BAD GIRLS FOR GOOD
Prison drama star brings cast back together for cancer charity bash
As the boss of HMP Larkhall in prison drama Bad Girls, Simone Lahbib had the power to lock up the lags and throw away the key.
Now she’s breaking them out… as Simone has helped organise cast reunions of the tough TV drama which ran between 1999 and 2006.
The actress, who played Governor Helen Stewart in the series created by Scottish duo Maureen Chadwick and Ann McManus, got the crew together to raise funds for the Eilidh Brown Memorial Fund, the charity set up in the name of her 15-year-old niece, who died of cancer.
She said: “We organised a Bad Girls reunion in 2016 and raised more than £ 21,000 for the memorial fund, which was amazing.
“It was just great fun. The cast all really enjoyed seeing one another again and the interaction with the fans. We thought we would do it again this year. The cast are close, they are a lovely bunch and the fans are exactly the same. It’s great to see everyone and we are definitely doing another next year because it will be the 20th anniversary of Bad Girls.”
Before then, Simone – who has also starred in Wire in the Blood, Monarch of the Glen, The Loch and Downton Abbey – is preparing to return to her home town of Stirling to take on the role of chieftain of the Highland Games.
She said: “I only experienced the Highland Games once as a kid and it was all really great fun but it never crossed my mind that at any point in my life I would be asked to be the chieftain.
“I’m always game for trying new experiences. I have been fortunate to be recognised a few times by my home town – I’ve been handed the keys to the city and won the Lord Provost award – and I really do take on board that it is an honour.
“It will be great fun and a welcome excuse to come back home and spend time with the family as well.”
If the role of chieftain is new to her, Simone is already heading up her own acting dynasty with actor and director husband Raffaello Degruttola.
Her 12-year-old daughter Skye has an impressive CV, which includes Disney’s Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson, and she’s about to start the fourth series of ITV crime drama Grantchester.
She has been in the show from the start, playing the daughter of Robson Green.
Simone said: “She is working away as an actress and is about to start on Grantchester series four with Robson, who I worked with on Wire in the Blood.
“We were filming that when she was just a baby and my mum had her in the trailer. I chaperone her on set so it’s lovely to see Robson and catch up, talking about what we used to get up to. Wire in the
It’s such an honour to be asked to be chieftain of the Games
Blood was such a heavy, dark programme yet we giggled all the time – he is such great fun.
“I love watching Skye do her thing and I learnt a few years ago to just leave her to it. She knows what she’s doing.
“I just ask her if she wants a sandwich. The acting coach thing went by the wayside pretty quickly.”
Maybe for Skye but not others. Simone has set up her own performing arts school and management company for kids, London Arts Academy and London Arts Management , drawing on all her experience and contacts.
Her husband takes classes, as do old friends including Forbes Masson and his wife, singer and former X Factor contestant Melanie.
She said: “It started because Skye was going to performing arts schools and I realised it was something I could do. All my teachers are people I know from the business.
“The agency came about because I was at a casting and I mentioned I was running this little performing arts school if they were ever looking for kids.
“Long story cut short, it was I, Daniel Blake and Ken Loach cast one of our kids, Dylan McKiernan. He didn’t have an agent and his mum asked me to do the deal for him. My feeling of responsibility to him kind of led me into it.
“I probably have between 70 and 90 that come to the school and there are 30 on the agency.
“Maybe further down the line I will build it and make it a bigger thing but at the moment it is just the right size and being part-time I can do it alongside other things.”
Despite her business, Simone does not represent her daughter, preferring to leave her to get on with it.
She said: “Skye was already signed to another agency and I have left her there so there is no conflict of interest. She’s at an age where she knows what she is happy with and what she is not.”
While that means acting just now, it may not be in the long term.
Simone added: “Kids have so many pressures on them now. There’s a lot of pep talking, a lot of managing expectations and we do all that in the classes but it’s important as well to keep a little sense of magic when you are young.
“It is just something to enjoy, like playing football as a kid. Skye is like that. She hasn’t her sights set on it, which we quite like. If you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she says forensics.” Simone will be appearing at the Stirling Highland Games on August 18. See www.sruighlea.scot. Bad Girls Reunion 2 will take place in October.