After two years of selling encyclopaedias and probing passers-by about their contraception strategies, I wrote again to John Bridges at BBC Radio. He arranged an audition for me with the BBC Drama Repertory Company. It involved a piece of narration, and then something with characters in it, to show versatility. I decided on an unscripted railway journey in which I played all the characters in the compartment. That was when all those little dramas I had created, walking up and down Banbury Road as a schoolgirl, finally came to fruition.
I arrived at Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London W1A 1AA (I can never forget that postcode) and John came to fetch me from reception. I was taken up and introduced to Norman Wright, a staff producer, whose job it was that week to take the auditions. I told them what I was going to do, saying: ‘I am now going to give you an example of my astonishing versatility.’ No hiding my light under a bushel! Then I was shown into the studio, and John and Norman went into a separate little room to listen to me on headphones.
I was excited, because it was a proper audition. I settled myself at the microphone. I started with my improvisation set in the railway carriage. I hadn’t scripted it; I’d just made a list of the accents that I wanted to show them, and then had a conversation between all the characters, making it up as I went along.
Many years later, they told me that it was the most astonishing audition they’d ever heard because I switched between so many voices — male, female, Scottish, Yorkshire, Brummie, Cockney, all the regions, all the ages, French, German, Aussie, etc.
After a week, a letter arrived: ‘You did a very good audition and we are sure that we are going to be able to offer you some work in the future.’ True to their word, in early autumn 1963, I got my very first radio job.
It was in an ‘Afternoon Theatre’ play called Defeating Mrs Dresden. It went out at 3 p.m. on the Home Service in November that year. I played the ‘Hotel Proprietress’, so not exactly a major role, but I found it terribly exciting.
Norman was directing, but when he said, ‘Right, Miriam, you’ll take a flick for that, and then on page seven you’ll take a flick for that…’ I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘What does that mean? What is a «flick»?’
Kevin Flood, one of the other actors, whispered: ‘See that little light that’s on a stand by the microphone? Well, that light is called a «flick», and when that goes green, that’s when you have to start talking.’ It was my very first lesson in radio.
After that I got a part in Howards End which was produced by William Glen-Doepel, and then followed parts in lots more plays, until in 1965 they offered me a full-time engagement for a year. There were a lot more then than there are now, and so from that point on I would be taking part in four or five radio drama productions each week.
There were about forty members of the Rep, and it was considered a fine job to have landed. You got to work with people like Paul Scofield and Claire Bloom, Coral Browne, John Osborne and Jill Bennett, Sir Donald Wolfit, Patricia Routledge and Wilfred Pickles. Wilfred Pickles was famous for going around England interviewing ordinary people in his show Have a Go (with Mabel at the table and Harry Hudson at the piano) but he was a good actor as well.[9]
You did anything you were asked. If they wanted narration, you did narration. If they wanted character work, you did character work. You did announcements. You did anything and everything that you were asked to do. We didn’t play leading roles (that came later): we played the ‘other parts’, and because I was versatile, I was useful and had lots of work. And so my career began in radio, which was not at all what I had expected. And it looks as if it will end in radio, too!
It was in the BBC Rep that I met my friend, Patricia Gallimore, a.k.a Pat Archer, wife of Tony in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers, and we remain really close. In the 1970s I went on holiday with her to Gozo, near Malta. One of our friends in the BBC owned a house there and we rented it. When we were leaving to fly back to London, we needed to get the ferry over to Malta and the airport. We had rented a car while we were staying in Gozo, and so I dropped her at the harbour, told her to take all our bags and board the ferry, and I’d return the car to the rental place. When I came back to the ferry, it was just easing out of the harbour! I pelted down the quayside, my bosoms hitting me on the chin, to try and jump onto it at the very last minute. I was running and running, but it was too late and I missed it. Pat was on the deck shouting, ‘Miriam, what are we going to do?’
I had to get to Valletta because I was carrying the plane tickets. No wonder Pat looked so anxious. I stood there, looking desperately around the harbour, where there were, of course, a lot of rowing boats and fishermen, who naturally had sat and watched the whole farcical scene unfold. I went up to one of the fishermen and I said, ‘I missed the ferry, is there any chance you could row me to Valletta?’ And this old chap said, ‘Sure, sure, get in.’
I jumped down into his boat. It was quite a big drop down to sea-level from the mooring place. When I landed in the little wooden vessel it very nearly upended with the force of my significant bulk. Once it, and I, had regained equilibrium, I sat in the stern and he started to row.
It was quite a long way over to Valletta by rowing boat, and so we chatted to pass the time. He was a nice, old fellow in dungarees and he spoke good, albeit heavily accented, English. He said, ‘You see this island?’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, I haven’t been there.’ He said, ‘That is Comino. Nobody live there. We go to Comino, you and me, now.’ I said, ‘No, darling, I can’t. I’ve got a plane to catch. Really, I’ve got to get there because my friend is on the ferry with all our stuff and I have the plane tickets.’ But he was insistent, ‘No, no, we go,’ he said. ‘We go!’ I replied, ‘No, we can’t go! I’ve got to get that plane.’ Then I saw that he had taken his penis out of his dungarees and he was enthusiastically masturbating. I thought, ‘Blimey, what am I going to do? I don’t want to get raped. Not on the sea.’ So, I got up, went over to him and tossed him off.
He was fine after that; he calmed down. The penis was popped back inside the dungarees and then on he rowed, all the way across. When we finally arrived, he helped me up and I asked him how much I owed. He smiled. ‘No charge, Miss.’ Bless him, what a gent!
Later, when I was telling this story to a friend and said that I had to toss him off, she replied, appalled, ‘You mean you threw him overboard?’ I said, ‘No! I didn’t throw him overboard — I tossed him off!’ She got it, eventually.
Radio, for me, is the most perfect performance medium. It’s the most concentrated: there’s nothing else to do but get the voice right. And you don’t have to learn the lines! But the creative process remains the same. Acting for radio is no different from acting for the stage, or any other medium, really; it’s an exercise in imaginative travel. You journey from yourself into this other person that you have crafted. You are using some of the bricks of your own humanity and personality, and slowly stepping over into another persona which you are inventing, based on the text that you’re given and the backstory that you might imagine for yourself. It’s always about creating the character with truth — that’s the job, whatever medium you’re working in.
9
He played Tom Courtenay’s father in the 1963 film