Rachael Stirling

0:00Give me an R, give me an O, give me an S, give me an E, give me a B, give me a U, give me a D, give me a Rosebud. Cue the music.

0:33This is Rosebud, and you're about to meet a brilliant actress called Rachel Sterling. We had a wonderful conversation. We've recorded it. You're going to hear it. In fact, we began our conversation by talking about a day, about a quarter of a century ago, when I interviewed a great actress, the great Dame Diana Rigg. And I interviewed her for the Sunday Telegraph. For me, that was a very memorable day, because Diana and I, we knew each other a little. We actually had lunch at the National Theatre, and I remember we ended up holding hands and even feeding each other. pudding you know over the lunch and the reason that Rachel and I were talking about this is that Rachel Sterling is Diana Riggs daughter.

1:21Rachel is a hugely distinguished actress herself twice nominated for the Olivier Award one of the stars of the brilliant television comedy Detectorists currently on stage in the West End in a remarkable play called Giant it's a play about the writer Roald Dahl and his controversial anti-Semitism. Now this conversation with Rachel, it's different from the one I had with her mum. Her mum and I, we did talk about sex a bit, but not as much as I would have liked because it was, of course, me writing it up for the Sunday Telegraph. We're a little bit more uninhibited with Rachel because I think she is a little bit more uninhibited than her mum was, but she's very like her mum in many ways.

2:06She's tall, she's brilliant, she's beautiful. We talk about acting and much more. This is a podcast about growing up, about teenage rebellion. Most of all, I think it's about the unshakable love between a mother and a daughter. So, welcome to Rosebud with Rachel Sterling. Trigger warning, this podcast is not for the faint-hearted. there may be sexual references and anatomical detail. Stay tuned. I think after that you definitely will.

2:52I'm going to tell you later about how the last time your mother and I had lunch, Yeah. We did feed each other. Did you? I read, I think, was it at the National? Yeah. I read, because, well, I'm writing, and I read your interview. Yeah. And have quoted her from your interview in my book. Oh. Because how much did I say in the interview? Did we talk about sex? No, you were so lovely. You told her she was sexy, and she responded in kind. She did. Yeah. We did. We were ridiculous. We were ridiculous. This was about 25 years ago. It was a lot of laughing, I imagine. We laughed so much. We had lunch at the National Theatre.

3:36We were the only people in the restaurant. Yeah. And a little side table. I was interviewing her. And we had several things in common. One of which is that we'd produced books at the same time. Yes, rivals. Rival books. Mine was about great theatrical disasters. Hers was about great theatrical disasters in reviews. Yeah. Hers was brilliantly called No Stone Unturned. No Turn Unturned. For fuck's sake. Exactly, no turn unstoned. Bernard Shaw. Is that the origin of that line? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we met. Of course we got on well. And for some reason, I don't know why, we became very intimate. Yes.

4:14But I think just you told each other the truth and you got right to the heart of it, didn't you? And she was talking about her tits dropping. Yeah. Stuff that happens in age. Yes. And you were saying, but you're still sexy. and I think because she was so sort of famous and revered, not many people said you're still sexy. Do you know? I know. For people of my generation, you must have heard this a lot from people of your parents' generation, because of her being in The Avengers in the 1960s, she wore, which was a very strong, it was an empowered girl, but it was also a very sexy girl. Very. So to teenage boys like me watching this at boarding school, really we went we went we landed the house master's room in our pajamas and our dressing gowns we had wine colored dressing gowns with cords on you know lots of little boners yes exactly it was very very exciting so so she was there was a kind of erotic charge the moment you met her yeah and then we fell into talking about and i don't know whether this whether the editor cut this from the interview i think maybe discretion cut it from the interview we talked about what it was like.

5:25We imagined having sex at our age. Yes, it's in the interview. She says you can't get on top of your lover in broad daylight. That is, exactly, that was the problem. And we then visualised it and I said, don't worry, you won't have to because I shall be on top of you. And then she said, well, how heavy are you? And then we went into... That bit isn't it. No, because it became... And then we held hands. Oh, that's so lovely. We held hands, which was very, very nice. Oh, it's lovely. We held hands on this side and we fed each other food on the other side. Sexier than on top of one another, really.

6:04Much sexier. We're exhausted now. You need a little lie down. I think I do my lunch with Diana Rigg. Oh, dearie me. See, this is what I had to contend with as a girl. Yeah, I bet you did. Like these lascivious stares of these big, when I was holding her hand and walking around and I'd see these kind of grown men drool and turn to jelly. And I think, oh, get off. You know, I didn't really understand it. I've been sort of pressing very much rewind and trying to unpick what I was aware of and what I knew and how it was sort of revealed to me. But it always felt like somebody was crashing into my mother.

6:53It felt like an imposition, like it was a sort of robbery of her in some way. We're going to come back to all this in a moment. Because I do want to know, when you first realised that your mother was famous, and that's an example of it, is when people were looking at her. In a funny way. In a slightly sexy way. And did you ask her what's going on? No, I didn't know. I just knew I didn't like it. And I'd sort of scowl at them. and thank god it was before the age of the iphone and that kind of intrusion because people would endlessly be taking photographs oh she'd be and i find it i'm i'm a little bit twitchy about it i'm not very recognizable my guy garvey my husband is and i get very often asked to take pictures of guy with somebody which um guy takes the piss out of he thinks i'm sort of cross about it because i'm not right it's not because i'm not recognizable thank god it's because i can't bear when we're out somewhere especially with jack our son the people feel the need to come up and kind of touch and intrude and and i should be more generous because i have experience of it and i am like trying to be more generous but i am i kind of get my hack it gets my hackles you should be brian cox because he's played in succession when people come up and ask him for a selfie he can Fuck off.

8:05Exactly. So he does that and says, I'm just kidding. And then he walks away. Let us begin, Rachel Sterling. Great name. Why is the Rachel with an A-E? Is it Scottish or something? I just liked the spelling of it. But I'm actually Rachel Atlantis Sterling because I was born with long legs, the goddess of running. Yeah, and I knew that when I was in trouble, my mother would use all three names, come in and close the door, Rachel Atlantis Sterling. It's a great name. So, Rachel Atlanta Sterling, what is your very, very first memory? I've listened to your other wonderful interviewees, and they're right.

8:47There are so many factors to it, aren't there? But my absolute first memory, and of this I'm pretty sure, is of having my head between my mother's thighs as she bent over me on the lav and wiped my arsehole. It was sitting on this loo that my mum had in her bathroom. It must have been the potty training phase or the loo training phase. And it was one of those loos with a, like a throne. Somebody's taken a sort of Edwardian loo seat and put it on top of a regular commode. And so it was on this throne and my safest place in the world, it was the most comforting thing in the world, was to have finished my business and my mum putting my head between her thighs and she bent over backwards and would oh you've got such a lovely bum look at the bum and you've just done a massive turd and nothing could be more beautiful as far as she was concerned so everything it was the happiest safest space and it feels like a cocoon and I've really racked my brains because because I've been writing a book.

9:52And that is my earliest sight, sound, smell, memory, is of having my head braced between her thighs. We have established who your mother is. She is the actress Diana Rigg. Who is your father? My dad, Archibald Stulling, is a... I always thought he was sort of aristocratic Scottish, but he's not. He's landed gentry. and he was brought up to believe he was going to inherit these vast lands this huge estate Keir and Corder in Scotland which come the time I think he was married to my mum when he discovered that his father had made some dodgy business deals and it was sold out from under him so he's sort of he's a businessman these days trying to pay off what was considerable debt and trying to hold the bits of land together that we still own.

10:47How did they meet your parents? They met at a dinner party. I don't know who it was given by but I know it was pretty immediate and that my mum had been married once before to a fella called Menachem Gwethem who was an Israeli painter and they'd had a really tempestuous, my mum was so vociferous about the fact she was never going to get married despite the fact her parents, Beryl and James, had an incredibly happy, devoted, almost exclusive marriage. One of those marriages where, like, Beryl, my grandmother, husbanded James to such a degree that she was sort of jealous of James's love of my mum.

11:32And I don't know that she was a very loving mother in that regard. But anyway, my mum, despite their very happy marriage, said really loudly all the time on every interview she ever gave that she was never going to get married and then she got married to this ridiculous man manakam who was an artist really high maintenance i mean he's sort of throwing things out of the window and all sorts of idiotic behavior and they had this ghastly marriage that lasted for about three months and she went to israel and came back uh and then they divorced they separated manakam through all of her items out of the fifth floor window.

12:11And the only thing she remembered was all her shoes lost their heels on impact. Or a really expensive shoe. And that was the end of that. And then she swore she was never going to marry again. And then she met my dad. And my dad, I think he came from such an opposite end of the world. And he made everything look easy. And he had, in those days, money. And mum normally was the one used to being the person who was paying for everything because she was so successful at the time. and she was a kept woman and she thought, this is what I want to do. I think he introduced her to swanky duchesses and all sorts of things and she saw a different way of life.

12:50I also know that their brains meshed. They made each other laugh a lot and they fell properly, truly and deliciously in love. Was he tall? Tall, very handsome and it was fireworks between them. and they had mum they were filming mama was filming ghastly what was it terrible little night music with elizabeth taylor who was pissed as a fart every day drove mama bananas they were in vienna dad had gone to visit her they were bored of watching horses walk backwards so she threw the pills out the window don't get pregnant pills out the window and they conceived me out of sheer boredom explain it forgive me about the horses walking backwards isn't that what they do in Vienna.

13:35Oh, I see. The famous horses. I'm so sorry. I thought this was a feature of the film that they were making. That there were some horses. There were horses walking backwards. It was a notoriously unsuccessful film, wasn't it? Notoriously unsuccessful. All sorts of... So, those famous horses that do indeed do that walking forwards and backwards. Enough of that. Enough of meatballs. Throw the contraceptive pills out and let's get busy. And you were the result. And I was the result. And she kept thinking she had been eating so much stodgy Hungarian It was those stodgy Viennese food and schnitzel, etc.

14:06And that was why she kept getting a bit porkier for her corset week in, week out. But Mama had got gently up the duff and was gestating all the while. And I was nearly called Vienna. Quite pleased I wasn't called Vienna. That's quite a good name too. Vienna. Vienna Sterling. Actually, Vienna Sterling is not bad. Rachel Atalanta Sterling is very good. What's your first memory as a little girl of them together, of your mother and father together? Oh, they had a huge bed on there. I was on the top floor with one of a series of live-in nannies. So it was quite old-fashioned in that way. I used to say I had sort of 28 nannies and I could name them all, but everybody said I was drowning in self-pity and I'd made half of them up.

14:58But I think I had at least 28 nannies. Did you have so many because you were an impossible child? Must have been an impossible child. I don't know quite how I got through them so quickly. Some of them must have been fired. I mean, some of them, you know, some of them were a bit naughty. I mean, it's a live-in situation, isn't it? So you'll bring somebody who's in the bosom of your family. And my father's quite short-tempered. So I imagine, I remember there was one nanny, can't remember her name, who used to say, Archie, do you want some beaner, Archie? By which she meant, do you want some rye beaner?

15:31My dad would go, I don't want to fucking my apartment. Fuck off. So she probably got the sack. So what were they like together? They were, they just laughed and loved. And my mum, I think, decided to be, despite having live-in nannies, she was a very physical, sort of overwhelming with love. She would make animal noises while famous, you know, biting my bum, as she would talk about on chat shows and stuff she did what beryl never did she encompassed and over and loaded me with love and affection and um and and it was and i think she taught my dad who had had a similarly sort of quite distant upbringing boarding school and i think he maybe called his dad i'm sure he called him dad i think he probably called him sir and my mum rubbed that out and implanted in him a love and an affection and showed him the way and so I remember being cocooned in love by these two people I remember thinking yet knowing that I was conceived in love I know they had their difficulties but and we would spend quite a lot of time in their massive bed um watching a telly we once had a telly at the end of the bed thrill of the age and and laughing a lot I remember that yeah why did it not last then well my dad and I won't say her name because I do it's too boring my mum was so bored and um bored by the fact that every time her marriage to my dad came up the person who he had an affair with name came up so my dad just I think predictable men also yeah just so predictable men they're all the same Same as my wife would say.

17:22And my mum was devastated and it was quite public and pretty grotty and low. It was not a great moment and predictable. And so eventually they broke up. And so she said, enough's enough. Enough's enough. Off you go. Yeah. And off you went. And how did that affect you? How old were you by then? I was 12. It was really bad. We had a summer. We were in Scotland where my dad still lives. and we had a summer, and I remember we'd sit down for lunch, and at every lunch, my dad would make me cry. I would just, I didn't know what I'd done, but I made him angry. Just the fact of me would make him angry.

18:04And then I would hear from my bedroom, I would hear at night time, I would hear rows between them. And, of course, you always hear your name in the row, because that, you know, the mum is saying, what's going to happen to Rachel? and so you think in your 12 year old brain that you've caused it so they had this fucking awful summer and then I went to boarding school which I didn't want to go to my mum always said oh you've always wanted to go to boarding school why ever since you read Mallory Towers I never read Mallory Towers and I definitely didn't want to go to boarding school but she'd plotted quite early on that she'd be able to get her career back once I'd gone to boarding school which is what my dad and all his family had always done.

18:43So I got into Wickham Abbey, which was pretty, you know, considered a good girl school. And I was so homesick. I was, I mean, I... And did you feel I'd been packed off because the marriage is breaking down? Did you think that through? I didn't think it through because I wasn't told until the first exit. You know, they keep you in for three weeks because you've got to get used to it. So I was kept in three weeks crying hopelessly and miserable. I felt like I'd been rejected. You just feel like you've been kicked out of the nest. And I'm surrounded by girls who I came to love and know, but who were, they could smell my fear.

19:21They could smell my homesickness. And you literally were lying in bed at night crying. Oh, sob, sob, sob. Yeah. And I had my first exit at, which is a weekend. And we went to go and see Dead Poets Society at the High Street Kensington Cinema. And we walked home. It was me and mum and dad because they hadn't yet told me what had happened so we went to go and see this movie fucking depressing movie thank you very much then we come back after everybody's committed suicide or died whatever it is feeling pretty low and we come back into the front door of the house and I remember my dad sort of picked up his briefcase and just scarpered out of the front door and left my mum to tell me that they'd separated and what had happened and then we just spent the next 72 two hours kind of I was in her bed we spooned and watched telly and didn't really kind of it was like the tectonic plates had shifted and it was just pretty grim and then thanks very much off you go back to boarding school it's funny my husband's parents broke up when he was 12 as well and it's something we have in common because that's such an age isn't it it's such a you're prepubescent you're all over the shop anyway hormonally and your normal is then ripped out from under you and you lost your access in them but essentially was there stuff in the papers about it yes that was the worst bit the one newspaper that my house the older girls voted on getting was the daily mail of course so on a daily basis it were photographs of whatever my dad was up to and yeah it was grim and everybody else knew and did you read them or did you avoid reading them i don't i remember looking at the pictures and not reading them if i could help it but i knew that everybody else knew what my secret that I didn't really know how to talk about and was there anybody at the school who helped you was that a teacher or one of the other girls oh I remember there was an older I loved her very much there was a lower sixth girl I can't remember her name there was a lower sixth girl who who I think was the head of our house who just sort of took me to one side and said are you okay but on the whole no I was the jelly belly wet person and I was called the only way that I could control my surroundings was by making sure that everything was immaculate in my cubicle we had these dormitories which had divided into 11 cubicles and my cubicle was like I was in the army my duvet was turned down perfectly I would hang up my school uniform without a crease.

21:53I would pull up my socks. You know, everybody else was trying to push them down and hitch up their skirts. I was like an advert for how to wear your school uniform. And I would hang it up at night. I didn't have any posters on my wall. I was just trying to sort of get through term and I counted down the days till the next exit. I was called Miss Sketchley, which was the name of the local dry cleaning worldwide. I remember Sketchley's. So I was Miss Sketchley and girls would stand on a table and pull up their socks and say, who am I? You know, and it would be me. Did it affect your schoolwork? No, I was a goody goody.

22:32You know, I loved work. I loved I was passionately in love with my English teacher, Miss Parham, whose handwriting I copied and still have to this day. And another one, Mrs O 'Rourke, who used to wear these wonderful pottery necklaces. And she was very flamboyant and she would take us out to picnics and read us poetry. and I remember we once saw a man's penis having a pee in the bush while we were outside having a picnic and we were all thrilled. And Mrs. O 'Neill went, look, isn't this wonderful? We're in nature.

23:03Did you have friends outside of the family when you were a little girl? I did. I had friends from school and I had lots of cousins. My dad is one of many. And I have still, Catherine and Georgiana, my cousins, who were born one day after me. We'd go on family holidays and occasionally I was allowed to bring a friend from school. I remember bringing a friend called Charlotte. Charlotte and I fell madly in love and we were sort of, we frotted. She was my first frot. Explain. Well, you know, just having a little rubber dub and working out what's going on. Oh, what fun. I was passionately in love with Charlotte.

23:40I think we may have tied each other up with our knickers once or twice. Oh, that's good. We love it at that. So what? Yes, we'll come on to it. I think we've come to your first crush already. Before we leave your parents, what's your first, what's your best memory of your father? A good memory? Oh, he's such a twinkler. He's a charm boat. Oh, I used to spend hours, we'd go Christmas shopping and he had this old cigarette money box that was like a sort of bigger than me and he'd put two peas in it or whatever all year round from his change and then I'd empty it out. I'd count up all the two peas and go to a bank and then I'd have to buy everybody their Christmas presents from this money that my dad had and I would spend so long in Crabtree and Evelyn trying to work out what to buy my mum my dad would get he's quite funny but he'd get a bit impatient so he'd start singing in order to get me to hurry up and he'd sing my daughter's in the water and I don't even know what to do my daughter's in the water I'd be like just get this soap tap let's get out of here yeah with your marriage to guy garvey what have you learned from your parents marriage to help you ensure that yours doesn't go the same way apart from putting a padlock on his to make sure he is not tempted he's such a good he's just not that i feel like our marriage is totally different because he's a great big hairy honest mancunian person for whom loyalty and the truth he has many more friends than i do you know he's got a huge vast swathe of manchester is his support network who know each other who tell each other the truth who support each other i love hearing all about his ex-girlfriends and all this sort of sex we have no secrets I like hearing all the salacious stuff oh do you?

25:38oh I love it it slightly turns me on in a weird way I know I mean I do because it yeah I find it slightly sexy do you? the danger with that conversation it's an okay conversation to cap if there are not too many people in the story yes yes but I think oh no but I think as I recall I'm going back a long way now it can be it's fine the first two or three descriptions oh you did that? yeah oh my god oh but Guy's done everything but yes I know I'm glad we're hearing that now. But after, when you get to the fifth or sixth, I mean... And upwards. The thing is that... What have I got to offer? We were watching the telly once and I looked at this person, came on the screen, and I went, I think I know that man.

26:19I think, oh, I think I might have. And I went, should I, do you want to hear this? Do you want, should I be telling you this sort of thing? And he went, listen, you're an actress. I'm a rock star. We've had everybody. Let's just say it like it is. And from there on in, you know, he's right. I was busy. We didn't get together until we were 40. And we've been busy. But the good news is that we won't be saying, quoting John Betjeman at the end of it all. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. For those who forget, John Betjeman, a very old man, was asked what regret he had in life. And he said, only the one not having enough sex.

26:56And he was quite an elderly... I think he was in a wheelchair when he expressed that view. So, as a girl at school, you're successful you do a levels i do a levels not very well um i was busy then so i got my my hardened skin developed after i was about 14 because of the the breakup because the breakup and actually they had swanky public school and the things they offer equal amazing amenities isn't it and things they've got in the school to offer they are and wickham abbey has the Lancaster Arts Centre, which is a wonderful, fully functioning theatre. And I was deeply involved in that. And that was when I started to go, oh, I can see that time can pass quickly when you are fully engaged in.

27:43The thing about boarding school is the weekends. You're only allowed to watch the same movie on repeat. The weekends, the boredom, the kind of, that's why girls start bullying each other and appalling things happen. But, and then I'd found the theatre and from then on I was off and I did every school play. I did everybody else's school play. And was it your ambition to be an actress even then? Yes, I only wanted to be an actress. My mum would not hear it, countenance it, absolute no-no. But then I would do everything. I did a school play at Eton. We were farmed out to go and do their school play.

28:16Yeah, by the time I left, I had also had my first boyfriend who I'd picked up in the local pub. Now explain to me, after the frotting with your friends... Yes. How did you move on to boys? I mean, the frotting was just crushes. Frotting was crushes and sort of working out what the anatomy was and kind of... You weren't thinking... You weren't thinking I'm... Oh, I would have done it with a boy if a boy meant to hand anybody. What's in your pants? I was longing to know what was in anybody's pants. Although I had... My parents were fairly naked people, I remember. But I still... mum trying to teach me the facts of life.

28:56Oh, bless her. Because I was trying. They start to have, my son is at eight and they started to have conversations about consent at his school. Forgive me, what age is this nowadays? This is eight, Jack's eight. Eight, they're talking about consent age eight now. It's about consent as to how you talk to people, to girls of the opposite sex. It's sort of, it's broaching, but it's not actually getting. But I have decided to get ahead of it all. And the reason I remember mama telling me about is I bought this book on the advice of my friend Jodie. I bought this book about what's going to happen to my body as I grow up.

29:30And it starts aged eight at a mixed school. So I got this book and I was starting to tell Jack. And the first page is what is going to happen to my body. And it's got a picture of a little person aged about eight. And then as you grow up and the hairs are growing in places and everything. And then it gets the final furlong. That's a picture of the grown up penis. but the person who's drawn it has sort of drawn a like thatched roof of cubes on top of it. And Jack and I were looking at it. Not only could I not say the word penis without howling with laughter, we were both crying with laughter as I tried to explain about the penis.

30:08And he said, mummy, why has it got a little house? Why has the penis got a little house? Yours might not look like that come the day. But I hope we're not expecting adolescent children to start shaving off their pubic hair. Or are we? No, no, hopefully not. What is happening now? They watch so much porn, don't they? Do they? Yeah, well, I mean, not that kids don't, but I know that everybody... But I remember my mum telling me the facts of life. I remember she sat me on her knee and she got this pad of her letter-writing paper in one of her green pentels and she started drawing the female anatomy.

30:56But that's actually quite complicated, isn't it? Around her head, I was like, it's a sheep, it's a sheep. That's not a sheep, that's the cervix, there's the ovary, and that's the womb. Oh, right, okay, I was quite, and then she got on to the male anatomy. I was, I mean, I'd seen my dad pottering back naked. and then she started to tell me what the male anatomy did to the female anatomy and I apparently went you don't and my mom said I found myself getting really defensive going but I do I do anyway the whole thing descended into giggles as it did with Jack history repeats so you're now doing this with your eight-year-old son I am but I'm not doing the sex bit yet I'm just getting to the yes why some boys are getting a bit hairy and also i want to get ahead of the rumors because i bought i was so actually by the time i was at boarding school 12 you get taken when you were 12 at wickham abbey in those days you got taken by the girls one year older you got taken up to the laundry room and the little ones would all sit on the floor and the grown-ups would sit on this quite high up shelf with backlit and they would tell you about the facts of life and i I remember one girl going, who knows what this is?

32:11And she pulled out a Tampax, you know, long white thing with a little wick on the end. So I thrust my hand in the air and said, there's a candle. Woke on everybody, howled with laughter. And I was that dumbass. Oh, gosh. I didn't have a clue. So obviously the sex chat hadn't, yeah, all of that. I was told a lovely story by Peter Ustinov. Oh, yeah. About the sex talk. It was either at his school or a friend's school where the housemaster got all the boys. I think they were by then about 13. And they came in in their wine-colored dressing gowns and the cords tied up. And they sat around the housemaster who said, now, gentlemen, gentlemen, I've only got one thing to say to you.

32:53Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, I've just got this one thing to say to you. If you touch it, it will fall off. You may now go. Oh, God, the shame. That's it. that's it. You don't want to touch it. But the way you're describing it, the journey of discovery is lost, possibly. The journey of discovery of what actually happened. There was a sort of mixture of too much incorrect information. And then we were separated from boys. So it was a hothouse. So who was the first boy that you held hands with and kissed? Oh, I don't know who the first boy was that I held hands with. I was longing to get on with it, you know.

33:36I was longing. I was longing to... Do you remember losing your virginity? Oh, God, yeah. It was not a good sex experience. It was... It was... Well, I mean, he might listen to this. Oh, my God. Well, we'll give him equal... He can write in. He can write in. And say it was better than she remembers. I won't... You don't need to name him. I won't name him. I met him in the pub. I was late. I was 18. And I met him in the pub in Iwickum. And he was an ex-con who'd spent time in prison because he'd been working for the post office. And every time he'd seen a Royal Britannia package come through, do you remember that was the postal delivery for buying CDs and stuff?

34:21And every time he'd seen one of these packages being delivered, he'd pocketed it. And eventually somebody had gone round to his, police had gone around his house and it looked like virgin megastore because he had all the cds that have gone through and i by then you're 18 7 i was 18 was in my last year and you can kind of fudge going getting out of school you're allowed to go out for the weekend and so you i'd go to the weekend but not really go i'd go and stay at his flat and in high wickham and you had to do a special knock on some of his friends doors because they had like racks of knives beside the front door I mean it was quite when I were you looking for a bit of rough I must have been and the thing that I was we do a lot of drinking of was 2020 do you remember that fortified wine that comes in kind of alco pop colors a lot of that anyway I had I mean you get all of this I can't I'm going to say this as well here we go so I remember coming having a holiday off at school and then going up to Scotland and I was sitting on the loo and I saw there was something moving about in my pubic zone and it was what I came to understand crabs and my first ever lover after our first had given me crabs and when I went back to school and I went back to school I didn't tell anyone and when I went back I was quite scratchy for the half term and then I went back to school and I went back earlier that I sort of said oh I've got to be back on Sunday at lunchtime didn't have to be back so I got back early went to go and see him and said I've got crabs and he the first thing he said was does that mean I've got them and I thought well I haven't had with anybody else oh finally the penny dropped that he was a wrong one.

36:14But anyway, I went to school. Did he know that when you slept together it was your first time? Yeah. And was he considerate and charming? Not remotely. Was he much older than you? Pretty much, yeah. He was a good... Late 20s? Yeah. 10 years older? Yeah. And I remember going back to school. But the thing is, at school, that we all kind of hopped in. You should have told your father, you know, he'd have thrashed him within an inch of his life. I know. Archie Sterling would have gone round. He would have done. You really would. You are a gunner. I went back to school. I didn't tell anyone. I went back to school and then I had to tell Matron.

36:52Oh, my God. I said, I remember I loved her, Sister Gibson. She was called Sister Gibson. She smoked like a chimney and you could come out the bottom. She'd need to with girls like you in that chart. I went and knocked on Sister Gibson's door. And said, Sister Gibson, I think I've got, I've got, I think I said lice at the time. and she went, oh, right, okay, well, you'll just put some of this in your hair. I was like, Sister Gibbs, I've got them down there. Oh, no. Oh, no. Anyway, I then had to fess up to everybody else and we all had to de-louse. I can't wait to get to the school reunion for you all to be, oh, my goodness.

37:32I then invited the boy, I still hadn't had enough, I invited the boy to the school final play. terrible the roses of iam all about people dying of the bubonic plague i was the vicar and my i remember my my drama teacher who directed the play coming backstage saying there's some fucking man sitting in the audience eating fucking salt and vinegar crisps and i thought i think i know who that is and sure enough what a disaster it was not good and then um i invited but still defiant i thought he looked like james dean so i invited him home for Sunday lunch. And he was late and he didn't turn up. He was late, late, late.

38:13And I ended up walking to Earl's Court tube station hoping that he'd turn up. Anyway, that was my first ghastly... Because we're a public service podcast, can you just explain to me how does one cure the crabs? What do you do? With anointment. Ah. Which matron gave you. Matron gave you. Did she have a sort of... Well, I think it might be the same thing you end up using for lice. I see. But they are called crabs for a reason because those little pincers burrow in your skin. I'm just saying. And then did she then say, well, if you're going to be doing this sort of thing, you need contraception? I don't think contraception is going to help you with crabs.

38:49No, no. But you got it from this guy who was intimately connected with you. Yes. And it was the intimate connection. Did she absorb that you would actually go to bed with somebody? Yes. I think I was the last one. Almost everybody had already done that by then. I'm so glad my granddaughter is not at Wickham Avenue. It may have changed, of course. I'm sure all these schools have changed. They have changed. Well, they have changed because also now I went back to go and do something at the school and there's sort of pass codes and everybody, you know where everybody is. We used to wait for dark to fall.

39:22And actually I would go with my friend when after dark had fallen, we would escape out of the school gates and go and spend the night with him. and, you know, go to the pub and then go back to his flat. And then we would come back in the morning in time for chapel. Nobody knew we weren't there. Well, hopefully their sins would be absolved. It was pretty outrageous, but you can't do any of that now because there are passes and everything and la la la la. And you got A-levels despite this. I got three A-levels. Well done. ABC, not very good. So what university did you go to? I went to Edinburgh.

39:58better. I wanted to go to drama school, but I was absolutely forbidden from going to drama school. Your mother was so against it. Where'd she been? She'd been to drama school, had a really nice time. Which one? Radha. I've got all the letters she writes home to her parents. She's having an absolute ball, but she did not want me to go anywhere near. Why was that? Do you think, did she not want her to compete with her? Because she had a very successful career right from the beginning. Yeah. And so it shouldn't have been. I think she was very cross at the notion already cross at the idea that I might have any form of a head start because of her that made her cross I think I was a spoiled um privileged person uh who hadn't really had to battle for anything I think I looked exactly like her which was annoying when she was aging at that time or feeling herself aging to be aging I think she was quite white knuckled about it about holding on to the reins and not letting me do it.

40:58So she sort of ring fenced her profession. And I was absolutely not allowed to go to drama school. I had to go to university and I couldn't have gone to drama school because I wouldn't have got a grant or any of that because of the overload of privilege I came from. Yes. And by then were his finances more difficult? Dad's. Oh, no, he could still, no, he, they, they were okay. He could still have sent me there absolutely and, and help me, but it was not allowed. So I got into the National News Theatre that summer and then I was asked by the head of the National News Theatre to go and play Desdemona with Tuatel Edufor and so I was up and running and I did it in every holiday.

41:41I was just constantly working but not necessarily at my degree. And you felt at home, you thought this is what I wanted you. I'd always known it. You know, at school, I was always putting on shows and directing shows. And at home, even, I was putting on concerts and playing my piano piece. And I'd charge 5p, thank you very much, to come and watch me playing my piano piece. And my mum would go, no, no, I'm not staying. She hasn't rehearsed. I want my money back. So I had a fairly hard school of knocks where that was going to happen. But I think my mum was in denial about the fact, and in fact, I read interviews now that she did around that period.

42:18does your daughter so predictable cliche question is she going to follow in your footsteps no would come out of her mouth before they finished the question but it was all I wanted to do did she become reconciled to it at the end yes at the end she really did at the end I might add though I mean I wouldn't ask her for advice because I was scared so for example Othello mama came to see Othello I hadn't asked her for any advice and two a day or two later she said Rachel come in come in and sit down and she brought out an Arden copy of Othello with 958 post-it notes in of all the things that I hadn't done in my performance that I should have done and I felt so ashamed that I'd done badly and that I'd failed her and that I mean apparently I had been okay you know the director and everybody had come and said I was okay and but um no I was I was given a good battering and the um following year summer I did that Othello again probably revised performance and then the following year we did The Odd Couple and I got an agent and then I quite quickly got a movie so I was at Edinburgh University but actually really you only needed to be at Edinburgh University I worked out for two hours every two weeks to attend your tutorial so I was actually in Pinewood filming Still Crazy not knowing Still Crazy?

43:49Yeah, not knowing what I was doing by the way it took me 12 takes to walk through a door and hit my sausage with a pair of plastic bags I did not know what was happening and I was not very good and at the time nobody knew who I was so I'd managed to kind of hide underneath my agent who'd signed me up Sue Latimer I said oh my mother's Diana Rigg and she got really disappointed because she thought she'd discovered somebody interesting rather than a subset of somebody else I mean has it overall been an advantage or a disadvantage I you of course it's been an advantage because I know that I've been invited into a room on the basis of being my mother's daughter but I also know that I was because I hadn't gone to drama school I was making it up as I went along and I was an enormous disappointment most of the time to the people who invited me into those rooms I never got those jobs and I think it was assumed that I knew more about the thing than I did because I still hadn't asked mum loads of questions because I was still shit scared of her really and she was disapproving and kind of dismissive of my work it wasn't great it wasn't great theatrical people when you were young not really I mean we had we'd have Sunday lunches and people would come from the profession but it wasn't as star studied she kept the two things quite separate

45:14how were you together at the end well here's the thing in the end our it was a love story really because by the time I started doing shows like plenty and my mum was then sort of weeping going you're a leading lady you know and I'd won her um approval by then but more than that it was when I met Guy and she approved of him and she should have married a big hairy northern poet really because that's did she have a partner after your no she had a few fellas um but then on the whole they were sort of pompous and disappointing and they would you know invite her for a drink after dinner and and the first thing they do is turn the light on above their own portrait and mum be like Fuck this for a game of soldiers.

46:02So I think she sort of resigned. But her work, after Dad left, then she played Medea, and her work went stratospheric. She's Medea and Mother Courage. And then she became a dame. And then she became a dame. Which is a nice thing, isn't it? Which was a wonderful thing. And she worked very hard for charities. She was never not busy. But we, our relationship started where we were kind of really one, as one, mother and daughter kind of unit. And then it fractured and we had, we could still make each other laugh more than anyone else, you know. But I knew that I irritated her and I was irritated by her.

46:39What was the cause of the irritation? Irritation is such an awful word. It's reductive, isn't it? But I mean, she could quite quickly get bored. Like if you realised I needed to ring her every day. I had to ring her every day. Because if I didn't ring her every day, she'd get cross and start giving me the slight cold shoulder. but not only'd I have to ring her every day but I'd have to think of something funny to tell her I'd have to amuse her on the telephone which was exhausting but I got it you know I was like that's what you want but actually mama's whole story is its own thing you know I think she was sent off to boarding school age seven and didn't see her parents for 16 months and there informed her fear of people leaving and of cutting people out before they leave as a sort of self protection thing but with me um and mama towards the end we really came together and then when she got ill she'd just come to the opening night of love love love this great funny play of mike bartlett's and she just found out she had cancer and it was as covid was hitting so suddenly mum told me she had cancer all the theatres went dark and I became her carer and looker after a nurse person and then um she came to live with me and I was her carer and I looked after and towards the end you know um mama would say we're the same person you know it's like we're the same person I knew what she wanted before she wanted it and I would you know I would sort of sleep at the same hours as she was sleeping and was looking after her endless lists of meds and all that sort of stuff and her friends many said oddly it's like she's the happiest I've ever known her because I think all this sort of dancing around each other and competition that stupid stuff had disappeared and really there was just profound unalterable and unchanging love which I had always felt for her and I think and it was a relief and a release and Guy was extraordinary and it was a happy as happy an ending as one can have.

48:56Were you with your mother when she died? I was in the next door room it was so funny I always knew the palliative care nurse person from lovely St Christopher's came to talk to me about what it's like and he said listen you've got to not be surprised there are different kinds of people in the world there are people who want to be surrounded by their loved ones as they take their last and there are people who are almost sustaining life for the carers around them not wanting to let them down and you may find that you go to buy milk in the local shop and it's at that moment that you're that they die and I knew exactly which one mama was because um a whenever she was ill she would just take herself off to her bed like she'd go i'm dog in a basket and she'd go to her basket and you just didn't see until she was feeling better and i knew and also she was quite funny because a couple of people who came to visit would get emotional by her bedside and she would go no keening no keening by my bedside so i knew that he was mama that was you know and we had very banal conversations the night before she died i knew i knew that she wanted to die she'd had really 24 hours too long of of real of pain when the mouth is ulcerated and you can't get your lips back over the teeth and it hurts to breathe and it hurts to be and the painkillers don't work anymore and I couldn't it was ghastly and she was cross with me and she wanted me um I've had enough put a well she couldn't talk that loudly but I knew she wanted me to end it and I um I couldn't put a pillow over her face because I had a three-year-old son so I um but I you know I I did everything within my power and um I went to I was giving her the meds all through the night so I'd set an alarm I've still got weirdly so many alarms with names of drugs I can't pronounce on my phone but I was going into her room every waking up every two hours to give her different stage of drugs that I was allowed to do and um and the last time I went into her room uh she was doing they call it the death rattle and it's have you heard it it's incredibly loud and you know they're beyond conscious now.

51:31They're deeply, deeply between the worlds, as it were. And the bodies, and you can hear, it is a rattle, but it's unbelievably loud. And I went in to give her her last dose and I thought, this is it now. But the death rattle, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, can go on for up to 48 hours. So weirdly, I gave her these drugs and I sort of sat with her for a bit and then I went next door and I wrote in my diary and then I went to sleep and I slept through the alarm that was supposed to wake me up two hours later. I slept through it and I woke up with a start two and a half hours later thinking, oh my God, I've forgotten to give her these meds and actually thinking, I really hope that she's dead when I go in there.

52:20And if she's not dead, she's going to be really angry is my biggest worry and I went next door and she had died probably 15 minutes earlier and I think that had I gone into the room and had I disrupted her and had I not slept through my alarm she probably would have hung on for another four hours or something like that but I just knew and I went in and she was peaceful and she was warm and I just sat with her for a bit I managed not to cry up until now but I just sat with her for a bit and it was um one of those moments where you go right the I'm gonna have to tell the world about this in a minute but I'm not quite ready yet I'm just gonna um it be you and me for a bit and sort of sit with what's happened and then um Jack had just started school and uh so I um I I sort of I sat with her and just held her hand and then I called, I said, I went, hi!

53:24And my voice was quite high. And he just said, I knew then that she'd gone because of that sort of cadence. And then he came upstairs. And it was very, it was very calm and very, it was a great and a profound privilege to look after her. And we did death pretty well, I think, between us. Well, you've done this conversation pretty well between us. Have you become a better actress since her death? The reason I ask that is because I was a friend of Colin Redgrave and I was lucky enough to know his father, Sir Michael Redgrave. Oh, wow, yeah. And Colin was released by his father's death, I think, not consciously.

54:09He loved his father, was devoted to him. But it gave him, it allowed him to be himself. And I think towards the end of his life, Corinne was a much better actor than he'd been when his father was alive. I think that's true, absolutely. I think there's a sort of willingness to please that I had. I don't have any more. And I used to scare myself on stage when I hit some low notes in my voice. It's my mother telling me off. And I just sound like her. And I would sort of shy away from that. And now I don't shy away from it. I go there on purpose, you know, and I celebrate it. There's that whole funny thing.

54:45I'm trying to unpack that Nepo baby word and conversation. And are you still a Nepo baby if your mum's dead? I don't know. But as a Nepo baby, I realised what I should have done from the off was just go, yes, I am Diana Rigg's daughter and how lucky am I and celebrated it. But because our relationship was so complicated, I would go into casting meetings with people and they would say, your mother's Diana Rigg. And I would say, no. You deny it. and they would go oh but you look quite like whatever and I got my agent would bring me up and go how did you we're going why are you and I was like because I don't want to just talk about that you know I want to talk about to go ever work together we did twice we did uh Mark Gatiss wrote us a Doctor Who about a mother an appalling mother who's trying to start the perfect human race Anyway, I was her daughter who she'd experimented on and was blind.

55:45And Mark Gatiss, I told Mark, because we were doing a show together, about Mama had had two knee replacements, she wasn't doing her exercises, so I would, between shows with the recruiting officer, put a scarf around my head and get on the tube and go and give Mama her physiotherapy and then go back and do the evening show. And I would tell Mark all the funny things that came out of her mouth, which were many. For example, in the hospital ward saying, I don't like looking at sick people. And of course, he just put them straight in the script. So along came this brilliant script called The Crimson Horror.

56:17And I said, Ma, Mark's written this for us. What do you think? And she said, oh, yes, I think this is going to come to me very easily. I never understand why these parts come to me so easily. It's because she'd said everything that was in the script already. So we did that. But that was awful because I'm being bullied by her. So that was our not very good working experience. And then the second time that was brilliant was Mackenzie Crook writing Detectorists. I'd already done a season or two seasons. And he said, I'm writing a part in and she'll be your mother. And I said, my mum loves the show.

56:53You've got to ask her to do it. And Jack was around then, actually. Jack was on set with us. I just had him. I think I was breastfeeding. And I had a Winnebago, much to Toby Jones's annoyance. Nobody was allowed Winnebago because there was no money. But because I was breastfeeding and all that, I was given this little Winnebago, and me and Mama and Guy and Jack would all hang out together on set. And that was a happy memory. And also because the work was just so easy. I don't know if you've seen the show, but the scripts are so beautiful. Everybody loves it. You've got to get Mackenzie on here because he's got the most, he can remember being born.

57:29Ah. Yeah. He remembers the feeling of his skin hitting oxygen. It is just about possible. We have had Alexander Armstrong remember that, the juddering feeling of coming out of the womb. No mention of crabs. But nonetheless, it was pretty descriptive. I'm afraid so. Some things do just tramp onto him. Clearly, I'm fine. How did you meet Guy? I met Guy at name-drop Benedict Cumberbatch's wedding, where both of us had partners at the time. But we'd both gone thinking, we're not quite sure, we'll just go to this wedding. Don't really go to a wedding. we'll go to this wedding and see what's out there guy says he went with 80 cigarettes and came back with me and i say i had um been introduced to elbow and loved their music and loved his lyrics and his voice and i'd gone with my friend with andrew scott as my wingman and guy walked in the room the night before the wedding and my i went and andrew just went what is wrong with you and And I was like, and he just sort of sent us out on a cigarette date, I think.

58:38And I got was a bit giggly and over refreshed already, I think. And Guy was in the middle of telling one of his long stories. And he I was standing beside him, overexcited. And my heels started to go on the edge of the grass, the turf, the pub, where it was. We were standing outside this pub. And I started to very slowly fall backwards. and Guy, without breaking off his sentence, just turned around and scooped me up by the elbow and brought me back up to the vertical and kept going with his story. And I thought, well, now I love you even more. Great. And it's, how long ago was that? Eight years.

59:18We had, oh, nine years. Christ, we always forget our anniversary, we always forget everything. But I knew, I was like, right, this is it now. Impregnate me. and Guy said, listen, we need to have four seasons in each other's company before we think of anything like that. And I was like, well, I'm 38, man, you need to hurry up. But that's an interesting rule that he's created in life, four seasons. Four seasons. So we did these four seasons and I suddenly realised, oh my God, it's a leap year. So I went to go and collect him. Oh, I rang my brother Ludo and said, shall I, I think, I feel like I need to ask Guy to marry me.

59:56and he said yes yes please do it I love him so much I want him as my brother please will you do it so Ludo my brother came around to my house this is what Archer's son by his first marriage exactly Ludo came around to my house and we had we bought Crayola chalk from the um pound shop at the end of the road and we went on the half penny bridge which was the bridge that I was going to take him over in order to go to the Spanish restaurant we love and I graffitied on the bridge in chalk, marry me shindig, which is what I called him, my nickname for him. And then I was a bit nervous it might rain.

1:00:31So I got hairspray and I sprayed the chalk on the bridge. And I sort of, we did some experiments and it wasn't going to come off. Ludo went home. I just couldn't stop. I had terrible diarrhoea. Obviously I was so nervous. I went to go and get Guy from Euston station and we started walking over the bridge and Guy was as ever thinking about national causes he was talking about the NHS and the state it was in and very important things and I kept going look down now you should look down now let's look down now and guys looked down and read marry me shindig and he went oh oh okay and he just fell on the floor on his knees and then he said oh I mean I mean yes yes and then thank god some passerby saw us hugging and looked down and said has that just happened?

1:01:24And we said yes and she took a picture of us. Oh that's lovely. Yeah. Oh is that picture available? That picture's available not online. I want to see it. How lovely. And then how quickly did you have Jack? Very. I mean he was a honeymoon baby. We got married in a Manchester registry office and then Guy's favourite cuisine desert island meal is a curry. So we went and had a ruby and then we got on the virgin pendolino and um and came home and the sweet guard gave us a free bottle of prosecco and then the next day we had friends and family and we got married in the sam wannamaker theater where i'd been doing a winter's tale wonderful it's a beautiful theater oh it was lovely and they my stage management yes and the stage management when my you know did the organizing of it so because i was talking to mama about it and i said well not neither of us she was religious but um i wasn't a church goer and i had a faith but not a the thing not to sound but the thing that was the our common religion was the theater so we decided to do it in the church of shakespeare and in the theater now what are you doing you're about to open open in giant for a 12 week and this is about roald dahl yeah and you play the girlfriend wife lissy felicity crossland fine the play takes place in a hot summer of 1982 and um roald dahl has written in the spectator this is true you can find it all online had written a review calling the state of israel um pretty much i mean by the end he doubles down and calls them nazis but he was getting into he was vociferous so that is the heart of what the heart of the play is it's a lunch when um his publisher Tom Mashler, his wife is there and this imagined woman comes over and everybody tries to get him to print a retraction because the witches is about to come out.

1:03:19So we end up having a conversation about the state of Israel and Palestine. When is this on? Where do we see it? At the Harold Pinter Theatre and we start on the 1st of May. Good, well we will certainly mention that. Before we finish, a little bit of wisdom from you. What have you learned either from your parents your mother or your father or from life or from guy or from having jack or from your career thus far what what have you learned from life that you would share just to um i think it's especially uh now with everything's frightening and fear being such a dominating emotion to celebrate now and this and this conversation with you and and us being in this room together and just do that fully.

1:04:11Put the phone away and tell the truth, you know. I'm thrilled with that. I've got some strawberries that I'd like to feed to you if you feed them to me. That would be fantastic. As long as we can hold hands at the same time. We can hold hands, we can hold hands. And I promise you, there'll be no crabs. I've had all the tests. It's going to be fine. Rachel, I may call you Vienna quietly in the still watches of the night. You know, who cares about Guy? It's been wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was heaven. I didn't ask you nearly enough questions. I want to ask you about yourself. Well, there's going to be time.

1:04:48Rest assured, the best is yet to come. My thanks there to Rachel Atlanta Sterling and, of course, always to you for listening and also to you for getting in touch. We get lots of wonderful emails. Harriet reads them all. She sends some on to me, but she makes a selection of the ones that we choose to read out. So what's she chosen for this week? Ah, oh this is a short but sweet memory. My first memory writes, Laura Daly is my daddy handing me a 99 that I would not be able to finish. It was on a glorious summer day on the north coast of County Dublin where I grew up. He was glorious and so, so kind.

1:05:33That's a lovely memory. Of course, I am old enough to have been eating ice cream before the advent of the 99. 99, I think, is where you put a chocolate flake into the ice cream. And I remember on holiday at Broadstairs, oh, it was wonderful. We walked from whatever guest house we were staying in, my mother and I, across the front, past, was it Morelli's, the ice cream parlor in Broadstairs? Anyway, had a different flavour. Every day of the week. It was wonderful. But I don't recall. There was no 99 in those days. But I do love an ice cream. I still love an ice cream. I don't know why. Funnily enough, I'm not sure that it isn't better without.

1:06:20I like the idea of the 99, but I'm not sure that actually the flake works. It's too milk chocolatey. I think I want a dark chocolate 99. Anyway, that's now the end of the day. What I've become very keen on recently is affogato. I don't drink coffee anymore. I haven't for a quarter of a century. But give me vanilla ice cream with espresso coffee poured over it. Oh, that's by the by. In fact, it is by the by time. It's goodbye time. Thank you for being with us for this episode of Rosebud. There'll be more very soon. And remember, there's a lot that's gone before. So if you've missed out on other people, whoever it may be from Hugh Bonneville to Rowan Williams you can catch them in the archive yeah, that's Rosebud

1:07:45Rosebud is a Plain Jane production produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me, Giles Brandreth, with music by Phil Leppard, and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane. Room service.