Butcher’s joint...
EastEnders legend Pam St Clement takes a deep drag on a bong filled with marijuana as she sits at an easel, drawing a still life in a Puff, Pass and Paint class.
The teacher warns her, “don’t take too much”, but in true Pat Butcher fashion, Pam gives it some oomph and is soon being told: “That’s enough!”
It is a surreal scenario, but this was one of the highlights of Pam’s US road trip around California and Colorado, where marijuana has been legalised for medical and private recreational use, for the ITV series Gone To Pot.
Minutes after taking a hit on that bong, Pam says she and darts player Bobby George, another celeb on the trip, were doubled up in “hysterics”.
The bong was all new to 75-year-old Pam, who played the formidable Pat Butcher in EastEnders for 26 years. She says: “I’d never seen anything like it. It was a glass bowl with a few bits and pieces and then a pipe and a wide opening to it. It’s cooled by water.”
She and Loose Woman presenter Linda Robson, 59, Christopher Biggins, 68, ex-footballer John Fashanu, 55, and Bobby, 71, also smoked joints and ate marijuana-spiked meals on the trip.
And Pam says that having immersed herself in the world of weed for three weeks this summer, she is convinced it should be legalised in the UK. But to reach this conclusion, she and her celebrity pals first had to get stoned.
The chance to have a puff on a joint came on the very first night of the trip, at a hippy party in San Francisco.
Pam says: “It was like going back in a time capsule to the 1960s. I didn’t think that still existed, that hippydom.
“The five of us looked so out of place it was unbelievable. These two guys were banging on the bongos and Harry, who had invited us, was there absolutely off his face.”
Then a joint came round to them. Pam says: “I looked at Linda, Linda looked at me and what else could we do, really? It would be rude to refuse.”
Pam had tried pot in her younger days, but not regularly. And she says the group “were like kids at Disneyland” during the trip. She says: “It allowed us to have the wonderment of children. But within that was the serious aspect of it – what did it do to us, how did we react to it? The pros and the cons.”
They met people with different experiences. One, Judy, thought her son’s life had been ruined by the drug because he started smoking it at 14 and now had psychotic episodes. But a doctor said she was convinced a medical version had helped a 13-year-old patient recover from seizures.
Legal cannabis has turned into big business, with all products earning 30% tax for the US government.
In the Hollywood Hills, the celebs met a chef who cooked with cannabis for posh private parties. Pam says: “He was absolutely brilliant. He brought us brownies and an apple tart.”
Pam now thinks legalising marijuana for medical use in the UK would bring relief from cancer, Parkinson’s, arthritis, epilepsy and MS. And she says it would also remove dealers and “all this crappy stuff ” from the streets.
Pam is looking forward to seeing the reaction when the series goes out next week. She says: “The youngsters will be like, ‘What?’ I think my street cred will improve.”
Gone to Pot, is on ITV, next Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
I looked at Linda. Linda looked at me. What to do? It would be rude to refuse PAM ST CLEMENT ON BEING OFFERED A PUFF ON A JOINT