch than Broadmoor and where the majority of the residents have eaten their fair share of porridge at one time or another. It’s just as well that Weatherfield has the most lenient judicial system in the world as even if you do get sent down for life, as in the case of murderer Tracy Barlow,
you can guarantee you’ll be out and back on the street on a technicality in the time it takes for your roots to grow out.

The Barlows are the Borgias of the
Street
. Ken Barlow, a man incapable of keeping his pecker in his pocket, would nail anything with a pulse while his wife Deirdre would let any passing stranger take her up the ginnel without even a second glance to see if the nets were twitching. In fact they really are a highly promiscuous lot on the
Street
, and up for it at the drop of a hat with just about anyone regardless of age or sex.

I’ve been a fan of the
Street
for as long as I can remember and they’d obviously misread my opening. I’d written it as an affectionate send-up, not meant with any malice, but the horrified ITV execs were claiming that I was agreeing with their detractors and adding fuel to the protests that
Corrie
was no longer the show it used to be. They thought I meant it had been transformed into a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah by producers callously resorting to gratuitous sex and violence to win ratings.

My script was too strong a taste for the palate of the
Corrie
execs and to avoid a fuss I scrapped it, vowing that never again would I offer to contribute so much as a comma towards the script for this show.

Predictably the performances planned for the
Street of Dreams
in March were postponed, so I started work on a series about Battersea Dogs and Cats Home for ITV with an enthusiasm that surprised everyone except me. I’d always wanted to do a show based around animals and after years of my pleas falling on deaf ears my wish had finally been granted and I was determined to enjoy every minute.

The crew were great, with Kate Jackson, the producer, and Jill Worsley, the director, working miracles on a shoestring
budget. I was only contracted to work for six days but you couldn’t keep me away from the place, I loved it so much, and in the end I stayed six months. Battersea Dogs and Cats Home has been taking in the abused, unwanted strays of London since 1860. Apart from a little local government funding, the home relies solely on the generosity of the public and within a couple of days of filming there I was so overwhelmed by the amount of loving care and attention that’s lavished upon every cat and dog during their stay that I changed my will.

Those who work at Battersea certainly don’t do it for the salary, which as you can imagine is hardly going to make a City trader choke with envy. The hardworking staff and volunteers do it because every one of them is mad about dogs or cats and is a hundred per cent committed to the animals in their care.

One of the worst cases of animal cruelty that Battersea has ever seen was when a young Staffie bitch was brought in. She had been found by a member of the public in a park, dumped inside a suitcase. This scared little dog, who was christened Sparkles, was so emaciated that every single bone in her body was visible. She looked like a skeleton of a dog with a wet dishcloth thrown over it.

What I found so heartbreaking was that this beautiful dog was still trusting and affectionate despite the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of her previous owner, who had used her as a puppy machine and starved her to near death. In the nineteenth century, Sir John Bowring wrote, ‘I cannot understand that morality which excludes animals from human sympathy, or releases man from the debt and obligation he owes to them.’ Neither can I but personally if I ever got my hands on the person who did that to Sparkles I’d nail them upside down, naked, to the barn door, smear their vile bodies
with a solution of sugar syrup, tip the hive over and set the bees on them. Sometimes I think I missed my vocation: my being born too late is the Spanish Inquisition’s loss.

If you want to know what happened to Sparkles you’ll have to watch the series.

Far from being depressed or traumatized, I always felt good about life after a day in Battersea, particularly if I’d helped rehome a dog. It became quite an obsession of mine and I’d hang around the courtyard and pounce on unsuspecting passers-by, asking them if they were looking for a dog, because if they were there was a nice bitch upstairs, a lovely old girl, in the manner of a canine pimp.

My friend Amanda Mealing came down with her sons Milo and Otis and left with a pretty little white Staffordshire bull terrier they christened Nancy who’s now living the life of Riley in the countryside. I’ve grown very fond of Staffies since I got to know the breed at Battersea. Originally they were known as the nanny dog as they are so trustworthy with children, but time and tabloid plus a plethora of gob-shite owners who shouldn’t be allowed near any living organism have maligned the reputation of this magnificent breed.

It’s a crying shame that the subspecies of society have adopted the Staffie as their breed of choice for no other reason than that it makes them look ’ard. They train them to be vicious fighting dogs, parade them around public parks without a lead or muzzle and find it great sport when they attack responsible dog owners’ pets. Good owners make good dogs. A case in point is Frank, an ex-Battersea dog who was adopted by one of the staff, who trained Frank to do every trick in the book. He can even sing. I proudly entered Frank for the agility course at Crufts and to my eternal surprise we won, possibly because I’d threatened to sleep with the judges if we lost.