Carry on, Amanda
She may be in her 80s, but normal rules don’t apply for Amanda Barrie, who has no trouble finding the funny side of life. She tells Gemma Dunn about her adventures filming the new series of The Real Marigold Hotel At 81, Amanda Barrie is proof that while you have to grow old, you don’t have to grow up. The stage and screen star – known for her saucy pin-up roles in two Carry On films and a lengthy stint as the legendary Alma on Corrie – is finally living life on her terms, and she’s never been happier. Her mantra is simply: “Get on with it”. “I would tell my younger self – and I tell my older self the same thing – not to be afraid,” says Lancashire-born Barrie, looking preened and fabulous. “Don’t be too judgemental on yourself, because you’re not the best judge.” She’s certainly proved her words have weight. Since leaving Corrie back in 2001, after 20 years on the popular soap, the actress has embraced a new chapter, starting with her decision to come out as bisexual at age 67 (she was previously married to theatre director Robin Hunter), and subsequently marrying her long-term partner, crime novelist Hilary Bonner. “I’ve only just had a gap year, too!” she squawks, laughing wildly. “So I’m living my life backwards, really.” But while Barrie – born Shirley Anne Broadbent – is open about her sexuality today, she admits she struggled to grasp the native consensus while embarking on her latest smallscreen project, the new series of hit BBC One travel series, The Real Marigold Hotel. “I couldn’t work out where they were on homosexuality,” she recalls of the locals she encountered in Kochi, a city in the south-west Indian state of Kerala. “I did ask but I got very diverse answers,” she elaborates. “One said, ‘Well, it’s illegal’, and I thought, ‘Well that isn’t going to encourage me is it; I’d be strung up the next day’, and the other people said, ‘Oh no, no, no, it’s totally acceptable, as long as you don’t mention it’. “So I thought, ‘We’ll gloss over that’. You know, it’s sort of (like being) back in the ’40s, ’50s ... ” The four-part series – inspired by, but otherwise unrelated to the Judi Dench-led 2011 blockbuster, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – sees Barrie joined by seven other famous senior citizens, each on a mission to discover whether or not they really would consider retiring to the other side of the world. “There’s this ghastly thing I had in my head the entire time,” Barrie recalls suddenly. “That people come out to India to find themselves, and I thought, ‘Oh God, please God, don’t do that at my age’. “Find myself?!” she adds, with a loud whoop. “That would be the worst thing I could imagine; I don’t want to find myself! “The thing I enjoyed most was this incredible privilege at a certain age to meet new people who you made friends with,” she begins, referring to entertainer Lionel Blair; snooker champion Dennis Taylor; TV personality Rustie Lee; doctor and presenter Miriam Stoppard; TV’s Bill Oddie; singer Sheila Ferguson, and actor Paul Nicholas. “Most people don’t get that privilege after 80, particularly meeting people who they get on with. And we were thrown together like a funny little family. So a move to India is out of the question, but is there room for a trip back, perhaps? “No, I don’t think I would, actually,” Barrie admits. “There’s so many other places in the world to go, and I suppose I would be more inclined to go to ancient cities.”
The Real Marigold Hotel returns to BBC One on Wednesday, February 15