Woman who built River Rillington Place. And...
and buildings. Scaled-down streets and structures were designed to look better on screen and were built from timber before the outside was plastered by theme park specialists to look like aged sandstone. “We had to come up with everything from the biggest buildings and sets right down to the teaspoons in the café drawer.” Pat was back in Dumbarton years later for Rillington Place, the chilling BBC drama about serial killer John Christie starring Tim Roth.
It had been hoped to find a Glasgow street that could double for 1950s London but when that proved impossible, a recreation was made in a car park at the BBC studios.
And being inventive in bringing the past to life is something Pat is well used to. “On the Channel 4 drama The Mill the hope was to use an existing mill, maybe one of the living museums that had all the old machinery,” she said.
“When we couldn’t find the right machinery, though, we actually had facsimilies of the enormous old spinning machines made and covered an entire mill floor with them.”
Pat still loves the opportunity to work on home soil but says that the BAFTA Scotland presentation, coming almost four decades after she took the biggest gamble of her life, is her greatest honour.
“It was a complete surprise, coming completely out of the blue,” she adds. “It would never have occurred to me in a million years when I started and it’s an amazing thing to get.”
The BAFTA Scotland Awards take place at Glasgow’s Radisson Blu Hotel next Sunday evening.