Sheila Hancock: 'I’m into honesty in my old age, which can be scary for people'

“I’m a classical music freak, it’s my life, so to be surrounded by musicians I’m like a terrible child in a chocolate factory, I love it,” she says.

“Originally it was just going to be me chatting and I said is it possible I could be with the musicians and they’re going to be playing the music I’ve chosen, and they don’t know that I’m going to be chatting to them.

“It won’t be a musicologist’s dream,” she adds with a smile, “but it will be fun.”

In the programme for the event at Ryedale Festival are pieces by Mahler, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Sondheim and Beethoven – all pieces which have spoken to her because, she says, she is “so shocked at what’s going on in the world”.

“I use classical music, particularly these pieces, because very often awful things have happened to Mahler or somebody like that and they turn it into something beautiful,” she explains. “So what I try to do is if I’m thinking ‘oh f...’ I listen to a bit of Mahler or Shostakovich and he says it for me, but not in words because I think it’s beyond words now because the world is a very frightening place.

“I use it as a salve, as an inspiration to remind myself when I get negative that human beings are extraordinary, that they can do such wonderful things, and there are wonderful places, which I hope I’m going to find in Yorkshire. It’s my sanity, although some of the music I choose is insane, but it’s using my insanity to do something good.”

Hancock says her preference for composers “changes all the time”, citing a television show that she’s just made about Mozart as an example. “When they asked me to do it, I’ve longed to do programmes about classical music, but I thought oh God, I don’t really like Mozart, a bit tinkly, a bit pretty. But of course when you study it, when you listen to it properly, it’s divine, it’s amazing, Don Giovanni and the Mass. I kind of dismiss him in my mind as being a pretty composer and I’m so utterly, utterly wrong. Suddenly from being one at the bottom of my list, he suddenly crept up to being one at the top of my list. So I can’t tell you who’s my favourite because tomorrow it might be I don’t know, Gilbert and Sullivan, unlikely but it could be.”

Beethoven’s Cavatina for string quartet and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.8 in C Minor, however, are long-established favourites of hers. She compares the Beethoven piece to Mahler’s last symphony, which she commentated on at the BBC Proms. Both, she explains, were written while their composers were facing their own mortality. “Beethoven, when he wrote the piece that we’re playing, he was not only stone deaf – which is something I struggle with, I have to have hearing aids, so even mild deafness drives me insane – but also he was facing death, he knew he was dying, the same as Mahler, he had a heart thing and you can hear his heartbeat in the music once you know that.”

The Cavatina was much loved by her late husband John Thaw, famed for his roles in Inspector Morse and The Sweeney, who died of cancer in 2002 aged 60.

“We played the Cavatina at John’s funeral because it was one of his favourites and it just expresses the inexpressible. It makes it all right to die for me because if it’s anything like that it will be all right, and looking at it like that it’s OK. I suppose they are people who express in music what I am a bit feeling at my great old age, and I feel a lot better, I feel a kinship with them. In both of those pieces there’s a sort of lost thing, it keeps losing track of itself and then coming back and stopping. It’s just amazing that these people, particularly Beethoven, what was the inside of his head like when he managed to get that out of it? It’s such a miracle.”

She adds: “It was very funny when I did the Mahler for the BBC, I did a very sensible and I hope quite learned introduction because I’d researched it and then at the end the joint commentator asked me to say something about it and I couldn’t talk. There was this grizzling idiot absolutely unable to talk, and I do weep lots of tears, and I hope at meet at my concert that we’re doing in Yorkshire, I want people to cry, I want them to have permission to cry at the beauty of music and how it expresses some of the sad things that happen in life.”

She and Thaw, best known for his roles in TV dramas such as Inspector Morse and The Sweeney, often discovered pieces of classical music together.

“We used to go to concerts together, we both had discovered it late in life. John discovered it through Tom Courtney when he was at RADA because Tom put some earphones on his head and made him listen to some unaccompanied Bach and it blew John’s mind, he’d never heard anything like that,” Hancock explains.

“And then a teacher of mine called Miss Tudor Craig – I’ll tell the story hopefully onstage – she did something called musical appreciation where she played something, which up until that stage had just been a giggle fest for me, but it was the Tchaikovsky Overture to Romeo and Juliet which is very orgasmic and I just couldn’t believe it, and I went with my pocket money to try to find it.

“So we came from unmusical backgrounds but we were introduced to it by people who loved it and we were very grateful about it. Because of coming to it like that, John and I then joined forces and explored together, we loved going to concerts. There was one Easter when we thought we ought to go and see the famous Handel (St John Passion) at the Royal Albert Hall and we couldn’t get in, so John said, ‘I think there’s one of those things by Bach on at the Royal Festival Hall. Shall we go over and see if we can get in there?’ So we went over and it was the St Matthew Passion and I said I don’t like Bach, it frightens me and he said, ‘I like those things that Tom used to play to me, let’s try it’, so we went and of course it blew our minds. I up until that time hsaid Bach didn’t write good tunes – please forgive me. Of course it’s full of devastating melody and orchestration and one of the saddest phrases of music ever written and (John) wept bitterly when Peter betrays Christ for the third time and the cock crows as it’s been predicted. Listen to that and it’s the grief of the world in one short line, especially sung by Peter Pears. Then we couldn’t get enough Bach, we were shooting off to concerts all over the place, it’s a rich vein that we didn’t know anything about.”

Growing up in a working-class family in London, Hancock had only heard popular music until her piano teacher Winifred Scott introduced her to Elgar’s Piano Concerto. “I used to driver her mad by not practising,” she recalls. “I didn’t know what music was, but mum thought it would be good for me to go for lessons. She had a big board outside that said ‘Winifred Scott LRAM’, we didn’t quite know what that meant but it sounded awfully impressive, so I went and bored this poor woman never doing any practise. She was a little pale lady who had a hanky that she used to put on the keyboard, it was silk with a lace bit on it, I can see it now, and it smelt over lavendar and occasionally she would dab her forehead, obviously sweating in despair over this dreadful child, and then one day I hadn’t practised at all and she suddenly got up and put on an LP which must have been just the orchestration of the Elgar Piano Concerto and she sat down and played the piano, which as you know from the Morecambe and Wise show is a devastating opening, and I could not believe my ears​​​​​​. It was the cleverest thing she ever did because she said, ‘That’s what you’ll be able to do if you only practise’. Suddenly I realised what music was about and then much later there was another teacher (Miss Tudor Craig), she used to do this thing called musical appreciation and she played a piece of music by Tchaikovsky and again it blew my mind and I went to a shop to buy the record with my pocket money and that opened the door to the joy of my life.

“In early days I would always go to a concert if I was in a town on a Sunday, like I was at Bournemouth Rep for a long while and I used to go and see the Bournemouth Philharmonic because they played opposite in the Palace Theatre. So I kept up with it and I played music a bit, but now in my old age I play a great deal. I have a good sound system now and I have proper earphones and I listen to the detail of the music.

“John was​​​​​​​ alwys very good at listening to the orchestration, he would say, ‘Can you hear that high bit?’ It was a flute or something, and I hadn’t heard it, like if you take a Mahler orchestration, how complicated they are, it’s very difficult, but John seemed to hear the entirety always, he had an amazing ear for music and he would point things out to me and lead me to pieces of music that I didn’t think I would like but when he told me what to listen for then I did.”

Hancock came to be full of gratitude for her early music teachers and today she says she wants to pass on her enthusiasm to others. “They changed my life and I want other people’s lives to be changed in the same way,” she says.

She deplores the fact that music is being cut from the school syllabus. “My grandson, who doesn’t know anything about music, was appointed music master for his school because it had to go on the list and they just didn’t have enough staff to cover it, so it’s not a subject that’s taught any more, like poetry is simplified and cut from the syllabus. Our children deserve to at least say, ‘I don’t like it’.

“I can’t tell you how many kids I have introduced to music. In the early days of Sony Walkmans if we were filming and a child came up I would put something on and play a bit of Wagner or something really scary, and then if they came to the film set a lot I would egg them on and play more, but directly as they hear it they know that it’s wonderful. But most people go through their entire life not having experienced the right classical music for where they’re at. You can’t start with Schoenberg, that’s probably a bit difficult, but you can start with something lovely and tuneful, Rachmaninov or Tchaikovsky, something that will make you feel happy and you know is beautiful, and I’m angry that not enough people have the opportunity to say no, they don’t want it.”

As the conversation shifts onto Hancock’s upbringing and her 70-year career, it’s clear that she remains conscious of class and social mobility, and is as politically frank as ever. Growing up, she remembers her parents worked “all the hours that God sent, first of all, in part they worked in pubs and then my dad in a factory and my mum in a big store” and she herself maintains a strong work ethic even now. She is, however, “jolly glad” that others can work from home now but feels there needs to be stricter protections so that people do not end up “working 24 hours a day​​​​​​​ because they’ve got their iPad with them”.

Attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a scholarship in the 1950s, Hancock was keenly aware that she was one of the few working-class students there. She deplores the fact that today, education in general seems to be “going back” to being largely the province of the middle classes.

“I think one of the most horrific things that happened was fees being put on universities,” she says. “I just find it so shameful. Scotland hasn’t, of course. But free education is everybody’s entitlement and it does mean that those kids will go to university whatever they say and they end up with the most horrendous debts, which most people are frightened of. That shouldn’t be happening to our youngsters.”

A frequent visitor to schools today, she says she was “appalled” to see at one school in Leicester pupils being taught in mobile classrooms “in the boiling heat and the freezing cold” because their buildings have been condemned because of crumbling RAAC cement. “I’m not for one for abolishing private schools because Eton is a wonderful school; I just want everybody to go to it,” she adds. “It’s a wonderful education, I wish they didn’t turn out so many ghastly prime ministers, but nevertheless I took a school from the East End to Eton, we did a concert there with a little orchestra, and it was wonderful, the children had never seen anything like it. I sat there thinking this is so unfair that these children are looking at this building and these fields and these lovely men being kind to them and they don’t have it in their lives. It’s not fair.”

Even during a General Election campaign, she notes that “there has been hardly a word said” about the future of education “apart from shirty comments that (private schools) might lose their charity status” or the arts. “All the things that with AI we’re going to have more free time to do, nobody’s said aything about that,” she says, “and they’re not looking sensibly at migration. Of course there’s going to be migration, countries are going to shut down, there’s a climate crisis that means people can’t live in certain areas of the world: what are we doing about that?”

Perhaps surprisingly for an actor who has spent so much time in the theatre, in particular regional rep, she dismisses the idea that it might be her natural home. “I don’t like doing eight shows a week, I never did; the only thing I liked about it was being with a company, I love my fellow actors, we do have fun,” she explains. “If you’re in a musical particularly the dancers and singers are such great fun. We have parties and things to keep us going because it’s quite difficult keeping a show fresh for a year or two, eight shows a week and making it for the public the first time they’ve ever seen it. You’ve got to be very disciplined, and they are. They all do class and we all do warm-ups and that, but we do also have a bit of fun, so I miss that.

“But I think theatre is essential. I think all actors have got to do it because you’ve got to remind yourself that your job is about telling stories to people. So sometimes you must get on your feet and face the fact that people don’t want to hear that or you’re not making them hear it or you’re not clear in your message. It can tecah you a lot about what you as an actor are doing if you’re not reaching out in the right way and interpreting the material in the right way, so I think everybody so touch base occasionally with a bit of theatre work.”

As a recent BBC interview with Amol Rajan reminded viewers, Hancock first revealed her gift for comedy in the 1960s sitcom The Rag Trade. “Joan Littlewood always said, ‘You’re a clown, darling’, and that was a high compliment from her,” she recalls. “I think some people have a sense of comedy and very few actors don’t. I’ve not met many, but there is occasionally people who don’t quite know how to time a laugh. It’s instinctive – with me it certainly was right from the word go. In those years when I couldn’t give myself away, I worked with a lot of comics. I did Concert Party with Cyril Fletcher; I did a tour with Frankie Howerd when he was out of favour and failing, I learnt a lot from him; I worked with Dickie Henderson and Tommy Cooper. I was lucky that timing is kind of a thing that’s built in with them and you pick it up, it’s like a disease. I suppose I do know how to time and laugh and I do find life quite funny. In the midst of disaster, I can get the giggles. If I suddenly find myself being solemn, I’m thinking what are you doing, you don’t really think this, why are you pretending to be moved by this because you’re not? So I’m into honesty in my old age, which can be very scary for people.”

Hancock has often played down her achievements, yet she blazed a trail as the first woman to direct a play at the Olivier Theatre and the first person who had not been to university to direct a touring production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Still, she says, she doesn’t see them significant. “You know, I never do,” she says. “I never watch myself but Women in Film and Television some years ago gave me a Woman of the Year Award, I begged them not to but they insisted and they did a montage of my work, with little clips from way back, and I had to look at it because I was sitting on the stage waiting to make a speech and I remember thinking, I forget that, that was all right, that wasn’t bad and people were laughing and I got back and thought, well, I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was but I never do think I’m good enough. I always think of a lot of people who can do it better and I try to be as good as they would be were they playing that part.

“I have more confidence now because the demands are not so high but certainly when I did Sweeney Todd in the first UK production in the West End in 1980), I’ve never been regarded as one of those actresses who plays leading roles, I felt a bit odd that I was doing that, but I have played leading roles, there’s no getting away from it.”

Hancock became a practising Quaker in the 1980s after a brush with cancer and faith remains important to her. “The main thing about Quakers is that they practise their religion rather than talk about it,” she says. “They are very socially responsible. Our meeting houses 32 refugees and we do a lot of work with the Ukrainians and people who are not helped by society​​​​​​​. It is our duty as Quakers to support the weak, we believe that there is ​​​​​​​that of God in everyone, so we don’t judge anyone​​​​​​​, everybody is entitled to be loved and cared for. I love my fellow Quakers, I feel safe with them. I’m not Sheila Hancock who says something ridiculous in the paper, I’m just Sheila the Quaker when I go there, and if I want to talk about it they will support and help me or tell me the turth and say that I was ludicrous or whatever, but they are my true friends​​​​​​​. We are a society of friends and nobody’s in charge, we don’t have priests and sermons, but we have a marvellous book called Advice and Queries which is ​​​​​​​things that Quakers have written since they were founded in ​​​​​​​1652​​​​​​​ and it’s full of wisdom​​​​​​​. In the advice, consider you may be wrong is one of them and speak truth to power is another Quaker saying, and they have always spoken truth to power, Quakers. They’ve been very brave right from Margaret Fell, who was one of the founders, who was constantly going up to Charles II to tell him he was wrong and he would listen to her and then put her into prison​​​​​​​.

“It’s a religion that has a proud history​​​​​​​ apart from anything else. We were founders of the National Trust and Oxfam​​​​​​​ and all sorts of things, it’s very often come from Quakers. Businesses like Barclays come from Quaker bases, they’re nothing to do with us now, but they were businessmen getting together and wanting to be honest and decent. And all the shops like Cadbury’s, they were honest tradesmen. So it’s nice to have a religion that’s got a very proud history, and particularly towards women – woman have always been equal in the Quaker faith.”

My Music – An aftternoon with Sheila Hancock takes place at Duncombe Park on July 25 at 3pm.