Dame Maureen Lipman: “I’ve always let fashion come to me in the sense that I ignore it."

Married to the writer Jack Rosenthal, with whom she had two children, until his death in 2004, she later partnered with Guido Castro, who died in January 2021 after contracting Covid. Last year, at 79, she married businessman David Turner, delighted to find love again.

Lipman is upbeat today, which is fitting as that’s exactly what is required for her latest appearance, starring as Allegra, in the eponymous heart-warming comedy from Olivier and Tony Award nominated playwright Peter Quilter. The tale of a woman with a zest for life, it follows Allegra who can’t help seeing the bright side and bursting into song, wherever she finds herself, often to an orchestra that plays in her mind. Her brother (John Middleton of Emmerdale) and carer (Elizabeth Bower of Midsomer Murders, Trollied) attempt to manage this behaviour, without raining on her parade.

“It’s about a woman who sings,” says Lipman. “I suppose you’d call her neurodivergent now, because she’s half child, half woman, and she has a younger brother, who worries desperately about her. It’s about what do you do with someone who is relentlessly happy in this day and age when everybody is snarling on the screen and off. When life is such a worry, and there’s a fruitcake at the top of the American presidency. And here’s this person who basically finds joy every day. It gets on your nerves when somebody’s like that so what do you do about it?
You try to bring her down, but then you don’t like what you get,” says Lipman. “From an actor’s point of view, you’ve got to find a way to make her not get on your nerves. That’s my job. Because I don’t think I’ve ever run into a character quite like this, half way between Lucille Ball and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. She can turn everything to the positive.” Would Lipman like to be like that? She takes a long pause then says, ”Yeah. I think I would.
I am the opposite. I turn positives into a negative. And of course, not to get too deeply into tribalism, it’s the pessimists like me, who got out. Probably why I am here.”

Lipman, who was born in Hull has said her father Maurice was dry and funny, and it’s a trait she has obviously inherited, but she tells me her mother Zelma was also unintentionally very amusing. Her advice included ‘always accessorise and make sure your hair is right’,
something the well-turned out Lipman looks like she follows. “It does stick,” she says. “You can’t be brought up by someone who’s really into looking nice without panicking slightly that you haven’t got the right colour earrings to match.

“I’ve always let fashion come to me in the sense that I ignore it, when they say things like, you need new jeans because those are last year’s jeans. I hate the rules of it. But at the same time I think I know the look I like. I’ve never been styled. And sometimes it’s very colourful, Pru Leith like, and sometimes… I once bought a Victoria Beckham suit in an outlet and it was obviously sidelined because it was too big for any of the people who would naturally wear it, so it fitted me. And when you have an item like that and you see the tailoring, it’s very, very pleasing.

“In fact, a man rang me and said, ‘I bought a suit on eBay and I think it was made by your father. I said, ‘well, my father was a gentleman’s outfitter and he sold suits and ties in the shop, but he didn’t sew’. But we met up, and I knew who the tailor was because his daughter was at school with me, and it was immaculate, as was the Victoria Beckham suit. Everything inside was as good as everything outside. So he gave me the suit and it’s got Maurice Lipman Tailors, Monument Bridge, Hull, inside it. It’s a piece of art really.”

In order to play Allegra, Lipman has taken a break from playing Evelyn Plummer in Coronation Street, making a fan-favourite of the prickly, witty matriarch with a very hidden softer side since her arrival in 2018.

“Evelyn’s gone to study law at university. Law, with special emphasis on dogs,” she says. “I didn’t get killed off, so it’s always open to me to go back. This week I got a picture from the Dobbs family saying we miss you. And honestly, I really do miss them. Corrie is a phenomenon. It’s good, it’s bad, it’s full of murderers and lesbians and kids and animals.
Well, my dog, Cerberus. He knew on his last day that it was his last day. He lay on the floor and had the fake cannula taped to his leg, and it was honestly tragic.” 
Cerberus was Evelyn’s constant companion from 2018 until his storyline death of kidney failure in March 2023, and had fans in high places as became clear when the 95-year-old Queen Elizabeth II visited the Coronation Street set in 2021 on its 60th anniversary to applaud the crew and cast for continuing production during Covid.

“The Queen said to me, [Lipman reproduces the Queen’s voice] ‘Is the dog a good actor?
How long has he been with the company?’ I said, ‘Well, he came with me, ma’am, and yes, he’s a very, very, very good actor. I keep a lot of liver in my clothes’.”

In real life Lipman married businessman David Turner, co-founder of the LA Fitness gym chain, in September last year in London and she is delighted to have married again at 79, after proposing to Turner, on a train from Edinburgh, ‘as a joke’ but he accepted.

“Certainly, it has been a fantastic experience to get to this stage in one’s life when you really want to just marry someone. . And his kids, and his grandkids, well, his son and my son used to go to school together and actually wrote together for a while and my daughter lives around around the corner so we see each other all the time, and that’s great. So I don’t really want to go away. It’s the truth.”

But she will because she’s a trouper and loves performing and shows no sign of slowing down. What’s on her bucket list that she still wants to do?
 “As long as I can remember my lines, I want to carry on doing this. I would like somebody, somewhere, to think of me as something other than a Jewish mother or Holocaust survivor. I’d like to be asked to do a series. Everybody’s doing Netflix streaming. It would be very nice to be asked to do that rather than chasing.”