For 20 years I had two men on the go
S Fenella talks, trademark false eyelashes flutter around her coal-black eyes. Her hair is a titian wig of epic proportions which makes her look as much duchess as grande dame. The entire effect is transfixing.
Despite being largely remembered for her improbable poshness and comedic seductions in Carry On films and Doctor In Clover, Fenella mixed the froth with heavyweight plays by Ibsen, Shakespeare, Chekhov and Henry James.
One critic described her Hedda Gabler, in which she co-starred with Sir Ian McKellan, as “one of the experiences of a lifetime”.
In the 1970s her fame was such that she became the first guest star on the Morecambe & Wise Show. She appeared four times in all.
“It was a joy to work with them. Do I look like I was suppressing a laugh in those clips? I knew how to do that without it showing that it was all part of the act. Comedians always try to make their guests laugh so it was important.”
Fenella – who still appears on Radio 4 and had a cameo in Channel 4’s gritty series Skins a few years ago – helped to put the swing into the 1960s, meeting such people as David Frost and designer Mary Quant when they were mere wannabes and she was already an established stage actress.
“Ned Sherrin found David doing cabaret in a nightclub that had been a former beauty salon where I had once worked as a trainee,” she says of the man anointed by producer Ned to host his satirical creation That Was The Week That Was.
“Suddenly we actresses all had to go to Lime Grove to meet [Frost]. He was ingratiating but he thought he was wonderful and so we all behaved as if he was. He immediately became very important but really he was just this chap who had been doing cabaret in a former beauty salon.”
She also worked with the late comic actor Norman Wisdom. “So ghastly,” she says. “You knew if you were doing something with him you had to be careful and behave as if you weren’t to be trifled with or be treated as a piece of meat. But you had to be careful not to damage your own career. I knew how to handle him because I was a woman and he was a man.”
At a time when all young actresses were taught to speak in RP – received pronunciation – Fin, as she is known to friends, was better at it than anyone. But she wasn’t posh at all. Her parents were Jewish emigrés full of aspiration. Born on November 17, 1927 she grew up in a semi in Edgware with a three-piece suite and “best” china.
Behind the laughs that permeate her book – including a hysterically funny account of an adolescent suicide attempt that turned into a desire for spaghetti bolognaise – lurks the shadow of her father Philip, an autocratic and sometimes physically aggressive man.
DESPITE managing a cinema in east London he was deeply troubled by the suggestion that his own daughter might pursue an acting career. “It was seeing the end disaster before it had happened and worrying it would reflect badly on them,” she says. “He desperately wanted me to be a shorthand typist.”
Her younger brother Basil was a plastics magnate who manufactured Sindy dolls and became a Conservative peer – “Sunday trading was all down to him” – but Fenella was always less conventional. The acting spark was ignited when she went to her father’s cinema at the age of three. “I saw these huge faces on the screen and I was given chocolates wrapped in gold paper,” she recalls, still transfixed by the memory.
She never married, work always came first. But there were loves.
“For 20 years I was involved with two amazing men. One rather old, one not. One a poet, the other one not. Both very necessary to me. I don’t think either of them knew about the other. I think there was somebody I thought I was going to marry but I always put my career first.”
She continues to perform at various venues and says that when the time comes she “might not mind being remembered as an original”. But surely the wonderful Fenella Fielding deserves a greater place in our collective memory than that.
For more information on Fenella’s upcoming performances see fenellafielding.com
To pre-order Do You Mind If I Smoke? by Fenella Fielding and Simon McKay (Peter Owen, £14.99) out on November 17, call the Express Bookshop with your card details on 01872 562310. Or send a cheque or postal order payable to The Express Bookshop to: Fenella Fielding Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.co.uk UK delivery is free.