Still Standing: The Savage Years (44 page)

My lovely old pig, Blanche, had to be put to sleep earlier this year and once she’d ascended to that pigsty in the sky I vowed that that was it – no more pigs. Famous last words as usual, for at the last count I have two adult pigs, Tom and Holly, and eight piglets, nine chickens, four dogs, two very old goats, one with arthritis, Minnie my barn owl, her beau Icarus and their two chicks, Percy, short for Perseus, and Andromeda, Andy to her friends, eight sheep including Winston, an incredibly friendly sheep who started life being stolen from a field and dumped in a wheelie bin in Manchester before ending up here with me.

I can’t just pack up and descend on the Venice Lido, the only place in the world I could contemplate living in besides here or London, with a menagerie like mine, can I? And anyway, as property on the Lido is among the most expensive in Europe all I’d be able to afford is a tin hut down an alley that would make living conditions intolerable.

I’m talking rubbish as I’d be unable to give any of them away even if I could find good homes for them, so it looks as if I’ll be dividing my time between London and Kent for the time being. On reflection, that’s not a bad prospect.

Apart from a nice house by the beach on the Venice Lido, I’ve never wanted to live abroad as I love this country, even
though I worry about the society I live in and the way those in positions of great responsibility conduct their affairs on our behalf. I feel I can no longer trust the police, the Church, not that I have since childhood, bankers (apart from my own reputable bank), corrupt politicians and a press who feel they are entitled to know every last intimate detail of your life and are happy to tap into your phone to find out about it. And they wonder why people riot. If it seems that those we are supposed to respect are allowed to help themselves and get away with it, then why can’t the man in the street?

You won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve nothing but contempt for our current government, my suspicions growing when I learn that during the Leveson Inquiry the phrases ‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I don’t recall’ were used by this prime minister we’ve found ourselves landed with forty-nine times in total. Maybe he needs to see someone about this loss of short-term memory, a complaint usually associated with long-term drug abusers. Not that I’m suggesting for one minute that Mr Cameron spliffs up in the garden of Number 10, it’s just that his memory seems to be deteriorating rapidly. After all, he did leave the kid behind in the pub, didn’t he? A scarf or a glove you can understand, but your daughter? Let’s hope the voters forget him just as quickly during the next election, leaving him free to tour holiday camps and care homes as a ‘memory act’ with his old pal the Dark Lord of News International, billed under the name Dandelion and Murdoch.

‘Enjoy your youth while you’ve got it,’ my auntie Annie used to say. ‘You’ll be old soon enough.’

I never took any notice of her at the time, preferring to believe that I would remain forever young and that old age was unimaginable. Well, it’s time to pay the piper, kid. I’ve become
what my mother would have described as ‘an old nit’, a cross between Victor Meldrew and Catherine Tate’s Nan character. I no longer suffer fools and absolutely refuse to tolerate ignorance, lousy service or blind authority without questioning it first. I’m civil to children and old people, providing the former aren’t ’ard-faced and I’m not stuck behind the latter when they are driving at ten miles an hour, and I’ll always defend and speak up for the underdog. As for homophobic remarks, be my guest but you won’t be going home with your teeth intact.

The other afternoon when the sun came out briefly to remind us of what she looked like I sat in the rocking chair on the porch of my summer house listening to the radio with Eddy on my knee, watching my two grandchildren playing on the lawn, and wondered how in God’s name did I ever arrive here? My daughter is in the house packing for the trip to Disneyland Paris that she and her husband, Phil, are taking the kids on tomorrow. I’m wisely staying at home for the sake of everyone involved.

And what of Lily? Well, I’ve agreed to unleash her for the very last time in
Aladdin
at the O2 in London this Christmas and then it really is goodbye. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool held an exhibition of Lily’s costumes and going back to open it I felt very proud of the old girl who had started out in a south London pub and had achieved the impossible, making her way to the London Palladium and prime-time entertainment. Now she was a museum piece up there among one of the finest collections of art and sculpture in Europe.

What would my mother have made of it all, I often wonder? And what would the lad sat in his bedroom listening to Laurie Johnson on his record player and dreaming of a life in London as a spy with a cool apartment and an even cooler car say, if the old me could go back in time for a brief moment to tell him that the unattainable will one day come true?

In 2011 Chichester University threw open their doors to celebrate fifty years of
The Avengers
and the moment I got wind of this forthcoming slice of heaven on earth I was on the phone offering my services. Those beautiful, wonderful organizers allowed me to host it and for an entire weekend the old nit became a boy again.

I was to interview Linda Thorson and Honor Blackman and to celebrate this red-letter day I decided to hire a helicopter to take Linda and me to Chichester, Honor having sadly gone down the day before by car. It was a beautiful June morning when the helicopter landed on the rugby pitch of the university and as there had been a fire alarm everyone had evacuated the building and was outside to greet us.

The
Avenger
fans went crazy. Here she was in the flesh, Tara King herself, and arriving by what else? A shiny white helicopter, as befitting a secret agent of her stature, with me by her side dressed in a bespoke suit of grey complete with velvet collar à la Steed. The little boy pinched himself with glee.

It was a wonderful weekend and great to be among like-minded people with a common bond. I felt that I’d found my tribe. The students who previously had never even heard of
The Avengers
had pulled out all the stops, re-creating
Avenger
-land in the grounds of the university with a giant chessboard, umbrellas hanging from trees and even Mother’s headquarters in the shape of a London Routemaster bus.

I’ve interviewed Honor many times now. She’s an incredible lady and it was a treat to talk to her for over an hour. Linda was also good value as she always is and later on in the evening we hosted the auction in the Hell Fire Club – me slightly pissed and both of us extremely leery. We’ve known each other for some time now and have become close friends and if anyone has a bestselling autobiography in her then it’s Linda.

After the interview with Linda we left the lecture theatre and walked straight on to the waiting helicopter that was taking us home to Kent.

‘This is the only way to travel,’ Vera said, bewitched, softly caressing the side of the helicopter as if it were a thorough-bred horse. ‘You’ll have to get one, Lily.’

Vera had never been in a helicopter before and had cadged a lift home with us – well, it wouldn’t be a show without Punch, would it? – and he was beside himself at the prospect of his inaugural flight.

We sat in the comfortable white leather seats drinking chilled champagne and admiring the magnificent view as the helicopter flew low over the south coast and towards the meadow outside my back door in time for dinner. It was pure
Avengers
and if I can ever get the Tardis, a prop from the teatime show and currently parked outside my garage, to function as it should then that
Avenger
-crazy lad in Holly Grove is in for one hell of a shock when I go back and tell him what’s in store.

Never mind be careful what you wish for – go ahead and wish all you want as you may be surprised at the result.

I’ve never considered myself to be an ambitious sort, nor have I ever had what you could call a game plan. I never expected the amount of success that I’ve achieved and am constantly amazed that I’ve got where I have – as indeed, no doubt, are a lot of people.

I can never sit back on my laurels and relax as I’m convinced that the wolf, if not actually at the door, is still lurking somewhere nearby, ready to pounce and take it all away.

I get called a workaholic and I suppose I am, finding it virtually impossible to just sit and read a book or watch a film. My mind is permanently preoccupied and I frequently find
myself not knowing where to begin when it comes to dealing with the various irons I have in the fire.

On occasions, when feeling particularly harassed, I find myself contemplating the supposed joys of retirement, only to quickly scotch any such fantasies by sharply reminding myself of Bran, an elderly Border collie that my dad brought home to Birkenhead from the farm in Ireland.

Bran had been a working sheepdog all of his life and the peaceful retirement in Holly Grove that my father envisioned for him eventually drove him mad. Left without anything to do, he began rounding up local children, herding them into a corner and terrifying them in the process. And, unaccustomed to traffic, he’d frantically chase cars and bikes up and down Sidney Road.

Poor old Bran became very ill and to everyone’s regret had to be put to sleep.

‘Died of a broken heart, that dog,’ my mother often said years later. He was used to working, not the sort of dog to lie in front of the fire. Without any purpose left in his once active life, I think he just gave up.

I’ve no intention of giving up just yet and will continue to work for as long as someone will employ me. I’m starting work on a new series for the BBC next week and there’s a ‘little cracker’ that I’ve written for Sky to film with Alison Steadman playing my mum, then there’s Lily’s final call in panto … I’m hoping it will be a pleasant and calamity-free ending to what started out as a disastrous year, although I doubt it. What was the biblical phrase that a Christian Brother used to describe me? ‘Born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards’? You can bloody well say that again!

Publicity photo for
The Lion Roars Back
at the Donmar Warehouse. I didn’t half fancy myself in this.

As Roxanne, the copper’s nark, in
The Bill
with Tony Scannell as DS Roach.

Vera in Chrissie’s kitchen, obviously not amused, after the chip-pan fire.