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y little girl was 18 months old and when I gave her a biscuit, mother said, ‘Don’t, you’ll spoil her for life’. I said, ‘Everything you say is OK, as a mother I am going to do exactly the opposite’. “She replied, ‘You’re probably not wrong...’ “We were combative to the end.”
Why was her mother so difficult? “She was depressed, isolated and posh – and posh people don’t naturally ask for help. Look at the Royals...
“In the 1960s, US doctors prescribed her amphetamines for depression.they thought they’d found the magic bullet, and when the comedown hits, just take more.
“There were no mothers’ support groups, no Mumsnet. If you dared say you couldn’t cope, people would tell you to pull yourself together. People had been in the trenches. Three children and a nanny and you’re finding it difficult to cope? No!
“My father simply said, ‘Just get on with it’. “They took 10 years to break up and then my dad was in his heyday in New York, driving about in a sports car, and it was the peak of her depression.”
LIKE MANY 70s teenage rebels, Arabella was attracted to drink, drugs, promiscuity and rock music. “I was in a band called Bazooka Joe. Our singer Dan was the older brother of Mike Barson from Madness.they used to come to our gigs when they looked like bovver boys.
“Most of Bazooka Joe were at art school. Then Dan recruited a guy he’d met called Stuart Goddard, better known now as Adam Ant. Our last ever gig was at St Martin’s
School Of Art in November 1975 when our support band, playing their first ever gig, were... the Sex Pistols.”
After school Arabella studied drama at Middlesex Polytechnic before acting, which brought fresh ordeals.
“I was 21 the first time someone told me ‘Nice t*ts!’,” she recalls. “I had two choices – to tell them I wanted to be taken seriously... or tell them to **** off, which I did.
“Back then, you never saw a female director, props or electrician. So I never thought of not joining in. It was like being on a building site.”
Arabella suffered unpleasant Metoo incidents with prominent actors – she won’t name names. It was nothing new.at eight, a caretaker had exposed himself to her and her mother scolded her for complaining.
Perhaps a career in comedy was the only logical response.after small parts in shows such asthe Bill,weir found fame inthe Fast Show and Posh Nosh.
Now a divorced mother of two, articulate, self-assured Arabella clearly enjoys turning her childhood misery into a kind of public catharsis.the show is honest, shocking but also funny. But do the memories ever choke her up? “I’ve had so much therapy, otherwise I’d be breaking down on stage,” she says.
What would her mother make of it? “I think she’d enjoy being the centre of attention, but all she’d say to me is, ‘I see you haven’t managed to lose any weight since I died’.”
● Does My Mum Loom Big In This? (arabellaweir.co.uk) is on tour until April 24