Odd-ball voice paid off

Press, 24 April 1986, Page 11

Odd-ball voice paid off

Wendy Richard" returns to New Zealand screens as Miss Brahms in the tenth series of “Are You Being Served?” on One this evening (Thursday). Tomorrow evening she plays a totally different role in “Eastenders.” She talks to Judy Byrne of DUO Features.

Wendy Richard always knew that her future lay in her odd-ball voice that defied public school, speech and drama training. “My mother once said ■all the money we’ve spent on your education and you have this dreadful voice,’ ” says Wendy Richard, otherwise known as Pauline Fowler in “Eastenders” and Miss Brahms in “Are You Being Served?” “I told her ‘don’t knock it. One day I’m going to make a lot of money out of it’’ ” Not only does it have a distinctive timbre, but it

takes to Cockney so well that millions of fans think she really comes from the East End. She is now making more than $lOOO an episode as one of the highest paid members of the “Eastenders” cast. And this is not the only way she differs from “Eastender” Pauline, who has an unemployed husband and a part-time job at the launderette. Pauline has two teenaged children and one late and unexpected baby. Wendy Richard has none. She is not even married any more, and the 41-year-old actress has no

plans to change her solitary status, or to repeat the experience of two failed marriages. And that means a life sentence to childlessness. She is too busy to look for a man and would, not consider motherhood without one. ‘T’ve never had babies because I’ve never wanted them and because they just haven’t come along. I’m just too oldfashioned to ever consider having a child outside marriage. “Besides, my mum was left a widow when I was 11 so I know how hard it is for a woman to bring

up a child alone." Filming “Eastenders” occupies her six days a week, sometimes for 12 hours a day. That leaves little enough free time for washing and ironing and learning lines for the next couple of episodes. She says: “Elstree studio is the natural contraceptive. You are so tired after working here you don’t have time for a bit of the other. I just don’t have time for boy- 1 friends.” Wendy Richard has worked hard to get where she is now and learned a lot along the way; but her decision to go into acting looked ill-starred at the first. On her first day at

drama school she was run over and had to have 33 stitches. Although she was later to have a long and successful run as Miss Brahms, she was hardly a hit when she got a job in a real department store in London. After a day and a half she was sacked, for having sold only £9 worth of clothes. Soon after leaving drama school her professional career got lift-off with the part of the supermarket manageress Joyce Harker in the 8.8.C.’s soap opera, “The Newcomers.” But it was a record that really put her on the map. Though her ambition was

to be a comedy actress, she was the girl who told Mike Sarne to “belt up” and “get lost” on the early sixties hit record, “Come Outside.” She was so green she accepted a one-off payment of £l5 for her contribution to it, then had the double frustration of watching it we£k after week in the number one spot while earning not a penny of royalties from it, yet finding that for years people knew her as “the ’Come Outside’ girl.” Her romances, too, were making headlines. There were two broken engagements, to a fashion expert and an actor, before her first whirlwind

romance and marriage to the importer and former music publisher, Len Black. They parted after five months. Wendy Richard, who had moved on to parts with “Harpers West One,” “Hugh and I,” “Danger Man,” “Dad’s Army” and “On The Buses,” had an on-off live-in romance with an advertising executive, Will Thorpe, for six years before they married in 1980. Eighteen months later that marriage, too, was over. So while Pauline Fowler lives in the cosy, gossipy intimacy in Albert Square, Wendy Richard has her Marylebone flat

to herself. She has always turned down roles with nude scenes, but her reservations before she agreed to be Pauline were of a different kind. “Pauline Fowler is a heck of a strong role and that’s a danger. I could become associated with the character forever like some kind of Elsie Tanner. “I have always been an all-round actress who really likes to make people laugh.” But within months of the start of the soap opera, people were identifying her with Pauline.

She told the series’ producer, Julia Smith, that she did not want to be a one-show woman. She intended to carry on with other projects — like a plan to make a new version of “Come Outside,” this time with Mike Berry with whom she worked in “Are You Being Served?” He has had five solo hits over the last 20 years. She is also trying to get on with writing her autobiography, but however much she resists the idea, the show that shot straight to the top of the ratings eats into her waking hours, even off-duty. DUO copyright.