Hello, I'm Cresti Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for

rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lolley.

My cast away this week is an actress. One of the most versatile in the business

today she's appeared in everything from carry-on films to Shakespeare. She's also

directed plays for the RSC. Born into a working-class family in the 30s, she

developed a talent for making people laugh. She won a scholarship to Radha and nine

years of hard graft in Rep Followed until she made her name in the early 60s in

the television sitcom The Ragtraid. But as her career was to show there was more to

her than that daffy blonde role. She's a zealous campaigner too. She supported

the green and women and alternative treatment for cancer and illness she's overcome herself.

Now in her 60s she appears finally to have taken the advice of a colleague who told her

long ago, lose the inferiority complex you don't need it. She is Sheila Hancock. I do

get the impression Sheila that roughly speaking after 50 or life has become better and more

enjoyable than it was before. Is that about the feel of it? Yes I think that's true.

I partly because one becomes aware of mortality and it's now never a slightly desperate

thing rather than a positive thing. So the cancer really? Yes to a certain extent. I

really did think I'd live forever until that happened to me and then suddenly I thought

well I better make the best of it because I might have only a year or two years or whatever

as it happens I've had 12. So you kind of reclaimed yourself if you like didn't you?

It was an element of that. Suddenly saying this is what I am, this is who I am. Yes that

sounds rather more positive than it was. I mean I'm working towards doing that so let's

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