I’d not met studied cruelty like that before. I was nineteen and it was painful. I used to go back to my Newnham room and weep, but I got over it… sort of.
In truth, my dislike of that whole, largely male, world of comedy has never left me. I feel awkward, admitting to such bitterness sixty years later — it seems absurd, it shouldn’t matter; I should have got over it. But I haven’t. The treatment I received by those boys at Footlights was diminishing, pointed and vicious. On reflection, it is they who diminished themselves. I admire the Monty Python creation and I think they were men of genius but they were not gentlemen. Cleese, Oddie and Graham Chapman were total shits — and they have never apologised bar Tim Brooke-Taylor. All the perpetrators went into light entertainment and I went into drama so, thankfully, our paths were to seldom cross.
The crowning nastiness of that whole ghastly experience was that I wasn’t invited to the traditional end of production cast party. I was furious. I went to the then president of Footlights, a pleasant chap called Chris Stuart-Clark. (The Monty Python team used his name later for one of the characters in a programme they wrote.) I told Chris that I hadn’t been invited. He seemed surprised but said it was probably ‘an oversight’.
‘No, it isn’t an oversight. It’s completely deliberate. But I would like an invitation.’ I got one and I went to the party. Oddly, I can’t remember a single thing about the party, except for my determination to attend. When I see a wrong, I will confront it; I strongly believe in sticking up for what is right. Injustice offends me, deeply.
And, nearly sixty years later, I haven’t forgotten.
Saved by the Beeb
I turned up to my Finals in a green ball gown carrying an apple — I was determined to put a brave face on failing my exams. But I left Cambridge with a 2:2 Bachelor of Arts in English (there’s a reason it’s called the actor’s degree).
I like to think I missed out on my 2:1, or my first even, because I did so much acting. By my second year at university, I knew that I wanted to be an actress. I had not been sure of it before, but by then I was resolved.
When I was in the Footlights, everybody said, ‘You must get people down.’ I had no idea what they meant, but learned that I had to ask agents and producers and directors of the BBC to come and watch the show — ‘That’s how you will get work.’ The Footlights, even then, was a known repository for future talent. So I sent a letter to a radio producer at the BBC, John Bridges. He came down and watched the show, and afterwards, kindly told me that he thought I was talented. He gave me his card and said, ‘When the time comes, will you write to me?’
And so, I wrote to John Bridges and said, ‘I’ve left Cambridge, and I really would like to join the BBC Drama Repertory Company. Could you help me?’ The company was so sought-after that you had to wait a long time to get an audition. It wasn’t until some months later that I actually got the call.
By then my TV career had already begun, in what would later be seen as my trademark shocking style. In 1963, along with my teammates Liz Hodgkin, Jinty Muir and Susan Lee, I represented Newnham College in the debut series of Granada TV’s University Challenge. We travelled up to Manchester by train, a happy group. But Liz, Jinty and Susan were all completely oblivious to the man masturbating opposite us. My masterstroke was to offer him a peppermint, whereupon he promptly detumesced. I should have kept one for myself. When during the show I couldn’t remember something that was on the tip of my tongue, in frustration I swore loudly and we lost the point. It was beeped out of the actual transmission, but I believe I was the first person to swear on national television. I was certainly the first woman to do so. (This predates theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, then the literary manager of the National Theatre, infamously using the F-word during a satirical discussion TV show called BBC-3, which is the usual example cited.) The tapes no longer exist sadly. We won our first round, but were knocked out in the second by University College — despite the best efforts of those dear girls. I met Bamber Gascoigne again last year and he acknowledged that my ‘FUCK IT!’ has resounded in his memory for almost sixty years now.
Before I left Cambridge, Tony Palmer had proudly announced that he had set up a tour of Europe with three plays: Romeo and Juliet, The Importance of Being Earnest, and a play of Zuleika Dobson. I was going to be the star of the tour. I was to play the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest and something else in Zuleika Dobson. I felt on the threshold of a great adventure. I was so excited I was finding it hard to sleep. Then, suddenly, about a week before we were due to start, Tony announced: ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t been able to get the money going. It’s off.’ It felt like the end of everything. What was going to be a thrilling time travelling around Europe doing these plays simply evaporated. Tony is now a famous television director, and I still see him occasionally; largely, these days, at the funerals of our mutual friends. I’m friendly enough, and I think he quite likes me; secretly, though, I’ve never stopped feeling resentment towards him, for the two years of my life that were lost to acting as a result.
Having graduated, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was doing nothing, wasting time, so I went back home to Oxford. Later that year, our fortress family fell apart when Daddy made a pass at our au pair, Boyte, a winsome Norwegian. Nothing happened — in fact, Boyte complained to Mummy, which is how she found out, but it broke Mummy’s heart. Her ‘good man’ was good no longer. Mummy told me, although he had begged her not to and, like Mummy, I could never forgive Daddy. It cemented my view of men as flawed and incomplete beings, incapable of sexual control. Nothing in my life since has led me to change my mind.
There was nothing in my future. I didn’t get auditions easily because I hadn’t been to drama school, but while I was waiting for my anticipated glorious career to take flight, I had to do something. So I got a job selling encyclopaedias from door to door. I hated it — not the encyclopaedias — but because I had to manipulate people into buying the Children’s Britannica by making them paranoid about their children’s future education, implying that only a bad parent wouldn’t sign up. It went against everything I believed in. And when the atmosphere at home became unbearable, I decided to move to London.
It was a strange time in many ways. I would take the tube from Plaistow (where I was living in West Ham vicarage with a very nice family called the Griffins), into the West End to see all sorts of theatre productions, which I loved. I found a new job in market research, which involved asking people questions about which contraceptive method they used. I was working for a respected company called Norland, which had offices in Soho Square. My designated area was Henley-on-Thames. I had to approach people on the street. The company gave me a card on which were listed six or seven different methods of contraception, and I’d give it to people and say, ‘Now, which one do you use? Is it number one? Number seven?’ but they never gave a number — they’d always just say very directly, ‘Oh, my husband withdraws.’ It was fun; it was a licence to ask questions. I was getting paid to be a sticky-beak and nose into people’s intimate sex lives.