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Make a date with the Calendar Girls at Milton Keynes Theatre
Miss October, actress Lynda Bellingham (and Aston Abbotts lass) talks about a new stage in her career.
CALENDAR Girls has become a world-wide phenomenon. The tale of how a group of middle-class ladies from a Yorkshire WI stripped off for charity has won fans across the globe with the story raising more than 2m for Leukaemia Research.
The sensational drama to Milton Keynes Theatre on March 15 and tickets are selling fast (read a review of the show our Theatre Reviews section in Buzz2).
It's an incredibly poignant story which makes you cry and laugh in equal measures.
I got a preview in Birmingham and afterwards sat down to chat to three of its stars – Aston Abbotts girl and Oxo mum Lynda Bellingham, former EastEnders' star Letitia Dean and TV actress Jan Harvey (read Letitia and Jan's interview elsewhere in Buzz2).
The lovely Lynda Bellingham plays Chris – in real life Tricia Stewart – who is the driving force behind getting the calendar produced.
Local girl Lynda grew up "with an idyllic childhood" on a farm in Aston Abbotts with her adoptive parents Don and Ruth Bellingham and was in the first year of girls to attend Aylesbury High School.
She regularly comes back to the area, work permitting, to meet up with friends and relatives who still live in the area.
The 61-year-old actress is on a bit of a high at the moment. For 16 years she was the epitome of domesticity in the Oxo adverts and recently she has done The Bill, danced through reality TV, swapped banter and gossip on Loose Women
Last week her warts-and-all autobiography, Lost and Found: My Story was published.
This is Lynda's second tour of duty with the play and it's a part she loves.
Chris is a far cry from the perfect Oxo mum. She gets one of the biggest laughs when she resorts to cheating in the village cake competition by entering a perfect sponge from M & S.
"Chris is the engine who drives the whole story. She runs around getting everything done," says Lynda.
"But Tim Firth has also written this not so nice side of her which comes out in Act 2. Tricia has seen the play and is fine with it.
"It's not so much that she isn't a nice person. She gets caught up, as so many people do these days, with celebrity.
"She started off with all the right intentions but it's very seductive to go to places and stand and have your photo taken. To be asked to go on TV, to go to Hollywood, when you're just from a small village in Yorkshire was incredibly exciting for them.
"I met Tricia and read her book, which is like a diary of the whole thing and she's an amazing woman. She and Angela (Baker) who is Annie in the play are very good friends.
"They never had a row and they were upset that Tim Firth invented a scene in the play where they argued. They were upset at first but dramatically it needed it and they appreciated that Tim had put it in there.
"They are still doing stuff for the cause and Tricia is still very much at the forefront of it because she is very extrovert, as you'd have to be to get things done.
"She still does talks and the women are still fund-raising. Good luck to her and them. They've all handled the celebrity side brilliantly.
"They've all been very supportive of this and saw it three or four times on the last tour and in the West End because we are still collecting for Leukaemia Research Fund.
"If you book your tickets on-line and at the box office a percentage of the booking fee goes to LRF.
"I have been personally affected by this. I lost my sister Barbara two years ago to lung cancer. I don't think there's anyone who hasn't been affected by this disease.
"Part of the success of the play if that everybody is touched by it and also that women who are historically invisible over 60 are given a new lease of life watching this.
"So many women come to the stage door to congratulate us and say:' You get up there and do that. How brave'.
"And I say to them that you have just got to keep moving the goalposts.
"It's strangely liberating in a funny sort of way (to strip). The first day you do it in front of each other you all stare defiantly into each other's eyes.
"Once you've done it a bit it's ok. It's a very good bonding moment. In this day and age when everyone is supposed to be perfect it's marvellous for the audience to see that we're normal.
"If you look at the real calendar they're much braver than we are. We have a nipple alert if someone is showing too much but they show it all!
"So many people these days have now done these sorts of calendars but you forget that back in 1999 just how phenomenal this was.
"The first time we had to strip off was when we went to have out photos taken for the poster before we'd even met properly or worked together so we met around a cup of coffee and a croissant and you could see some of them thinking:'Shall I have the croissant or not!'
"Then psychologically we thought:'Actually I'm so depressed and nervous about this I will have the croissant and worry about about where it's gone on my body later!'
"But it was a great ice-breaker. Then we all had to take our clothes off in front of a strange man taking our photograph.
"But we all retain that because that's what it's like for the characters on stage when we do it in front of Lawrence (played by Lynda's real son, actor Michael Peluso).
"I actually found it more terrifying to do Strictly Come Dancing because you're you and aware of your flaws, but in the play you're playing a character."
In the Oxo ads Linda was the perfect wife and mother but their success did affect her career.
"When you're in a famous campaign you find yourself landed with an image whether you like it or not.
"I had to fight that all the time because I wanted to be known as an actress. I've got more philosophical in my old age and think that it was better to have had a profile than none at all.
"There's nothing wrong with being the nation's favourite mum as long as people will let me play other parts."
Lynda's book, currently being serialised in a Sunday paper, pulls no punches and deals with the search for her birth mother, her drinking and failed marriages and the domestic violence she suffered at the hands of second husband Nunzio Peluso. She's now deliriously happy with hubby no three Michael Pattemore.
"I love to tell a story and when you're writing it, I felt very removed. The paper did pick out the dark bits to serialise but they are part of a much bigger story and that is mainly about me being adopted, finding my mother and how that impacted on my life.
"I never talked about it. My adopted parents loved me and I feel that I am what I am thanks to them.
"It's hard for my children and ex-husbands and several people involved but you get to an age when you've walked around people carefully and now you think, no it's my turn."
Calendar Girls runs from March 15 to 27. For tickets call the box office 0844 871 7652 or go online www.ambassadorticket.com/miltonkeynes
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