Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
EMMERDALE
Pots and pans are strewn across Wendy Craig’s kitchen and lunch is nowhere near the oven. The actress half giggles, half groans: “I’m trying to make a simple tray bake. Why can’t I get it together more easily?”
It all sounds like her most famous character, and her favourite, Ria Parkinson, the frustrated lovestruck housewife from hit sitcom Butterflies – who is a disaster in the kitchen.
That was more than 40 years ago but Wendy is still the centre of a TV romance at the age of 83. In her first ever foray into soap land, she’s been playing larger than life Maisie in Emmerdale.
In the six-episode stint she is the love interest for Sandy Thomas, played by 90-year-old Freddie Jones.
She’s there to brighten Sandy’s dotage after a rough ride for Freddie’s character, who recently lost his son to early onset dementia. And as for new found love brightening your later years...wendy sees nothing wrong in it.
She describes their romance as “rather charming”. “Why not?” she says “We’re still human beings and love a bit of a cuddle, warmth and friendship!”
The part suits Wendy because unconventional, strong women have always been her thing. Ria was a rare character at the time – a woman who dared to question her lot.
She pondered her marriage to Geoffrey Palmer’s character, Ben, and even thought of an affair, with friend Leonard. “I did think I was making a bit of a stand for women,” she agrees.
It fits neatly with the theme of the year, equality for women. But when I mention the #Metoo campaign which has seen so many actresses stand up and discuss the harassment, abuse and general misogyny they have faced in the industry, Wendy sounds hesitant.
She is quick to support any woman who has been wrongly treated.
But she insists she wasn’t affected in a career which took off during the 60s in films like The Servant, with Dirk Bogarde and The Nanny, with Bette Davis.
She also starred with known hellraisers Oliver Reed and Peter O’toole.
Then came sitcoms including Not In Front Of The Children and Mother Makes Three, in which she was a single mum.
“I suppose I was lucky, either that or I was just too plain,” she laughs, keen to lighten the mood. “I wasn’t aware of it. Flirting went on backstage but doesn’t that go on everywhere? It’s harmless.
“Men finding you attractive and telling you so, there is nothing wrong with that,” she adds. “It’ll soften off. At the moment it’s quite fierce isn’t it?
“It’s a good thing. They’ll adapt, and learn to be more polite and respectful.
“But no, I didn’t pay much attention to it. It was men and women’s natural flirting – it’s not natural that they don’t.
“I think men might be a bit nervous now, not knowing quite how to approach a woman they would like to take out.”
Nevertheless, in her own life Wendy