"When's the star turning up"?

It was the first day of panto rehearsals, and the question (from a Bjork look-a-like chorus boy) threw us all into an Icelandic freeze - our luvvy villain David Leonard stopped reading his six-volume copy of Delia Smith's How To Cook An Egg; me Sloane Rangers Suzy Cooper and Juliet Howland stopped counting their credit cards, and me son Martin Barrass froze in mid skip. I slung me zimmer frame to one side and, with all the authority that only 34 years at the bottom of the ladder can give you, announced: "I am top turn."

Bjork went on to ask me if I'd been in an Australian soap. "I've never been a practical person - hate working with wood," I replied. He walked away muttering "perhaps she was big in her day." I swiftly put on my turban and dark sunglasses and bellowed to him "I still am big, it's the pantomimes that got smaller!"

I've had me name above the title in the West End you know, oh yes. It was at the Comedy Theatre, and I was playing the role of Pope John Paul II in Dario Fo's The Pope And The Witch. One of our most gifted actresses Frances de la Tour played the witch. The week prior to opening night, she was on every TV and radio talk show publicising the play. The one I managed to see was the day before we opened, it was a morning TV show with Richard and Judy. Frances heaped praise on my performance as the Pope, told millions of viewers that I was the next Leonard Rossiter and that by this time tomorrow I would be a huge comic star.

Tomorrow's stardom never came! The play got slaughtered by the London critics, and ten weeks later Frances and I were labouring for a couple of brickies in the East End.

I was at the Castle Museum last Tuesday night to celebrate the National Year of Reading. All the elite business people of York were gathered, including Thrifty's of Acomb, the fashion empire I get all me frocks from on tick. Derek was there! You may know him better as His Worship Derek Smallwood the Lord Mayor of all he surveys, but I knew him before he ruled York. He's obviously come into money and wants everyone to know it, because I have never seen such ostentatious wealth wrapped round the shoulders of a man in the shape of a gold necklace.

Now I've got 50 quid in the Post Office so I know what it's like to have money, but I'm not brazen with it - I don't shove it in people's faces.

Dame's mystery for the week

An invitation arrived for me yesterday. It said, "Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Joan Collins would like you to keep the evening of December 13 free." Now I don't really know these two, although I do recall writing to Joan a few years back offering her chorus in our panto, but I never got a reply! I'll keep you posted on this one, but it really is a genuine mystery to me.

27/11/98

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.