Women With Balls: Maureen Lipman

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The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dame Maureen Lipman has been a fixture of stage and screen for over five decades. She has been a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company and the Royal Shakespeare Company; she is well known for her roles in acclaimed films like Educating Rita and The Pianist; and most recently she has had an award-winning run in soap Coronation Street. For a generation she will always be 'Beattie': the grandmother from the BT adverts.

On the podcast, Maureen talks to Katy Balls about her journey from 'the cobbler of Kazimierz Dolny to the cobbles of Corrie'. They discuss selling comedy as a commodity, whether you can separate art from the artist and her most recent role in a Christmas panto.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons. Photo credit: Jay Brooks.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get three months of The Spectator for just £15, plus a free bottle of Paul Rageé champagne if you go to spectator.com.uk,
0:08.3	forward slash, jingle. This offer is UK only and time limited.
0:16.6	Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak today's Trailblazers.
0:21.9	My guest today is an actress, writer-comedian, and to put it simply, a national treasure.
0:26.7	Trade at Lambda, she was a member of Lawrence Olivier's theatre company and completed a season with the RSC.
0:32.4	On stage, she's perhaps best known for her roles in See How They Run, and her one-woman's show Rejoice, a homage to the actress Joyce Grenfell.
0:41.2	In film, she is known for her roles in educating Rita,
0:44.2	in the last carry-on film, Carry On Columbus,
0:46.8	and as a matriarch in the award-winning the pianist.
0:50.1	While a generation will always think of her as a grandmother Beatty in the BT adverts,
0:54.2	most recently she has had a long-standing and award-winning run in the Soap Coronation Street.
0:59.0	My guest today is Dame Maury Lipman.
1:07.3	Thank you for joining on the podcast today.
1:09.9	We always begin with a similar question.
1:12.0	Some say it's loaded.
1:13.6	Was yours a happy childhood?
1:15.8	Looking back, I think it was.
1:17.8	My parents were combative, let's put it that way.
1:21.3	They were a marriage of slightly chauvinistic dad, slightly,
1:26.4	and a rather ingenuous mum.
1:29.3	And there were lots of battles, not plate throwing or punching battles,
1:33.5	but when I met my husband to be Jack, we both realized that we were almost incapable of having a proper row
	...

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