Behind the Laughter. Sherrie Hewson

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СКАЧАТЬ the accident, I never stopped loving horses. I haven’t lost that addiction to the sniff of a saddle, as I call it – horsey readers out there will know exactly what I mean. Horses are still very special to me and I have a close connection with a horse sanctuary in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire: Only Foals and Horses. For many of the horses and ponies there, the sanctuary is the only safe place they have ever known. Many have suffered fear, pain and mistreatment. Some, including newborn foals dumped when their mothers were sold, have been rescued from auctions, where they were being sold for meat. I do what I can to help, and when Carol McGiffin (my fellow presenter on Loose Women) and I won £75,000 on Celebrity Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I was able to donate my half to the sanctuary.

      Back in the days when I lived for my horses I couldn’t bear to be separated from them for longer than twenty-four hours and so, when my parents decided that I should join Brett at boarding school (at the age of 11), naturally I was horrified.

      Boarding school? Not if I had anything to do with it.

      Chapter Three

      The problem was that I’d failed my 11 Plus. Well, to be fair, I didn’t even know the test we took one day was all that important. I’d sit through most lessons gazing out of the window, not listening. To this day, I still have nightmares of sitting at that desk, not having done my homework, with not a clue as to what anyone is talking about. I always blame the teachers and too many kids to a class. It was a shame, though it meant I couldn’t get into any of the good local schools, so it was the secondary modern or boarding school for me.

      My parents took me on another visit to Brett’s school (it was a boys’ school, but they were just starting to allow female siblings in) and it was 300 boys to 20 girls. I was shown the dormitory in the small girls’ wing, which had been placed as far away as possible from the boys’ section of the school.

      One look at that dorm settled it: I wasn’t going to share a room with several other girls I didn’t know. I’d always hated school, so how on earth could I go and live in one? My parents agreed that I could attend the school as a day pupil; it involved an hour-long journey each way, but for me this was a much better option. And so it was that in the autumn of 1962, just before I turned 12, I set off for The Rodney School in my smart red and grey uniform. I loved the uniform and the ballet lessons, and once in a while we would have dances in the big hall. The boys would sit on one side of the room, the girls on the other; the boys would have to come over and ask us to dance and it was all very formal but we got to wear pretty party frocks, which was the bit I liked.

      The grounds were absolutely beautiful and on hot summer days our school fairs were fantastic. I also remember having choral concerts outside. It’s funny how the summers seemed longer and hotter when we were young. It was an amazing school and I wish I could have appreciated it more and enjoyed my time there, but I didn’t. In fact, I used to do everything I could to get out of school, including perfecting the art of making myself ill. I was so good at it that I could even throw up when occasion demanded it. I’d then be allowed to skip school – or be sent home if I’d actually made it thus far – and would be put to bed, clutching my stomach and gently moaning. Once I was safely installed and the coast was clear, I’d settle down with a comic or the TV and enjoy my day, then make a miraculous recovery in time to go out and see the horses in the afternoon.

      Eventually realising that they were wasting their money, my parents took me out of school and placed me in the local secondary modern. The classes were huge, so I could sit at the back and do nothing, and that’s exactly what I did: nothing. My best friend was a girl called Sue Maddern, who was strong and full of self-confidence. I was bullied when I got there because I’d come from a posh school, so I teamed up with her and became a bit of a smart arse. It was self-protection: I’d never forgotten the beating I had as a 6-year-old and I wasn’t about to let it happen again. Having said that, I made a few lifelong friends there and have some good memories of those days.

      While school felt like a waste of time, once I joined the local theatre club at the age of 11 I absolutely loved it. The club, which was based in the aptly named Shakespeare Street, was great fun and I couldn’t wait to go there every week. I also joined a drama class at Clarendon College in Nottingham, run by a man named Allen Tipton, who became a mentor and friend to me. He was a brilliant teacher, who got us kids organised into one production after another and managed to bring out the best in all of us. This was, coincidentally, where Robert Lindsay (who was my boyfriend at RADA) started his drama education, although we didn’t know one another there.

      By the age of 13 all that mattered to me, apart from my horses, was drama. I was also a member of the Burton Joyce Players in our village and had my first female lead in their production of The Seventh Veil, based on the famous film starring Ann Todd and James Mason. I played a young girl – Francesca – a pianist, with an obsessive Uncle Nicholas (played by the vicar, who was brilliant). When she tries to run away, he smashes his cane down on her hands and virtually cripples her, so she is a broken woman.

      At the same time I joined the Midland Academy, a local drama school run by a wonderful woman called Miss Audrey Albrecht. This was the beginning of my formal training, in readiness for an eventual audition for RADA. Miss Albrecht was passionate about poetry and insisted I enter all the Poetry Society as well as the many LAMDA examinations, and while this seemed like hard work at the time it stood me in great stead.

      After leaving school I attended the Academy full-time, from 16 to 18, and during that time I passed numerous poetry and drama exams. I adored Miss Albrecht, who became in some ways like a second mother to me. She was firm and extremely demanding, but I never minded because she believed in me, and along with Allen Tipton she played a big part in shaping my future. At the same time, my own mother insisted I attend finishing classes, where I learnt how to sit properly and walk beautifully, how to close a door behind me without turning around, how to get out of a car elegantly with no knickers showing and, of course, how to speak properly.

      With all this going on my life was incredibly full – I think maybe it was Mum’s way of delaying my interest in boys. I had the Theatre Club, Allen Tipton’s classes, school, the Burton Joyce Players and the Midland Academy, so I was almost always rehearsing for or appearing in a production. It was a wonderful grounding, and by the age of 15 I was determined to make a career on the stage. Actually, it was seeing Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music that finally nailed my decision.

      The school had other ideas, though: when I told my careers teacher that I wanted to be an actress she just laughed and told me to stop living in dreamland. Who did I think I was, Doris Day? Well yes, actually. Careers advisers were like that then: they advised the boys to go into engineering and the girls to train as secretaries. They made me feel so ridiculous that I thought, OK, I will go and train as a secretary just to prove that I can do it.

      Mother was ambitious for me and I’m sure she only agreed to the secretarial training as an insurance policy. She found a private course held in a large Edwardian semi. On the first morning I turned up at the address I’d been given and was shown into a room by a small, rotund lady – not very happy, really quite odd. There was a long table in the middle and six big black typewriters on either side. Three girls were already on one side, two on the other, and I was shown to the empty place. A very tall and sinewy-looking man with a face like thunder walked in, obviously in charge. He stood at the end of the table and lifted one hand up while glancing at a watch on his other wrist. As a clock chimed, he brought his hand down hard on the table, which made me jump and giggle. He then came over and without saying a word showed me what I was supposed to do, and left me to it. I remember he smelled of camphor oil, like bandages.

      I started, but the big black keys were very temperamental: you’d hit them and they would shoot back or get stuck. The Lurcher look-alike came over and without looking at me uttered his only word that day: ‘Rhythm.’ Furiously pulling out all the keys now jammed in СКАЧАТЬ