Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
EX-CORRIE STAR
SUSIE Blake turned 70 in lockdown and wishes she could wind back the clock... not to revisit her carefree, bra-less youth, nor to relive her youthful romance with Nigel Havers.
No, she just wants to avoid the cosmetic surgery she had decades later.
The Coronation Street and Mrs Brown’s Boys star had some fatty tissue removed from under her eyes after worrying that she made Rovers Return barmaid Bev Unwin look like she’d been over-serving herself.
Susie says: “I had my eye bags done after I left Corrie. I took one look at myself and thought I looked like an old drunk. I just didn’t want to look unwell and I’ve regretted it ever since.
“Now I’m playing Miss Marple and the more bags the merrier, but at the time I was going through that 50-year-old phase where you think, ‘I don’t want to be this old.’
“I’ve always felt if it makes you happy, have plastic surgery. And at that moment it did make me happy.
“But I wouldn’t have more plastic surgery. For example, you’d never ask Britt Ekland to play (actress) Margaret Rutherford, and that’s what I enjoy.”
Hopefully Susie did not point this out to Britt when the pair travelled to India to film the BBC’S The Real Marigold Hotel together.
The series – which asks a group of celebrities including Barbara Dickson, Paul Chuckle and Zandra Rhodes to decide if they’d consider retirement there – shows Susie is far from the po-faced, serious characters she has played in decades of playing the straight woman with comedy greats such as Victoria Wood and Russ Abbot. It does however, mean she is virtually unshockable, which led to an invitation to Mrs Brown star Brendan O’carroll for endless mischief.
Susie says: “Brendan knows, because I’ve been a straight man to a lot of people, that my job is not to laugh. But Brendan has carte blanche to do what he wants and he’s incredibly naughty to me. He knows he can push me as far as he dares. I really have to clench my jaw and grit my teeth not to laugh.”
And she adds: “The swearing doesn’t bother me. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, we were the first generation to not wear shoes in the street. When I was 16, we got rid of our shoes and took off our bras. There were no limits – I don’t know how my mum put up with it.
“So no, I don’t mind the language. And anyway - the f-word is Shakespearean.”
Susie was brought up in a thespian family. Her maternal grandmother Annette Mills voiced Muffin the Mule, her great uncle was film star Sir John Mills, and her cousins are actresses Juliet and Hayley Mills. It meant she has always rubbed shoulders with famous names. That brings us to Nigel Havers’ autobiography, which details Susie taking his virginity on a Kent beach – something which has left her pretty peeved.
“Hmm, he’s written about it in his book which is the only reason it came to light. And he wrote about it without asking