‘Can’t do’ Britain is today’s challenge
AGAINST my better judgment I’ve been drawn into Bbcthree’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends. And no, BBC Three (the yoof channel) is not my natural habitat.
Why do I watch it? It’s hard to say. The performances are all exceptionally good but the characters are insufferable.two girl students meet up with an established woman writer and her actor husband.
One of the girls – Frances – starts an affair with the actor. He is admittedly handsome (as she keeps telling him) but duller than a puddle.
Perhaps I watch it because it shows me where I went wrong when I was 21.
Instead of trying (too hard) to be amusing, vibrant and glamorous
I should have drooped around like Frances in brown clothes, no make-up, eating toast and catching buses.
Then good-looking actors would have beaten a path to my door.
I’M NOT going to lie. In the long gone days when I was the occasional recipient of a wolf whistle it gave me a spring in my step. I didn’t feel abused or threatened though I’d occasionally raise a weary middle finger to the jokers who said: “Smile, it might never happen”.
But if Nimco Ali, the Government’s adviser on tackling violence against women and girls, has her way then wolf-whistling will be a criminal offence subject to on-the-spot fines.
Yes, I understand that men can menace women in all kinds of unpleasant ways, but there are laws to deal with that. But let’s not ban all forms of interaction between men and women. It merely reinforces the dangerous idea that the female sex is so fragile and vulnerable that it must be protected at every turn.
PETE PAPHIDES, a music journalist, described his elderly dad’s dismay when, arriving for a friend’s memorial service, he was unable to use a parking app. He parked the car anyway, got a fine, and then sadly died, leaving his son to sort out the bureaucratic process that ensued.
Pete’s message was that the digital world is a nightmare for older people.
I used to try and remember to carry some change in the car for meters.
Now even ordinary parking machines which don’t involve a dreaded app are full of things to tick and press, which you struggle with as a queue builds up.
For some reason I can never remember my car’s registration number.
Last summer I had to park in a huge field. I reached the parking machine, realised I had to put in the reg, which I couldn’t remember, went back to look and couldn’t find the car. Did I weep in frustration? It’s possible.
IT MAY BE shallow and silly but after two years of the Covid-inspired pretence that virtual festivals and awards were anything but pale shadows of the real thing, it was great to see real-life, rooting-tooting Cannes back with a bang. The photographers, the razzmatazz, the stars, the South of France glamour.
For once nobody seemed interested in virtue signalling or making political points about anything. I suppose it’s possible that the divine Isabelle Huppert (dressed by Balenciaga) may have been broadcasting her support for green politics. But I prefer to think she simply wanted to look like a mad little pixie.
DIG OUT your Lycra, commanded Anneka Rice last week. Her much-loved show Challenge Anneka is making a comeback on Channel 5. The first time round, from 1989 to 1995, it was on BBC One, when audiences of 12 million tuned in each week to watch Anneka complete charitable projects against the clock.
Her shapely backside became a national treasure as the camera followed her tireless sprints round (mostly) Britain, all in the name of a vast number of good causes.
Sound man Dave with his fluffy mic was her amiable companion.
Now aged 63, she was on the Today programme enthusing about the remake. She said: “The last few years have shown us all the power of community and how it’s good to be part of something bigger than ourselves.”
That was the thing about Anneka – and the programme. She was totally and uncomplicatedly decent and always enthusiastic.
The glass was always half full. You and I might think that the past few years have shown us that we’re a nation full of bickering and spite. But she sees things differently.
Did she ever get tired of running around, all bright eyes, gleaming teeth and glossy hair?
Did Dave the soundman ever sulk? If they did you’d never know it.
The whole show was so “can do” that it almost inspired you to zip in to a jumpsuit and race off to do something similar.
But you do wonder whether that same atmosphere of sunny optimism will be evident in the new series. With one thing and another we seem to have turned into a nation of “can’t do”.
Nobody could ever say “no” to Anneka. The show was a tribute to the geniality and generosity of the British workforce and organisations.
Using a mobile phone which in those days resembled a military walkie-talkie, Anneka politely pestered companies to deliver 400 tonnes of gravel or build an orphanage in Romania or send a truck-mounted crane ASAP. She raced through a Devon high street to strong-arm a bakery into providing free buns for the launch of a barn which had
been converted into a boathouse for disabled young sailors.
And it was all thrown together in 53 hours. The buns were, you might say, the icing on the cake.
Of course there must have been a lot of background work in setting up the projects, but there was a real sense that anything was possible.
S
ADLY, I find it hard to imagine she won’t come up against a lot more red tape, obstruction and bloody-mindedness with this remake. And as for tracking down a phone number for all those companies who will agree to anything she asks the moment she gives them a call...
Ha! If she’s lucky she might find an email and expect a reply in 48 hours.
Getting to speak to a real person would be something of a challenge, Anneka.
THE LAST couple of years have been a time of mixed fortunes, to say the least, for singer and actor Lee Mead, professionally and personally. In 2020 he was due to tour the UK showcasing his new album, but the pandemic put paid to that.
“We did manage a date at the London Palladium last June,” he says, “which was incredible.”
He had also been cast alongside Sherrie Hewson and Les Dennis in a six-month tour of Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends, based on her hit TV show. “But it was pulled at the last moment. Such a shame. It’s so rare to get a funny musical.”
There is talk, though, that it might resurface next year.
In the meantime he is joining the tour of Chicago in Sunderland this month, playing slimy lawyer Billy Flynn alongside Faye Brookes.
Tousled-haired Lee must have been chuffed to land the role.
“I have my actor friend Dan Burton to thank for that. He’d played Billy and he said I ought to turn up at the audition in full tuxedo, dickie bow tie, my hair slicked down with lashings of lacquer.”
The tour ends in the last week of July in Llandudno. “It’s going to be an intense two months.”
In 2007 Lee won the TV talent show Any Dream Will Do, landing the lead role in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
No stranger to hard work, he went on to star inwest End productions like Wicked, Legally Blonde, Phantom Of The Opera and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
He was then cast as Ben “Lofty” Chiltern in TV’S Casualty, a part specifically written for him. There was a break after two years but then his character popped up for another three in the hospital drama’s sister series, Holby City.
Lee, 40, says he would have stayed with Casualty longer, but his daughter, Betsy, was four and five at the time. “I’d see her every weekend and sometimes for a couple of days in the week. But I was missing the school runs and you don’t get those years back.
“Leaving a primetime show was the hardest decision I’ve ever made, professionally speaking, but I’ve never regretted it. It was the best thing I could have done.
“For seven months Betsy was at the centre of my world again.”
His adored daughter is the product of his short-lived marriage to TV presenter and actress Denise Van Outen, 48.
She had been a judge on the Joseph talent show, where the two fell in love and married in 2009.
It is fair to say Lee was bewitched, but four years later the relationship had unravelled.
By the end of a panto run in January 2020 – five solid weeks playing Aladdin a dozen times a week – he had also become disillusioned with the industry.
“I needed to recharge – I’d come to a crossroads. I’d worked more or less continuously for 20 years.
“I was seriously contemplating giving it all up.” To do what?
A shy laugh. “To open a coffee shop in St Ives. Silly, I know, and I couldn’t have turned my back on Betsy. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
NOW, HE SAYS, he’s got his mojo back. He’s rested, his career is on the up again and he’s in love. He first met Issy – he prefers not to reveal her surname – when both were in a cafe waiting to pick up their children from school.
He has always made a point of not discussing his break-up with Denise. Now, he confines himself simply to saying: “Sometimes, two people, for whatever reason, are meant to be just friends.
“Like any marriage, I went into it with the best of intentions. But I’ve never talked about the break-up and never will.”
Does Denise feel the same? A cloud crosses Lee’s otherwise sunny face. “Oh no, she’s talked
about it openly,” he says, and you