Getting to like Mavis

Press, 13 January 1987, Page 19

Getting to like Mavis

By

IAN BROWN

Thelma Barlow once could not stand Mavis Riley, the dithering spinster she portrays so well in “Coronation Street.” But now Thelma is very fond of Mavis Riley and admires her sense of what’s right and wrong. Both Barlow and the scriptwriters have strengthened Mavis’s character since she was first introduced into the show 15 years ago. “She’s a lot more selfconfident these days and actually a lot stronger than many of the other ‘Street’ characters,” says Barlow proudly. “She has the courage to stick to her principles. For instance, how many of the other ladles in the Street would have the courage not to turn up for their wedding because they felt it wasn’t right? That’s what Mavis did.”

As is usual with soap

operas, the actress bears the resemblance to her TV screen image — a distinction many fans fail to appreciate. In real life, Barlow is always being spoken to and treated as if she were Mavis. It means women look after her in supermarkets and men are always ready to open doors or help her with her coat. “This confusion of identities was first brought home to me in the early days when I parked my car in the Granada car park,” Barlow recalls.' “People were always insisting they should park the car for me as they couldn’t believe Mavis would be able to do it on her own. What they didn’t realise was at that time I was living in Scotland and had just driven 250 miles.”

Far from being helpless like Mavis, Bariow does shorthand and typing, makes clothes, pottery and wine, crochets, paints, has a good eye for antique furniture, studies wildlife and enjoys yoga. Unlike her character, who gets fluttery at the mere thought of marriage, Barlow, now divorced, has

two sons in their mid-20s, both with good university degrees. Nevertheless, she admits to some resemblances that have helped her get closer to the character.

Barlow was bom in Huddersfield just five weeks after her father died. Her mother did not remarry, so she did not have a normal fatherdaughter relationship and grew up shy, sensitive, and slightly afraid of men.

The shyness persisted when Thelma took a job in Huddersfield as a secretary.

“I didn’t really like it,” she recalls. “But there was nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. I didn’t realise there was anything better. Horizons were pretty limited in those days, so I stuck it for seven years.” Barlow only has to think back to those days to give Mavis that air of vulnerability that strikes a chord with viewers. She gets lots of letters from young people who say they feel they are being ridiculed.

In public she often has to listen to people telling

her all their troubles because "Mavis will understand.”

But Barlow obviously had more “go” than Mavis, for in an. effort to escape from her typewriter in Huddersfield she enrolled for drama lessons at night school. It was a wise decision, for she proved to be a natural. Eventually she was spending all her spare time acting with amateur-dramatic societies, until . she plucked up enough courage to try her luck as a professional.

“What struck me when I first arrived to take part in the Street, apart from the sheer professionalism of it all, was the tremendous enthusiasm. “Now that I’m an oldstager myself, I can understand why everyone’s so keen.

“You don’t get a chance to become bored with your character because she is in different situations and involved with different people from week to week. “For instance, over the last 10 years or so Mavis Riley has had more romantic situations than Bet Lynch!”

-DUO COPYRIGHT