Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Liver Birds’ Nerys: Men always tried it on but we just said No
Third of theatre staff victims of sex harassment Sitcom star speaks out on scandal
women who’ve come forward recently to say they’ve been exploited... I’m not saying it’s not terrible, I’m saying you can very firmly say ‘no’. You can get out of it, you do not need to go through with it. I didn’t. I got out and said ‘no’.
“You’re vulnerable when you want to get a part and you think ‘If I want this part I have to do this.’ No you don’t.”
She added: “Once, in a TV episode, the director promised me that if I had my top stripped off, he’d be filming me from behind.
“But he didn’t. He had a camera in a bookcase and filmed from the front. But otherwise I’ve been very fortunate.
“I had a strong moral going through me. I’m a Welsh Methodist after all.”
She played Sandra Hutchinson in The Liver Birds alongside Polly James as Beryl. The show about young women sharing a flat in Liverpool also featured Mollie Sugden as Sandra’s mum.
Nerys recalled the late Mollie intervening in real life when a fan overstepped the mark.
Nerys said: “We were doing a personal appearance at Liverpool FC’S ground Anfield and we got swamped by fans. They weren’t being horrible but we were engulfed.
“Then one man tried to get hold of my bust, and Mollie Sugden swung her big heavy handbag and bashed him on the head.”
The hugely popular BBC show was created by Carla Lane and Myra Taylor. Nerys said: “There was something in it for everybody.
“Some women wanted to be us, and some men quite liked my legs.
“People have told me ‘I always wanted
ON DISTRESSING AUDITION
ONE in three people in the theatre industry has been sexually harassed at work, research has found.
And one in 12 has been sexually assaulted. But when attacks were reported, no action was taken in the vast majority of cases.
Two in three who have suffered
some form of harassment or to share a flat because of The Liver Birds’.” The show first aired in 1969 and ran until 1979, before returning for a seven-parter in 1996.
Nerys also starred as Megan Roberts in BBC period drama The District Nurse in the 1980s. She says her favourite role now is being a gran.
In the interview with Weekly News, Nerys said: “I make the occasional telly appearance, like on a celebrity edition of Pointless recently, but these days I prefer to do things out-of-vision.
“I’ve just narrated Children’s Hospital for BBC Wales... and I found it unbearably moving because I’m a devoted grandmother to two adorable little girls.
“I just feel like a wife and grandmother, and I totally forget I’m an actress.
“But I still get lots of letters, and I’m always stopped in the street.
“A lot of people have followed my career over the years, especially since The Liver Birds.”