Maureen Lipman initially proposed to her fiancé David Turner as a joke (Image: Jay Brooks)
Maureen Lipman can’t stop laughing. She’s laughing at me, not with me. I should be embarrassed, even insulted perhaps, but I’m not because I’m too busy chortling along.
“You’re seriously asking me what kind of person my pantomime character is? What sort of character she has?” she cackles. “I’m playing Mrs Potty in Beauty and the Beast, darling! She’s a teapot! It’s not bloody Chekhov! I haven’t exactly dug deep into her backstory. You’ll be asking me what her motivation is next!”
Whip-smart and very funny, that’s Maureen.
A Dame and a National Treasure to boot. And, I’ve just learned, an actress who says she has pantomime running through her like letters through a stick of rock.
“Panto is such a British thing – it’s in my bones. I’ve loved it since childhood. It was the only time I went to the theatre in Hull, my home town. Every year, I would be there on the edge of my seat, breathless, in my nap coat with the elasticated gloves hanging through the sleeves.
“Every year I’d wait for them to say, ‘Are there any little boys and girls who’d like to come up on stage?’ You probably couldn’t say that now!
“Anyway, I’d be out of my seat and up on stage to do whatever. I just loved variety. And I liked the story being told, because these fairy stories teach you things about life much more than issues being pumped at you in various guises on television. Fairy stories have a strong moral.”
Maureen Lipman is playing Mrs Potty in Beauty and the Beast this Christmas (Image: Sparkled Press)
Maureen’s first professional foray into pantomime was in a production of Aladdin in Watford when she was 21. Since then, she’s starred – again in Aladdin – at the Old Vic in 2004 alongside Sir Ian McKellen, while in 2016 she played the Bad Fairy in Sleeping Beauty at Richmond Theatre in Surrey. It’s at Richmond again where she’s playing the aforementioned Mrs Potty.
“In Sleeping Beauty, I just had to come on and snarl and be nasty,” she laughs. “It wasn’t too strenuous. This year will be tougher. I’m eight years older for a start and it’s two very strenuous performances a day for four weeks. I hope I have the stamina to do it. I can only do my best, what I can do.
“If I flake, I flake! It’s a very long day – the make-up starts going on at around midday and then you’re at the theatre until after 10pm. It will be a bit like resuscitating the dead every day!”
Maureen, 78, intends to include some Ologies in Mrs Potty’s repertoire in memory of Beattie, the iconic character she played in the famous BT ads from the 1980s. Plus, she has a few songs to belt out and she’s looking forward to it – even though her old drama school pal, Lesley Joseph, 79, has advised against it.
“When I told her she said, ‘Oh no! No, darling you mustn’t sing!’ Lesley and I don’t hold back with each other – we’ve been friends since the 1960s. When we get together, we love a good bitch about the business.
“Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, me singing in the panto. I’ve been having singing lessons with a wonderful teacher. In addition to getting me ready to sing, there’s an added bonus. I was a bit breathless before I started the lessons, but no longer. I’d recommend anyone to have a singing lesson because it really teaches you to breathe properly and makes you realise how much lung capacity you actually have.”
It’s impossible to ever imagine Maureen struggling to get her words out.
Witticisms come so naturally to her and almost everything she says is tied to a gag or good humour. The only time the Jewish actress turns more sober is when she discusses the rise of anti-semitism, which is at its highest level across Europe since the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Earlier this year, Maureen described left-wing actors’ polemics against as being “close to fascism”. Speaking today, she says: “Jewish people are always scapegoats. We have been for thousands of years. Something in the world is awry? Blame the Jews. The situation in the Middle East is tragic but what must not be forgotten is that Hamas are a terrorist organisation, not freedom fighters.
“This doesn’t win me many friends on the progressive Left but there we are. Queers for Palestine? Under Hamas, they would be thrown off a roof. What is forgotten by so many, it seems, is the October 7 attacks in .”
She considers the , which doesn’t describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation, to be biased in its reporting of the atrocities. “I do what I can. My mantra has always been to stand up, show up and speak up, and that will never change.”
She’s busier than ever and has not one but three short films about to come out. My Neighbour’s Ass, which just won Best Short Film at this year’s UK Jewish Film Festival, stars Maureen as a widow left to care for her late husband’s donkey.
“It is funny and good,” she says. “My co-star remembered every one of his brays.”
With just Christmas Day off, however, you won’t find Maureen cooking up a storm in the kitchen come December 25.
“No, my hands will not be going anywhere near a turkey’s bum this year,” she asserts. “I intend to spend most of the day submerged in a warm bath and recuperating. My two grandchildren aged 12 and nine like doing the Christmassy thing but, being Jewish, we also celebrate Hanukkah. This year, even more so than usual. My chap, David Turner, is quite religious, you see.”
Maureen Lipman with fiancé David Turner at a book launch in September (Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Ah yes, Maureen’s fiancé! In September she announced she was engaged to her former businessman partner of less than a year. She proposed as a joke.
She and David were on a train back to London from Edinburgh when he mentioned that it just happened to be the minor festival of Jewish Tu B’Av – a day when a Jewish woman can ask a man to marry her. Unable to resist, Maureen slid under the table separating her and David, got down on one knee and proposed.
To her surprise – and “slight panic” – he accepted.
He will be her second husband. She was married to writer Jack Rosenthal from 1973 until his death in 2004. After Jack, Maureen met computer expert Guido Castro in 2008 and was with him for 13 years until he passed away in 2021.
“I feel very lucky to have had three exceptional men in my life,” she reveals.
“David and I are looking at wedding venues at the moment. I’ve no idea if we’ll find one. David has about 9,000 relatives whereas I have four cousins. You can’t walk down the street without him knowing someone.
“What’s really important is that my two and his three grown-up kids are happy about it and they get on. It’s all very exciting.
“We’re enjoying this unexpected Indian summer of late love together which has taken us both by surprise. I’m very grateful and thoroughly recommend it.”
Maureen Lipman as Beattie in BT’s iconic television advertising campaign (Image: Nationals General Library)
Who doesn’t love the ins and outs of a love story – especially a late-blooming one? And Maureen is more than happy to tell us how this one grew.
“I wasn’t really looking for a new relationship but in spring 2023, an old friend of David’s from childhood, whom I also knew, had a lunch which we both attended.
“David and I got chatting, particularly on the subject of his son and my son, who had at one time worked together. David told me that he had a website about poetry. I went on it and there was a poem about the human spirit on there. It just so happened that I was going to take part in an event called The Human Spirit and introduce a musical act.
“I thought, ‘That’s a coincidence’ and I messaged David about it. So, he ended up coming to the event and we went for dinner with friends afterwards, and then he asked me out on a date. I wrote in my diary afterwards, ‘He turned up on time in a nice clean car and we had a nice walk and went for a pub lunch. Yes, I think he’s very interesting.’ We’ve spent an awful lot of time since then saying, ‘How did this happen?’
“Incidentally, we can’t find the Human Spirit poem on the website any more so maybe I was deliberately chasing him!
“Another thing is that we both think we met each other in our youth and danced together somewhere. He didn’t ask me for a second dance. I guess we’re having it now!”
Beauty and the Beast is showing at Richmond Theatre from December 7 to January 5, 2025. Tickets, from £13,are available via atgtickets.com