Heroine Addict

Vashti Bunyan

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:56:00 +0000

"Why should you say I could love any man, have his children and still be free? Go on voting, striking and fighting. Go on searching, fighting and loving."

How Do I Know.

As a lyric in isolation, this pretty much sums up everything that draws me and concerns me about 'feminism'. Men and women both work these days and earn roughly the same but while being born female is fate, motherhood is made the destiny of a lot of women. It's a privilege to have somebody to care for but motherhood also seems the ultimate prison. All mothers are single mothers at the end of the day. Once that decision to be a mother has been made, there's no turning back. It's nothing less than traumatic. Yet, we're still pretty much expected to make that transition of freedom to non freedom.

Vashti Bunyan wanted most of all in life to be a pop singer, something she still upholds as being the dream she had for herself. What she did instead was release some folk tunes then turn her back on what she saw as her ambition failure, to take two years to head to Donovan's commune in the Isle of Skye. It took two years for her to get there and by the time her and her boyfriend Robert arrived, it had closed down. Still, more spiritual wisdom; it's all about the journey, not the destination and this inspired an album.

They set up home nonetheless and raised children together but Vashti didn't sing again for 35 years. The reasons for that aren't completely clear. Perhaps she didn't feel like it, perhaps she was just content with family life. She busied herself in domesticity which she enjoyed, but there was still a renunciation in place. Her children knew snippets of their mother's past but she never so much as sang to them.

Still it was wanting to share her past with her children, and the advent of the Internet (which made clear to her how much she had grown into cult status in the meantime and also just how many of those scratchy old tapes were issued in compilations) that prompted her to make a new album, Lookaftering; an experience she enjoyed returning to.

And, yes, in her own words, she felt like a flower unfolding after all that time.

Listen to this. Buy this.

Vashti Bunyan, born in London in 1945

Ruth Madoc

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:35:00 +0000

Did you know Ruth Madoc went to RADA? Did you know she played Fruma Sarah in the film "Fiddler on the Roof"? Did you know she looks and sounds spookily like my Mum (especially in the 80s and early 90s when Mum had her trademark short, straight hair and her accent was at her strongest)?

We remember her as the 'vamp from the valleys' in Hi de Hi of course and that Wispa ad with her longed for love object, Jeffrey. Actually looking again at that ad, she's hot, what was Jeffrey thinking? Jeffrey, the gauche, bumbling Hugh Grant of his time with all the passion of a wet Pontins' tea towel. You should have targetted someone a bit more rum, Gladys. Was he really worth hanging around in a banana-shaded uniformed job for? Bet she doesn't think so now.

On stage Ruth has done everything from Shakespeare to musicals, co-starring with the late Harry Secombe in Pickwick, playing Dorothy Brock in 42nd. Street and an 80 year old Jewish mother in Gypsy.

Most interesting for me, she played the daughter's role in the stage version of A Taste of Honey, and while no Tush, I bet she was great and was less of a mousy, hide under her fringe victim than le Tush. It would have been interesting to see.

In 2000 she played the role of Mrs. Ifans in Very Annie Mary alongside fellow Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce.

But life was not always smooth for Ruth, she was brought up by her Grandparents in a small Welsh town, near Swansea because her parents were nomadic and couldn't settle to a life of child-rearing.

She was and still is greatly loved as a symbol of Welsh freshness with anyone old enough to remember balancing a French Fancy on their knee while tuning into Hi-de-Hi. Lest we forget her serious side too though. This is what one fan remembers:

John Price from Rotherham ---originally Porthcawl (presumably not *that* John Price)
Yes a good actress---I remember seeing her in a television version of Dylan Thomas' under milk wood and since that scene of her in the water have always thought what a good looking lady she is.

That ad in full:

Ruth Madoc, born 16 April 1943 in Norwich but brought up in Llansamlet, near Swansea.

Floella Benjamin

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:11:00 +0000

Did you know Floella was the first to appear fully pregnant on British TV? (In Play School).

For a woman whose ambition was to be Britain's first black bank manager, her life took a totally different course. There just weren't black bank managers back then, but black people were accepted into the theatre, so that's the way she went.

Similarly there weren't many black people on TV during the 70s and 80s. The TV channels were becoming more senstive to the fact, especially in representing children, firstly in the 60s and later on with Derek Griffiths, but the main allure of her was I got the impression she genuinely loved being around children and not just adorning the shop floor for the career bump-up. Sourcing pics for this post, there were hundreds of her and not one without her beaming.

Floella starred in two of the upper echelons of Play for Todays from one of its golden eras (the late 70s). She starred in 'A hole in Babylon' in 1979, about a seige in an Italian restaurant that goes wrong and Waterloo Sunset (also 1979, the year that brought us the dazzling performance of Jonathan Pryce in Trevor Griffith's 'The Comedians') a play about racial disharmony in a poky London flat. A young man and his elderly relative lives on a mostly West Indian London housing estate. The pivotal scene involves the naive old woman dusking her chops with cocoa in order to fit in with them, but they take it the wrong way and she has to leave.

A few years prior, too, in 1975, she starred in the Play for Today 'The Floater' - where she was lucky enough to appear alongside Richard Beckinsale (who played a solicitor's clerk acting for his sick wife). Yum yum.

She also appeared in many films (mainly playing a nurse) but 'Black Joy' is a film of note about a naive African immigrant arriving in Brixton, with Norman Beaton as the wise-arse, no-good rude boy she falls in with. Floella plays Beaton's non shit-taking wife. Vivian Stanshall's in it too, weirdly, as a pervy vicar.

In more recent years she was cast in Doctor Who and there's the Floella Benjamin Awards in Exeter University (which gave her an honoury doctorate) where up to £1,000 is given to promising students to help improve their future job prospects.

Predictably but admirably she runs a lot for charity these days.

Floella Benjamin OBE (born in Trinidad, 1949)

Pam Ayres

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:41:00 +0000

Pam Ayres was born at Stanford in the Vale in Oxfordshire. She went to same school as my younger brother in Faringdon and to this day lives down the road from where my family until recently lived.

As kids my older sister was mad about her poems and being a younger sibling, whatever tickled my sister's fancy piqued my interest. 'I wish I'd looked after my teeth' prompted me to brush regularly, morning and night which has held to this day. I visit the dentist about every 7-8 years and it's always a wasted journey because I never need anything doing. So thanks for that Pam. This poem was also voted into the Top 10 of a BBC poll to find the Nation's 100 Favourite Comic Poems.

I was always a massive Roald Dahl fan over Ayres but this changed soon after when I discovered poetry at around the age of 8 thanks to her. My sister learned to read by Grandad teaching her William Blake's The Fly, but I learned to write poetry by reading her stuff basically. I used to write volumes of the stuff, always illustrated, I don't think my parents still have them, but one of my poems 'springtime' is still inscribed on our oak table that we now have in our flat.

A BBC website stated that Bob Dylan inspired Pam Ayres to write poetry, but on a NZ website, Pam gloated that the Lonnie Donegan records her brother played were her inspiration.

This probably makes more sense. A feeling for her rhythm and wit was a good a grounding as any for appreciating Roger McGough as an adult. And this advert, just wouldn't have been the same without her.

Pam Ayres MBE (born 14 March 1947)

Claire Grogan

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:51:00 +0000

Some Suzy Pepper related facts about Claire Grogan:

1. I have her name as a middle name.
2. I once wrote to Jim'll Fix It to meet her and perform on stage with her. I wrote in my best handwriting, got my Dad to proof-read it and to make suggestions in the ilk of persuasive text, as it's fashionably called now, but two weeks after depositing in a shiny red letter box, another little girl from the Bristol area was selected instead of me. Watching TV that night, I think that was my first, heart-sink, kick-in-the-teeth moment. But of course, that's life, so thanks to Ms Grogan for giving me the first taste of disappointment.
3. Gregory's Girl, one of my fave films. She's even been in Father Ted as the Sinead O'Connor rip-off, and not a bad Dublin accent too, could even rival mine at a push.
4. And what's this I hear about a story of a marriage between her and David Hepworth? Somebody please clear this story up for me.

Claire Grogan (born, 17 March 1962)

Hanna Schygulla

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:08:00 +0000

The first of my German heroines here. Fassbinder is of course a genius but I couldn't imagine any other actress being cast in these films and making them come alive the way she managed to do.

Hanna Schygulla met Rainer Werner Fassbinder while taking an acting class in Munich and began working with him at the Munich Action Theatre.

Fassbinder casted her in "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (1972), as an insolent working-class girl, confident in her ability to break hearts of either sex, using her looks to get ahead while refusing to surrender her independence.

It was her role in "The Marriage of Maria Braun" (1978) which blew me away and, which finally brought Fassbinder the acceptance he sought and confirmed Schygulla as his ideal actress, he cast her as a self-made woman whose rise to prosperity paralleled that of postwar West Germany. In fact, the more successful she becomes, the more ruthless she becomes. Perhaps one of the few anti-feminist New German Cinema films?

She's in other Fassbinder films too of course and she's in Wender's Falsche Bewegung (Wrong Movement) but it's her role in The Marriage of Maria Braun which will stay stamped in my head for ever more(first picture above). She was perfectly, ever so slightly wooden and fitted Fassbinder's haughty, vaguely grotesque role amazingly well. She is so synonymous with Fassbinder for me, it's as if they were meant to meet. Despite his amazing talent, these films would have been a lot poorer without her and no doubt her strong character was an asset, he was a spoiled, tempestuous queen to work for by all accounts.

Hanna Schygulla (born 25 December 1943)

Margaret Lockwood

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Isn't she gorgeous? Sigh. Liz Taylor and Marilyn have never captivated me the way she has done.

The first time I saw Margaret Lockwood in film, I was around 15, staying at home with flu from school and miserably tucked up on the sofa watching The Wicked Lady. (Click here to read me gush on about it in TV Cream).

As a young girl not only did I think she was eerily beautiful (and yes, she was) but I loved the typecast roles of a gold-digging minx she played in this film and others, which were a disappointment to her own acting ambitions, but which actually suited her alarmingly well. Some people just have a naughty face, after all.

Recently there has been a Lockwood season at the BFI and I have indulged in a couple of afternoons watching 'The Man in Grey' (another glorious costume romp where she plays a poor girl who thinks outside the box, so to speak) and 'Jassy', where she plays a gypsy girl with a propensity for seeing into the future. The former film is actually a hugely enjoyable film, with a script amusingly identical to The Wicked Lady, but that's ok because if she had been in twenty films that are a variation of The Wicked Lady, I'd be happy. The Wicked Lady was the best film of hers and my goodness she made some dreadful films too. The second film, Jassy, is a bit daft and unfortunately shot in colour, this doesn't detract from her beauty but she seems less mysteriously mischevious somehow.

The woman should always have played a gun-toting social climber. In her acting career and in her personal life she was pretty uncompromising. As Phil Norman notes in his book 'TV Cream's Anatomy of Cinema', 'at RADA, she refused to kowtow to the strangulated 'how verreh verreh love-lay' diction drilled into the other pupils'. Apparently too, she had a very filthy, unpolished laugh and a crude tongue that would make a naval officer blush. Less of a wicked lady, more of a minx, in my opinion.

And so...until our next merry meeting, heroine lovers....

Margaret Lockwood (born 15 September, 1916 )

Jilly Cooper

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:11:00 +0000

In the 70s, there was only one Queen of the columnists and this was Jilly Cooper, and what a sexy young filly she was too.

Bear with me on this one, I've recently read 3 of her books from the 70s/80s, not those nonsense novels about being horsehipped by a man in a tuxedo, but the whimsical guides she writes, covering topics from the secrets of a long marriage (believe me, there are some real pearls of wisdom in there), how to survive being a step-mum (very candid, that would rival anything being published now), to how to have an 'affaire' and get away with it. Class!

Jilly on men: ' I find I resent the fact that I can't live without them, that they hurt me emotionally, that I hate yet secretly enjoy being bullied by them, that they can do tasks domestic far better than I can, that they enjoy the company of other men so much, and on the whole prefer a bat to a bit on the side'. (Super Men and Super Women, Magnum Books, 1977). I can't say I agree with her on the last two points though, I enjoy male company and Mr Norman, as many men I know, has no time for sport.

She is for the most part, a woman after my own heart, before landing a job as a writer, she worked doing umpteen office jobs, and she writes with clever wit and class-consciousness about the horrors and benalities of office life.

A full list of her non-fiction, many of which I've read and enjoyed hugely, is here.

Jilly Cooper (born 21 February, 1937)

Paula Yates

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:42:00 +0000

I kid you not, I absolutely adore Paula Yates, always have done. The other night I ploughed through hours and hours of Tube footage, some good tracks were unlocked from the memory but what really got me aghast were those dresses. I want every single one of them, without question.

Well documented, is some confusion over her origin. Until May 1997, she believed that her father was her mother's husband, Jess Yates. However, a DNA test proved that her biological father was Hughie Green, presenter of 'Opportunity Knocks' (1956).

For me, she'll always be a delicious epitome of girly randomness but also the perfect madonna (she took her children absolutely everywhere with her). I don't even hold a grudge for her bagging a young Geldof and fathering a cartload of kinder with him. (Wouldn't want to now though). Her death was a really sharp intake of breath, 'WHAT?' moment. What a shame she died so young. A total heroine of the first order. Who else would have persuaded rock stars to pose in their underpants?

Here she is getting down and flirty with Simon Le Bon.

Paula Yates (born 24 April 1959)

Toyah

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:58:00 +0000

I've always been a punky kinda chick, liked people who are a bit different from the rest and I've always admired strong women with multi-coloured, back-combed barnets (well, I did when I was 7). The first album I ever bought with my own money was Anthem. This was Toyah's most successful album with hit singles of "It's A Mystery" and "I Want To Be Free" contained within. The other songs contained within are mindfully awful, but that's ok, what 7 year-old girl was really listening anyway? I was just led belly-down, feet-up in the air, on the rug in our old council house, gazing admiringly at her looking determinedly into the future on the cover of her album, dreaming of a day when I could get away with hair like that (I never bothered of course). Toyah was the woman I dared never be, but there were to be plenty of others too ...

Toyah Ann Willcox (born May 18, 1958)

Joanne Catherall

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:50:00 +0000

I had to choose Joanne over Suzanne Sully, which is odd because my name is Suzanne but Joanne is a brunette like me and this wins hands-down (every time) in the role model stakes. Now there's a female thing! Do men like other men because of their hair colour?!

Joanne was a teen singer in the group the Human League. Plucked from the streets of Sheffield by father-figure Phil Oakey, the girls rose to fame by smearing on the blusher to nuclear effect and by, well, merely looking so bored. This was ultimately their appeal because their singing was flatter than average, but still, maybe this was their appeal too.

Here is a wonderful clip of the Human League in the first episode of OTT singing 'Do or Die'. Look out for Joanne's Siouxsie Sioux type eye make-up under that uncompromising fringe.

Joanne Catherall (born 18 September 1962)

Long Distance Clara

noreply@blogger.com (Suzy Norman) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:12:00 +0000

As a kid of around 6 or 7, I used to really look forward to Pigeon Street coming on, not for Mr Macadoo and his pals mind you, no, for Long distance Clara. Long distance Clara was a woman on a mission, in a strictly male dominated world of trucking, she was a red-haired, no-nonsense, can-do kinda girl, 'picking up and dropping off her heavy loads'. I always knew I wanted to go far, to travel and to succeed at work and so I identified with Clara as a metaphor for 'one day in the future I want to live my life just like her'.

'She can drive across the Sahara, nothing's too far away'. Well, exactly.

Like Clara too, I've always been a conscientious, on-time kind of person. 'Always on time, she's never late'. A tip-top role model.

Long distance Clara appears between 06.12 and 07.52 in the clip below.