My Cultural Life - London

As a star of stage and screen, an OBE, a BAFTA and Golden Globe winner, not to mention an Oscar nominee, Brenda Blethyn has certainly come a long way since acting was just an out-of-hours hobby when away from her secretarial desk. With a career spanning three decades, Miss Blethyn has climbed the ladder to reach the rung of national treasure, and she continues to entertain audiences with every role. And, if that’s not all, I find to my delight she’s also joy to meet in the flesh, with her warm welcome, engaging manner and thoroughly down-to-earth disposition.

We’re sitting in a small stuffy studio, chatting about Brenda’s latest film, Clubland, a hilarious but heartfelt and touching tale about first love and family relations. Stories of dysfunctional families have been gracing our cinema screens for an age, and Clubland is no exception. Brenda takes on the role of Jean Dwight, a bawdy, boozy, has-been British comedienne, canteen assistant, divorcee and mother of two, who pounds the boards around the shabby Sydney club circuit. Her two sons, sweet Tim (Khan Chittenden) and his intellectually disabled brother Mark (Richard Wilson), are their mother’s biggest supporters and the family unit is chaotic, but close and loving.

That is, until a new younger woman steps on the scene and into her son’s life. When Tim meets the gorgeous, waif-like Jill (Emma Booth) and soon falls desperately in love with her, he is soon struggling with his own sexuality and the emerging battle between his mother and girlfriend. Jeans attempts to scupper the burgeoning union threatens everything and some home truths are soon faced.

Clubland is not only a love story of sorts, but a beautiful drama, sprinkled with great comedic moments, and support from a handful of Australian actors, with fine portrayals all around. Brenda delivers a characteristic performance that’s funny, empathetic and highly moving at times. It’s silly, saucy, heartwarming, but honest.

Although the character was created specifically with Brenda in mind, it was in fact the story itself which attracted Brenda to the project. “Fortunately I didn’t know Clubland was written for me at the time I was sent it, as I think it might have scared me a little bit. The responsibility would have been too great," says Brenda. “But I just loved the story, because I thought it was so tenderly and beautifully written. All of the relationships, especially Tim finding love and sex for the first time – without it being lascivious. It was just the embarrassment of it all, and also the relationship with his Mum. She behaves badly, but what do you do?”

Indeed Jean’s manner causes a combat zone between the two women in Tim’s life, and although it is Tim’s love story, I suggest it is very much a coming age for both Tim and Jean. She struggles with losing Tim, and Brenda agrees. “Of course, yes, and that’s why she is behaving so badly with that girl. She knows she is being rude and caustic”, says Brenda. “But that doesn’t mean to say she is like that all the time. In fact, as we see through the film, she has to eat humble pie. She does it in her own way, but she does it.”

Clubland features four largely unknown but talented young Australian actors in the roles of Tim, Mark, Jill and Jill’s flatmate Kelly, and Brenda insists working with the group was a great experience. “It was a joy from beginning to end”, she remembers. “Emma Booth (Jill) and Khan Chittenden (Tim) said they were so nervous about meeting me, but I was nervous about meeting them!”

“I knew the producers had scoured Australia looking for the best young actors they could find, so they really got the cream of the crop, and I thought I hope I’m going to come up to their standard. But we had such a good time working together.”

Brenda and her new brood were even given time to bond as a family. Brenda explains: “We had the luxury of three weeks rehearsal, which is almost unheard of in film. But it was to get that feeling they were a family – Jean and her two boys. I think that paid dividends. They know their Mum – what’s a joke and what isn’t. And sometimes when she is caustic to the girlfriend, they know she doesn’t mean it. The girl doesn’t, you see. In that way, the film was so beautifully textured.” 

The humour and the emotion in script is evidently one of the film’s strongest points, and the Australian’s obviously thought so too, with Keith Thompson the writer, recently winning an award for best screenplay in Australia.

And what about the whole comedy element? Playing the risqué has-been comedienne Jean involved stand-up routines. “I had never done it before and actually it was quite a bit scary,” says Brenda. “But Jo Brand gave us some pointers, and I just love her work. Coming up with the gags was interesting, as we would come up with good ones that we couldn’t use, because otherwise she would have been a big hit. But she’s not, she’s just an embarrassment.”

“One of my favourite scenes in the film is when she does the audition, because it is painful and I think if people don’t like Jean to start with, that’s where it turns. I don’t think people think that is where she got her comeuppance. I think they’re thinking ‘Oh poor woman she’s trying’.”

Jean Dwight also likes to belt out a tune, and – despite her reservations - Brenda rose the occasion with a tremendous rendition on an old classic.  “Do you know what? I didn’t know I could do that! When I agreed to do the film, I said ‘What are you going to do about the singing?’, and (the filmmakers) said ‘Oh, we’ll get around that’. But then about half way through filming, I looked at the schedule and it said ‘Brenda in studio to record Nut Bush’, and I thought ‘Hold on, what’s this, I can’t sing!” She grimaces at the memory. “But they turned around and said ‘You don’t have to sing, Jean sings!’”
 
“Anyway, so I had the first go at it, and it was dreadful, because I was just too inhibited. So I thought, Well, it can’t be worse than that, I’m just going to go for it!’, and so the next time, I did. And that is what is on the film!” Nut Bush City Limits isn’t the easiest song, but, ever the professional, Brenda excels at the attempt. “I didn’t know I could do that”, she says, “because I never had the confidence to do it. But I just had a good go and it worked!”

Perhaps we should have seen more singing from Ms Blethyn? “I actually did sing another one” she replies. “A duet with Philip Quast (as sleazy agent Ronnie Stubbs), but the scene was too long so it was cut.” And at this point Brenda breaks into song, working through the lyrics with a deep breathy voice: "Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it…”  It’s quite a moment – being serenaded by one of this country’s most celebrated stars!

As an actress, Brenda is a natural comic, but I ask who her own personal favourite comedians are? “Morecambe and Wise, and particularly Tommy Cooper. In fact, there is a scene in the film where Jean says she was watching Tommy Cooper when it happened on stage – and I was too”, she says, poignantly referring to Cooper’s tragic death while performing in April 1984. “He was very funny, though, wasn’t he?”

Earlier this year, Brenda released her long awaited autobiography, Mixed Fancies, covering the story from her childhood in Ramsgate (the youngest of nine), to treading the boards across the UK, and awards galore for the critically acclaimed Mike Leigh drama, Secrets and Lies. It’s a fascinating and uplifting story, peppered with hilarious anecdotes from beginning to end. I congratulate Brenda on the book.

“Well, thank you, but to tell you the truth, it wasn’t my idea to do it first off. The publishers asked me and I said ‘Oh don’t be daft, I’ll never remember anything!’ And their reply was: ‘Well the things you don’t remember won’t be in there.’ But I would ring my brothers and I’d mention incidents, and they would respond with ‘Yes, but don’t you remember what happened the next day when Mum found out ...’ So it was like triggering off all these memories all the time and it was very therapeutic. In fact, I absolutely loved it. “

“I started on January the first – it was my New Year’s resolution – and I said to myself let’s see if I can do this, and I delivered it in August. Plus I was working all that time as well. I had been thinking out it for a couple of years before starting, but without actually writing a single word down. And, listen, you’re a writer (she gestures to me), you’re used to doing that. I am not and I wasn’t sure if I was capable of it, or even if I could make it interesting, or even if I could make it readable. But everyone seemed quite pleased with it.”

Brenda wrote the book on her own, unlike many celebs who employ ghost writers to pound the keyboard. It’s easily readable, written simply and plainly, from the heart. Its void of big and fussy words, which is something, Brenda insists, was learnt from her father.

“He taught me this phrase when I was little and I’ve never forgotten it... 'In promulgating esoteric cogitations, or articulating superficial sentimentalities and philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Allow your conversation to possess a clarified conciseness, coalescent consistency and a concentrated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectation. Shun double entendre and spurious jocosity whether obscure or apparent.'”

After such a tongue-twisting performance, I am suitably impressed and offer up a small round of applause. Brenda giggles. “I was only small when he taught me it,” she recalls. “A little bit each night and eventually I put it all together. He said ‘Brenda, what it means is – and I didn’t know what it meant – you don’t have to use those words. Just speak plainly.’”

As our time comes to a close, we gather ourselves to leave the airless little room and I ask Brenda about her future plans for work. “I’ve got Atonement out at the moment, a lovely film – although blink and you’ll miss me! Then next week I am off to Australia for a national tour of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, which goes for ten weeks. And in March, I am going to The Royal Exchange Manchester to start rehearsing something”. She pauses in thought for a moment. “I am not sure exactly what yet, but it will be a classic!” Much like the the wonderful Brenda Blethyn herself.