Writer and Actor Kay Mellor speaks
to the Keswick Guide Magazine
Keswick Guide's Ross Brewster spoke to writer and actor Kay Mellor, a star guest at the forthcoming Keswick Film Festival, about the story behind one of her most famous plays that turned out to be closer to home than she could ever have anticipated.
WHEN actress and writer Kay Mellor faces her audience at Keswick's Theatre by the Lake on Thursday, 10th February, on the first night of the Keswick Film Festival, there will be "no secrets, nor will there be any no-go areas."
Kay is attending a screening of "A Passionate Woman," a poignant story based on the secret of a great, but ill-fated love affair, which her own mother carried with her for 30 years before finally revealing her innermost memories and emotions as she and Kay were doing the washing up in the kitchen.
The stage play was performed at the Theatre by the Lake a few years ago, but now it's the turn of the film, which starred Billie Piper and the Royle Family's Sue Johnson as Kay's mother, in her youth and much later in life. Kay will be answering questions about a story which resonates with many people who have similar family skeletons rattling in the cupboard. Not that it's a skeleton for Kay Mellor any more now the story has been told in such a powerful way.
"It's surprising how many people come up to me after a show and say ‘my mum or I did this.' It's almost as if it releases locked in emotions they have never revealed to anyone before. It's extraordinary, but I believe if you are open and honest that is how they will respond to you knowing you won't judge them," said Kay.
"My mum didn't tell a soul for 30 years. She wasn't able to grieve which was incredible when you realise I was the first person she had told. It was literally at the kitchen sink. I could not comprehend it at first. She had never mentioned men at all. She wasn't glamorous and didn't always look after herself that well in terms of appearance."
Kay and her husband Anthony had been going through a tricky time in their marriage. Kay had decided to move back into education as a mature student and he was working as a mechanic. "I was questioning my marriage and mum said it hadn't been easy with my dad and why she didn't get on with him because he just wasn't right for her.
"It was then she spoke about the handsome, slightly dangerous Pole, Craze, who lived on the floor below. They had a passionate clandestine affair. I thought I was hearing things. Then I tuned in to what she was saying and this amazing truth came spilling out. I remember her saying he was killed-murdered. Yet things like that didn't happen in Leeds."
Kay continued: "Every week a little more came out. She liked talking about him and came alive. I could see this woman I didn't know, a passionate woman."
It was a long time, 10 years later, that Kay's brother Philip was getting married. He and her mother were very close and she resented his new wife-"even Princess Diana wouldn't have been good enough." Kay could not get rid of the story from her mind and began writing the play, disguising the fact it was about her mum. "I thought I had better take her to see it," said Kay. "She didn't cry normally, but she had tears in her eyes and immediately asked to see it again. ‘It's about me, isnt it,' she said. On the press night the audience was asking all sorts of questions about what inspired it. From the audience came a voice saying ‘it was me.' And that's when she came out publicly." For a long time Kay resisted overtures from film makers, including Sean Connery. She would not let the story go without assurances it was going to be shot in Yorkshire and tell her mum's story in a way she could live with. "At the end of the day it was my tribute to my mum and her life," she said. About three years ago she finally decided it was time to get the screenplay out.
Kay had doubts about Billie Piper playing her mother, but Piper's agent was insistent that she be given a hearing. "She came up to Leeds and had learnt her lines and just blew me away," she admitted. "Sue Johnson was rock solid. I was worried she had to climb on a roof, but she said she would do anything for the part it was so wonderful."
Kay, who had two children by the age of 19, started her own theatre career when she formed a touring company after graduating with an honours degree in drama at the age of 30. One night a woman in the audience at one of plays congratulated her on her acting and said she would willingly be her agent. A year later Kay located the card and rang the woman. That afternoon she went to Granada TV to audition a three line role as a nurse in The Practice. She didn't get the job. Instead they offered her a key role as the doctor. "I could not believe it-or the money they paid," she said.
Regular work followed in programmes like Albion Market and All Creatures Great and Small. Kay had written six plays by then and penned an episode for Albion Market which she left lying around in a brown envelope. She got a call from Bill Podmore and went to work as a script editor at Granada where she wrote for Brookside, Coronation Street and her celebrated groundbreaking series Band of Gold which drew audiences of 18 million.
The iconic Band of Gold and A Passionate Woman remain Kay's proudest work. Last year she played her mum, Betty, in a Hulltruck production. "It was wonderful. I felt mum was very near to me," said Kay, who went to Buckingham Place to receive the OBE for services to drama in 2010.
She still lives in Leeds and is a great supporter of her native county. "I drive a little Mini and that's enough for me," she said. "I live a very modest life. People say why don't I go to London, but why should I be away from family and friends and the thing that inspires me? I think integrity in my work is more important than a lot of money."
Kay revealed to Keswick Guide her next big project which is a programme for the BBC about a group of Co-op workers who win the lottery. "It's about how it changes their lives for richer and poorer," she said. "I have written one episode and the working title is The Syndicate. The BBC say they love it."
So where does she get her marvellous storytelling ability from? "My mum was a storyteller. She didn't read books, but she told us stories. She was just an ordinary woman, but it turned out she had a fantastic story of her own to tell."
