The Big Interview: Lynda Bellingham

LYNDA Bellingham might be best known to some people as the patient and ever-cheerful “Mrs Mum” in many years of Oxo ads. But fans from those days (the ads ended in 1999) may be surprised to know that in person the sensible matron is rather a sex bomb.

The actress has said in magazines, newspaper articles and in her (very well-written) autobiography Lost and Found that she hankers to play sexy, and is shocked at how many people have pigeonholed her as a woman who sublimates all other desires to keeping lumps out of her gravy boat.

However, four years of playing Chris, or Miss August, in the West End and touring production of Calendar Girls (following the charity fundraising efforts of the Rylstone WI in North Yorkshire) did rather a lot to redress the balance.

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She may have worn nothing but a string of pearls and a spray of carnations to preserve her modesty in the photo shoot scenes, but Bellingham – part of a wonderful cast that included Patricia Hodge, Sian Phillips, Bridget Forsyth, Elaine C Smith and Gaynor Faye – recalls with affection the amazing reception the play received everywhere from audiences mostly filled with women who were uplifted by the characters.

“It was loved by everyone,” says Lynda. “Audiences behaved as though they were part of it, which was really lovely. But after four years I decided I needed to move on to something new.”

In the flesh, as it were, Bellingham is open and warm... and yes, she has an allure about her that it’s difficult to imagine casting directors being able to ignore. At 64, she easily passes for a decade younger.

Her skin has an enviable olive tone, and facially she glows. Even without make-up her complexion is flawless, and the direct nut brown eyes dance before you.

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She sets about transforming herself from Lynda B to the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella for the show’s matinee at Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre. The physical tools of the trade are all around – her silver and feather gown awaits, as does the weighty diamante crown and not one, but two wands.

On go the foundation, powder, exaggerated eyebrows and fake lashes. She chats away all the while, addressing head-on the difficulties that can be caused by a lucrative long-term advertising contract which creates a persona that is hard to erase from the public consciousness.

“At time Oxo came along, my then husband had just opened a restaurant and we were very much dependent on my money. But after that, well, there comes a point when theatre people get a bit sniffy if you are known for doing a long-running ad for gravy.

“Now there’s a whole generation who don’t know Mrs Mum. You need to keep going for things, finding a new audience... but acting is a cruel profession in many ways.”

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It seems as though Bellingham has lived a few lives in her six decades so far. She was born in Montreal, Canada, after her mother Marjorie was left high and dry by the sailor who got her pregnant.

She decided to have her baby adopted, and the couple who became Lynda’s adoptive parents were British but living in Canada at the time. Don Bellingham, a British pilot, was based there with BOAC, and he and his wife Ruth had been having difficulty in conceiving a child.

When they returned to England they went on to have two daughters of their own, and pony-mad Lynda was told about her adoption when she was very young.

She was a rebellious teen whose parents found very difficult at times, but she regards her late parents as “...amazing....they made me what I am today.” Her theatrical debut as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at school gave her a thrill that changed her life.

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She rejected her parents’ suggestion of a secretarial course. “I knew if I did it I would get too comfortable in an office job, and decided it was better to be singleminded about acting, and clean loos while I waited for a break. You have to learn to survive.”

She has survived, and despite a long spell of feeling typecast by Mrs Mum, Bellingham’s CV is long and varied.

She went to Central School of Speech and Drama and has made a living from acting for more than 40 years, with roles like Helen Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small, other TV series like Second Thoughts, Faith in the Future, The Bill, At Home With The Braithwaites and Bonkers.

In the West End she has starred with David Jason in Look No Hands, with Janet Suzman and Maureen Lipman in The Sisters Rosenweig. More recently she appeared with Alison Steadman in Sugar Mummies and in Vincent River with Mark Field. Her film career stretches from Confessions Of A Window Cleaner to The Romanovs – A Love Story. She was one of the original Loose Women in the hit lunchtime chat show.

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After an early marriage to producer Greg Smith, Bellingham married and had two sons with Sicilian restaurateur Nunzio Peluso. There followed 15 years of abuse which coincided with the period when she played the country’s most recognisable mum apart from the Queen.

What kept her so long with a man who threatened her with a knife, called her a slut and a drunk and generally demeaned her and knocked her down?

“You think you can change him, and by the time you realise you can’t, your self-esteem is so low that you believe some of things he says about you and think you can’t get out...”

She finally summoned the courage to leave and spent 10 years raising Michael and Robbie, now 29 and 24, mostly by herself.

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She says she wasn’t looking for love when, in 2004, she was looking at an apartment in Spain and met Michael Pattemore, a British man who dealt in foreign property. They dated secretly for many months and finally get together properly, at which point he admitted that he’d been to prison for 20 months, and she admitted that she’d gone through a period of drinking too much. They married in 2009, both are teatotal, and they are, she says, “ blissfully happy”.

In the late 1980s Lynda Bellingham travelled to Canada to meet her birth mother, and although they saw each other regularly before Marjorie succumbed to Alzheimer’s and died last year, Lynda realised her true debt and devotion was to her late adoptive parents.

“I was brought up knowing about my adoption and my original name, Meredith Hughes. It didn’t bother me, although I noticed differences between me and my sisters.

“I was glad that I had met Marjorie, and it meant a great deal to her, too. But it’s through their (Ruth and Don’s) love and nurturing that I am who I am now, and I owe them everything.

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“I think Marjorie regretted the adoption. For her giving me up was like a death. She spent the rest of her life praying to God to forgive her.” Lynda is now putting out feelers to trace her birth father.

“I think people who go looking for their birth parents in the hope of finding themselves are likely to be disappointed. They have questions about their life that finding a parent won’t necessarily give them answers for, and it can be very painful.” She regularly helps the 
charity Barnardo’s by giving talks about adoption.

The quest to continually learn about herself and her art are inescapable elements of Bellingham’s personality. Even panto is part of that.

“You always need to keep stretching yourself... I’ve done it twice now, and pantomime, apart from being an ancient art, is wonderful because people of all ages see it and love it. It introduced me to lots of new things to learn about comic rhythm and timing.

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“It was said years ago that an actor’s career was on the slide if they did panto, now even Ian McKellen has done it. You have to be fit, though, as it requires high energy levels.”

So what next for Lynda Bellingham? She seems excited by a play that will open “up north” this August, but is still under wraps. And, after the success of her autobiography, she has completed the first of two novels, due out in April.

“I found writing about myself fun – once I got into it – and it flowed at 10,000 words a day over three weeks in Spain. In the end I had 140,000 words and they cut 25,000. I’d love to write for a living.

“My literary agent is a great source of wise advice and told me not to move too far away from my own life. So I wrote a multi-generational story based around nature versus nurture... what do you learn from your parents, and what is handed down genetically? It revolves around four generations of women in the same family who all have an illegitimate daughter. I know I’m not going to win the Booker, but I hope people will like it.”

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She’s happy to announce that she’s on the look-out for a meaty part in a TV drama. “Before, the public perception was that at 60-plus you’d had it. Lots of women get to 50 and divorce now and then have to reinvent their life. I want to keep expanding what I can do, but of course in aiming at drama I find that I am queueing up behind Judi (Dench), Helen (Mirren), Alison (Steadman), Celia (Imrie) and Joanna (Lumley), who are all wonderful.”

Bellingham says the major trait she recognised in her birth mother Marjorie that they shared was low self-esteem – but she is happier and more confident these days. Bring on the juicy role for a mature, confident sex-bomb who can seriously act.

Bradford Alhambra Theatre’s Cinderella continues until February 3. 
Box office 01274 43200. Lost and 
Found – My Story, by Lynda Bellingham is published by Ebury Press, £6.99.

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