Farewell to our voice of the North
Tributes to pioneering TV writer and actress Kay Mellor, whose colourful life mirrored that of her best-loved characters
VIRTUALLY all of the heartfelt tributes to Kay Mellor, who has died just a few days after her 71st birthday, contained the same touching sentiment. Famous names from the TV industry and fans alike applauded her extraordinary talent for writing about ordinary people and their daily struggles.
And in an era in the 1980s and 90s when television dramas were predominantly written, commissioned and directed by men in London, Mellor was a shining beacon both for women and northerners in the creative industries.
The creator of hit series, including Girlfriends, Band Of Gold and The Syndicate, also wrote Fat Friends – marking the TV debut of James Corden – which aired until 2005 and was later turned into a hit musical.
In a career spanning more than 30 years, Mellor received a Bafta for Outstanding Writing for Television, a Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award and was awarded an OBE in 2009.
West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin, a former actress and writer who appeared in Coronation Street before turning to politics, described the Leeds-born screenwriter as “our voice of the North”, adding: “She put working-class characters at the centre of her brilliant compassionate, moving and funny stories.”
Mellor’s Leeds-based TV company, Rollem Productions, revealed yesterday that she had died on Sunday: “It is with profound sadness that we announce the untimely and sudden passing of our beloved friend, mentor and colleague Kay Mellor.”
She leaves two daughters, actresses and producers Yvonne Francas, 55, and Gaynor Faye, 50, and her husband Anthony.
Just a few weeks ago, she was on Channel 4 News talking about the mooted privatisation of the network. In what is thought to have been her last TV appearance, she branded sell-off plans a “tragedy”.
Mellor began her TV writing career in the 1980s, working on soap operas including
Coronation Street, where she was one of the show’s earliest female writers, and Channel 4’s Brookside. Later, with fellow Granada Television staff writer and friend Paul Abbott, the talent behind TV hits such as Cracker, Shameless and Clocking Off, Mellor created the series Children’s Ward which won the Bafta for the Best Children’s Drama in 1997.
In a parallel acting career, she wrote and appeared in family series Just Us from 1992-94, in her 1997 adaptation of Jane Eyre and in the films A Good Thief and Gifted. On stage, multi-talented Mellor acted in Three Girls In Blue and wrote and starred in a one-woman show, Queen, at her beloved West Yorkshire Playhouse.
The cast lists of Mellor’s bestknown series – Band Of Gold, Playing The Field and The Syndicate – read like a Who’s
Who of British television and include Geraldine James, Lorraine Ashbourne, Brenda Blethyn, James Nesbitt, Ricky Tomlinson and Neil Morrissey.
Her Bafta-nominated 2000 series Fat Friends featured a slimming club in Leeds, and launched the career of a young Corden, who Mellor tracked down after seeing him in a
Tango advert, believing
he’d be perfect for the role of Jamie. The show also featured Alison Steadman, Lisa Riley and Mellor’s daughter Gaynor, with whom Mellor wrote The Chase for BBC One in 2006.
Kay Daniel was 16 and her boyfriend Anthony Mellor 17 when she fell pregnant in 1967. Against all expectations, the teenagers married.
In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle in 2017 – Mellor’s mother Dinah was Jewish – she said: “We were just a little lad and lass off the estate. Anthony was a mechanic. We were married on December 12 and by Christmas Eve, I wanted to go home. “Fortunately, Anthony has always been more mature and he persuaded me to stay and work it out. I remember thinking then, ‘Look what I’ve gone and done.’ I thought it was the end of my life.”
Five years ago, the couple celebrated their golden wedding anniversary and Mellor has said her achievements would have been impossible without him at her side. “More than anything he is a massive support for me; emotionally, he’s there for me. Juggling all these things, I need a lot of support,” she said.
Another huge inspiration in Mellor’s life was her mother. Dinah raised her and her brothers, Philip and Robert, after divorcing their abusive Catholic father, George, when Kay was two years old. Dinah made her daughter promise she would go back to education after the birth of her first child, Yvonne, who is now a successful TV producer. And she delivered a bombshell of her own – an affair she had kept secret for 30 years and which would inspire her daughter’s play A Passionate Woman.
MELLOR kept her vow and passed her O-levels and A-levels and, in her twenties, became the first ever mature student at Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire. Incredibly, the story of Dinah’s secret romance came out over the washing up one day.
“I couldn’t believe it was my mother talking: the passion, the emotion. I had to write the story,” she said.
Mellor lived all her life in Leeds, latterly just 10 minutes from the council house in which she grew up and shared with her stepfather Abe Harris, an upholsterer.
“My two brothers and I had an idyllic childhood. We didn’t have a lot of money – we lived in a council house – but mum let us daydream and encouraged creativity,” she recalled.
Mellor kept up a frenetic output throughout her life and in 2017 realised her lifetime dream of writing a musical when she adapted Fat Friends with Nick Lloyd Webber, son of composer Andrew.
Family was always vitally important to Mellor who adored spending time with her daughters and four grandchildren – Grace, Elliot, Oliver and Lily.
“I’m so lucky: each child is so different and individual and talented. It is gorgeous for me,” she once said.
“We go on holidays together as a family. We went to Mablethorpe or Filey when I was little. I can afford to take them somewhere nice because of my job, which is fabulous – and that’s what it’s all for.”