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1:18

Any good stories,

1:21

keep them for the conversation. No problem.

1:25

See you soon. A

1:55

song for affection from uninterested

1:57

or timid men, usually played on

1:59

the radio. by Williams. But, as

2:01

we'll hear, her real life was very

2:03

different from the characters that she played.

2:07

Choosing Hattie Jakes for Great Lives

2:09

is Sophie Scott. Sophie's

2:11

a neuroscientist and a senior fellow

2:14

at University College London. Sophie,

2:16

why have you picked Hattie Jakes

2:19

as if I haven't already answered your question?

2:21

I was trying to think of somebody who was

2:24

a comedian and I was trying to think of

2:26

somebody whose performance I enjoyed

2:28

and who'd done a range of different things and she

2:30

just seemed like a very obvious person. She is

2:33

the first funny woman I can remember watching

2:35

on television.

2:36

You can remember, can you? Yeah. Yes.

2:39

She was on Sykes. Yes. The

2:41

sitcom Sykes and I loved that. I absolutely loved it. And it was,

2:43

well, she played his twin sister and

2:46

was funny. She was very funny. And then,

2:48

I was a bit older, they were showing all

2:50

of the carry-on films at the sort of time when you just got

2:52

home from school. So everybody, in my early teens,

2:55

we were all watching the carry-on films. And then,

2:57

of course, she cropped up later and I was listening

2:59

to Hancock's Half Hour on the radio and

3:01

she's just such a fantastic performer.

3:03

And obviously, that's just a tiny bit of what she actually

3:06

did. She was a phenomenal performer and very,

3:08

very productive. And I thought

3:09

it would be interesting to think more about her and her life

3:12

and her attitude to performance. Do

3:14

you come from a Hattie Jakes loving family?

3:17

I came from a Hancock loving family. Yeah. My

3:20

father was obsessed with Tony Hancock. And

3:22

after my father died in 2012, I started listening

3:25

to the radio programs to sort of have

3:28

contact with him because then he loved them. And

3:30

I hadn't realised how much he talked like Tony Hancock.

3:32

He talked like Tony Hancock all the time. I realised, kept hearing

3:34

my father. But of course, it's kind

3:36

of the perfect form of a sitcom. It is

3:38

the first real sitcom and it's

3:41

a form that still exists today. And Seinfeld is exactly

3:43

the same format. Three men, one woman. And

3:45

they try out a few different female

3:47

roles. Initially, there's Andre Melly being a girlfriend

3:50

or Moira Lister as a girlfriend. And

3:52

then they settle on Hattie Jakes as

3:54

his secretary who has a very different

3:57

role and has a larger

3:59

and more complex role.

3:59

ex-relationship with the three men. And

4:02

she absolutely nailed it. She's amazing

4:05

in that. Absolutely amazing. I'll

4:07

ask you if you have any favourite

4:10

hatty moments, but first I'll

4:12

give you, I think mine, I can only

4:15

remember

4:16

her words but never with a daffodil.

4:19

I seem to remember that a daffodil had

4:21

been stuck up somebody's bottom in hospital

4:23

but I can't remember why.

4:25

And this Wilford Hyde-White

4:28

character is in hospital and he's

4:30

very stuck up and people are playing a joke

4:32

on him that he's going to have his temperature

4:34

taken with a rectal thermometer.

4:35

And so he's lying there and

4:37

instead of a rectal thermometer a daffodil is

4:40

inserted. And that payoff

4:43

is of course when Hattie Jakes comes in to find out what's going

4:45

on. As matron. And

4:48

she, he says well I'm having my temperature taken.

4:51

But never with a daffodil. Any

4:53

favourite moments of your own? I do

4:56

really love the bit in Hancock's offer when

4:58

Hancock joins

4:59

the East Chie Mystic Society

5:01

and somebody says oh that sounds interesting,

5:03

who else goes? And she said oh we don't know, they're

5:05

all wearing hoods. Mr Hancock puts

5:08

his duffel coat

5:08

on back to front. It's

5:11

just beautifully served. But there's a fantastic

5:13

whole episode where they go to watch wrestling,

5:15

I think it's called the Grappling Game, and she's completely

5:18

against it and he's just terrible. This is inhumane.

5:20

Man shouldn't behave in this uncivilised manner. And

5:23

then

5:23

she goes there and she finds it extremely

5:25

exciting, these manly men grappling with

5:27

each other and that the whole plot develops from there.

5:30

Ian, that wasn't

5:30

in the script. You mean they're really trying to

5:32

hurt each other now? Certainly they are. Oh.

5:36

Kill him. Jump

5:38

on his head. Go on Prussia. Wrap

5:41

your knee in his ear hole. Miss Bew please. Pull

5:47

his nose. Bunch his ear off. Oh

5:49

good old Prussia. Step on his fingers.

5:52

Miss Bew sit down.

5:54

Control yourself madam. Have you gone raving mad? Go

5:56

on Prussia boy. Give him the O-1-2. Oh

6:00

my hero, he's done

6:03

it, he's won! Don't

6:06

let her get into the ring, come back! Oh

6:09

Prussia, Prussia, you great

6:11

big manly thing! I

6:14

don't know if it should surprise me, Sophie,

6:17

but I hear that aside from neuroscience

6:19

and studying laughter

6:21

in a scientific way, you've actually done stand-up

6:24

comedy in the past. I have,

6:26

I have. I absolutely love doing it. I first

6:28

did it because UCL started something called Bright

6:30

Club, which was a public engagement activity.

6:33

It was wonderful in my forties to discover something

6:36

that you could learn how to do, and I

6:38

really enjoyed it as a skill to acquire, but

6:40

it's also tremendous fun to do it. It's

6:42

lovely to think about scientific

6:44

stories and how you can make them funny, and it's also just

6:46

a really useful

6:48

communication tool. It's useful when

6:50

I'm lecturing or when I'm going to give talks to

6:52

have that as something, particularly if things go wrong, you've

6:55

got comedy you can fall back on.

6:56

Joining us in the studio is Andy

6:58

Merriman, who wrote the authorised

7:00

biography of Hattie Jakes. Andy, welcome. Did

7:04

you also grow up steeped in the

7:06

radio comedies in which Hattie

7:08

appeared? Yes, I really did. In fact,

7:10

my grandfather, Percy Merriman, rang

7:13

a concert party

7:15

in the 1920s in the First World War

7:18

and made one of the first radio recordings at

7:20

the old Savoy Hill Studios

7:22

in 1930.

7:25

And then my father, Eric

7:27

Merriman, wrote Beyond Arkenne,

7:30

which was on from 1958 to 1964. Oh,

7:33

one of my favourites. Absolutely. And

7:35

that became a sort of legendary show. And then

7:38

I started writing with him. I just wrote a

7:40

few series on Radio 2 and Radio 4

7:43

and then some on my own and some with other partners. So

7:45

radio has always been an important part of our lives.

7:48

And that agent actually at one

7:50

stage was Roger Hancock,

7:52

Tony's brother. Wow. So he knew

7:54

Tony quite well. Let's hear from

7:56

her. Here she is in 1975, speaking to...

7:59

Terry Wogan about auditioning

8:02

for the radio show It's That Man

8:04

Again. I don't know how I

8:06

pass the audition except that I

8:08

think at the time Ted Cavanagh thought

8:11

that he could create a character called

8:14

Ella Fant.

8:16

And

8:18

I think he thought, well, you know, he had

8:20

my size to play with and this

8:22

would be a funny idea. But of

8:25

course on radio the

8:27

public don't see you and I hadn't really

8:29

got an Ella Fant kind

8:31

of voice. My voice was rather light

8:34

and so this

8:36

character never really hit first base

8:38

at all. It wasn't until I did a little girl

8:41

character which was completely foreign

8:43

to the way I look, which is a little

8:45

girl called Sophie Tuckshop, that it really

8:47

sort of happened and you know,

8:50

I was accepted then as one of the team.

8:52

Being too young to remember

8:55

myself having... It's

8:58

that sort of show, is it? What was the

9:00

catchphrase that the

9:02

Tuckshop girl had? Oh well,

9:04

she used to eat lots and lots of food

9:06

and then as Tommy used to say, how

9:09

are you? She said, well, I have been

9:11

sick but I'm all right now.

9:17

Ella Fant, Sophie

9:19

Tuckshop. Sophie Scott, I

9:21

sense a certain professional detachment

9:23

from Hattie in that clip but so

9:26

many jokes were made at her expense.

9:29

How do you feel? How did she feel about being typecast

9:32

and then laughed at? It's

9:34

really interesting actually,

9:36

kind of reading interviews with her and in Andy's

9:38

book how she, you know, if stuff was funny

9:40

she was going to go for it, she was going to make it work

9:42

but she would say sometimes that, do we have to do this?

9:45

There's a recording, an example of her saying that in

9:47

one of the... a script reading with Tony Hancock

9:50

where she's like

9:52

a bird, he said organic more like and she said,

9:54

really always, you know, does it always have

9:56

to be that? And it is people

9:59

historically... now haven't always been

10:01

kind of, I would say, most charitable towards fat

10:03

women. And at that time it was simply a punch

10:05

line.

10:06

I am fat was just enough to be a punch

10:08

line. And that was

10:10

something that I think she was quite keen to either

10:13

get some distance from by laughing at and she would

10:15

make jokes about her weight. A

10:16

venerable tradition of people making jokes at their own

10:19

expense. That's a great way of distancing yourself from

10:21

people, anticipating people doing it

10:23

for you if you like. And you can sense a yearning

10:25

for her to do something that could in some ways

10:28

be totally disengaged from that.

10:30

It's interesting, isn't it? Early on, you

10:32

know, that she was already the butt of these

10:34

jokes on radio when she was just starting

10:36

in radio. And when I interviewed

10:38

Galton and Simpson, they

10:40

still felt really embarrassed

10:43

by some of the references to Hattie's weight.

10:46

Who worked at Galton and Simpson? Ray

10:48

Galton and Alan Simpson were

10:50

Hancock's script writers. And

10:52

I think probably the greatest comedy

10:55

writers ever. And I'm sorry, Dad. But

10:57

Hattie had always, I mean, at school,

11:00

she'd been bullied for her weight. She'd

11:02

always been overweight and was so aware

11:05

of it. And her self-esteem really

11:07

suffered from this over her whole

11:09

life, really.

11:10

If you are under

11:12

a certain age and over a certain

11:14

measurement, you have to be a comic.

11:16

If you're a lady, you have to be a funny lady.

11:19

Nobody ever gives you the opportunity

11:22

of doing anything straight. And I'm not

11:24

complaining about this because I love playing comedy.

11:27

It's a marvellous thing to do. And I really

11:29

enjoy it.

11:31

But at the same time, I haven't

11:33

had an opportunity of finding out

11:36

if I can do anything else. She says she's

11:38

not complaining. And she's not complaining.

11:41

But you can tell that she feels a

11:43

little bit sad about

11:45

it all. And I want to find out more about her.

11:47

Andy, give us a quick potted history of her

11:50

early life.

11:50

Where did she come from? Where was she born?

11:52

Who were her parents? She was

11:55

born in 1922 in Sandgate and Kent, where her father

11:59

was a rather dashing pilot in

12:02

the Royal Flying Corps and

12:04

very good footballer too. And her mother

12:07

was a nurse but who was also interested

12:09

in the stage. It was her

12:11

that gave Hattie her love of theatre. She took her

12:13

to films and theatre. Then tragedy

12:15

happened when Hattie was younger than two

12:17

when her father was killed in a

12:19

plane crash. She was trying a rather difficult manoeuvre

12:22

which she shouldn't have been doing as a trainee pilot.

12:25

And because they couldn't cope with the RAF

12:27

pension, they moved in with the grandparents,

12:30

with the mother's grandparents in the King's

12:32

Road in Chelsea. And they ran a

12:34

pawn shop and jewellery shop in the King's Road.

12:37

Pawn as in PAW then. Yes. Yes. Yes.

12:39

Let's be clever on that. And she

12:42

attended Latimer School and

12:44

Godolphin School in Hammersmith where

12:46

she was bullied unfortunately but was very nice

12:48

on her feet. She was what people didn't know. She was

12:50

a really good dancer when she joined

12:52

an amateur dramatics company. And

12:54

then in May 1939 she became

12:57

a nurse and worked in the East

13:00

End during the Blitz and she actually delivered a

13:02

baby in a telephone box in

13:04

the East End and she often said afterwards

13:07

she wondered what happened to

13:09

that baby. And then when

13:11

her grandfather died during the

13:14

war they invested in this house

13:16

in an elderly presence in Ellscourt

13:19

and she lived there really for the rest of her life. And

13:22

her brother Robin

13:24

was working at the Players Theatre

13:27

in the clerk room and got her a job on the book doing

13:30

prompts. And then one day she decided

13:32

to audition and she started

13:35

singing Mari Lloyd songs and

13:37

she became a huge hit

13:38

there.

13:39

The crowd used to shout we want Hattie, we

13:41

want Hattie. She was still

13:44

called Joe in those days, wasn't

13:46

she? And she was called Hattie because there

13:48

were two stories. One is that she blacked up

13:51

and people likened to Hattie McDaniel

13:53

in Gone With The Wind and the

13:55

family said it was because she wore lots of hats

13:57

which I think they were probably less embarrassed about.

13:59

So, but she was, that's

14:02

when she became Hattie. I mean,

14:04

if you're a fat girl, like I have always

14:07

been, then it's impossible for you to be

14:09

a normal character in a play.

14:11

I mean, no one would ever sort of fall in love with you or

14:13

you couldn't be married and have kids and have

14:15

a, you know, I mean, this sort of doesn't

14:18

happen, apparently, to fat women. I've got news

14:20

for them, but. But,

14:23

let's stick with the private side of her life

14:26

for just a moment. She had, I

14:28

believe, three key relationships.

14:31

Run us through those and do

14:34

chip in, Sophia.

14:35

Yes, she had three key ones, but she had

14:37

other ones too, which I didn't

14:39

like to mention in the book for fear of

14:42

upsetting families. But first of all, really,

14:44

she met her husband, John, the measurer,

14:47

famous actor at the play. He came to see her

14:50

in 1947. It was swept away

14:52

by her bullions and her, it was Rod of

14:54

Eve, and started going out with her and

14:57

in true dispassionate manners,

14:59

I suppose, we ought to maybe ought to get married at

15:01

some time. And she didn't

15:03

really know that was a, whether it was a proposal

15:05

or not. Because he was married to someone else,

15:07

wasn't he? Yes, yes, he was married to someone

15:09

else. So he did wait. Yes,

15:13

legally. But they started living together,

15:15

which was very unusual in those days. And

15:18

finally getting married in 1949.

15:21

But before John, the measurer, she

15:23

met this American army colonel called Charles

15:25

Kearney Randall, who used to go to

15:28

the place there, so like a lot of the American soldiers did,

15:31

and asked her out. And

15:33

this was really- Oh, he's so married, yes. Also

15:35

married. Okay, right. Yes.

15:38

But he didn't tell her that. No. And

15:40

she fully expected after the war that they

15:42

would go back to living the States and

15:44

be happy together. And

15:46

it was only at the end of the war when he went back

15:49

home.

15:50

It's the story of Madame Butterfly. Yes.

15:53

And she was heartbroken, and

15:55

was so embarrassed and rather ashamed

15:57

by this that she told everybody, even

15:59

very-

15:59

friends that he'd been killed

16:02

in the war. So that was as far

16:04

as she was concerned that was the end of the story. Sophie,

16:07

far from regarding or seeing

16:09

it as slightly embarrassing that she had passionate

16:11

affairs, I'm rather relieved to

16:13

hear it. I had thought of her perhaps as a rather

16:16

sad, lonely, overweight woman who

16:18

was good at being laughed at.

16:20

She was very happy, very sociable. The

16:22

thing just keeps shining through is

16:24

how much people enjoyed her company and

16:26

she was very interested

16:29

sexually in men and men

16:31

were interested sexually in her. Look at those photographs

16:33

of her. She really is quite beautiful.

16:36

We've left out John Scofield.

16:40

The rogue. The absolute

16:42

rogue. Patty did so much charity work

16:45

and she worked for the Leukemia

16:50

Society and one day the

16:52

normal driver was off and they instead

16:55

became John Scofield who

16:58

was a East End dashing,

17:00

good-looking. But Patty was

17:02

swept off her feet. She fell in love

17:04

with him and he was

17:07

married and she started an affair with him

17:10

and actually moved John Scofield

17:12

into the early present address. Told

17:15

John about it. John

17:17

said, oh well okay these things happen. I'll

17:20

move up into the attic then.

17:21

You can sort of feel that you've thought for a while maybe

17:23

it'll just burn itself out and it'll all

17:26

be okay. Yes. So

17:28

he was living

17:29

in the attic. Well, Patty and John

17:31

were on one of the other floors. Something

17:33

I hadn't really realized until I read your book

17:36

was in the 50s

17:39

when she's married to John LeMessurier and they have this young family,

17:41

she is the biggest star. Absolutely

17:44

and although John LeMessurier was in all those

17:46

old films and things, she was much

17:48

better known than him and when the divorce

17:50

happens it was John that said

17:52

I had admitted adultery so that

17:55

Patty's name wouldn't be tainted. Oh that

17:57

was very nice of him. Yes, yes, yes.

17:59

What's Scofield in it for the money? Well,

18:02

he did borrow money from her and he did borrow

18:04

money from her friends. And he seemed to want contact

18:06

with her friends. He wanted contact with high profile

18:09

people. Yes, and he'd made passes at most of them,

18:11

I've just discovered. The road.

18:14

There's another one, or the CAD. All

18:16

right, let's get a CAD. I'm upgrading to CAD. Yeah,

18:18

OK, it's an upgrade. And a founder.

18:22

She was desperately in love with him. But

18:25

while she was filming The Bobo, a film with Peter

18:27

Sellers, she discovered

18:29

that he'd

18:29

been having an affair with someone else and he

18:32

came and ended it. And poor old

18:34

Hattie really went to pieces then. But

18:37

she loved him and she was astonished

18:40

that he, such a good looking man, could

18:42

find her attractive. I mean, that was what

18:44

was so sad about it. She was beautiful.

18:46

Well, we pause

18:48

from that rather sadder side of her

18:51

life and get back to the burgeoning

18:53

career. You mentioned a moment ago, Andy,

18:56

the music hall, the start in

18:58

music hall. Is it true she

19:00

played a welder?

19:01

Yes, she did. She

19:04

did it in a film, Chants

19:06

of a Lifetime, which was directed

19:08

by Bernard Miles. And

19:11

she was offered a fee for this film. And

19:14

she went to Bernard Miles and said, that's not

19:16

enough. I was a welder during the

19:18

war and they worked very hard.

19:21

And so I want more money. And he agreed to it.

19:23

And she did her own welding in the film, didn't

19:25

she? Yes, she did. She wasn't done welding happening. Yes,

19:27

yes. And she'd worked. Have you done any welding,

19:30

Sophie? Tragically, no. Give me a crack at it. I'm

19:32

sure. I'll go brilliantly. The act doesn't go well.

19:35

Yes. Actually, I wasn't

19:37

being completely facetious, Sophie,

19:39

because you strike me as someone willing

19:41

to have a bash at almost

19:44

anything.

19:44

I found generally in life, one

19:47

of the few things I've learned is that it's always worth trying

19:49

new stuff out because you might find that you

19:51

like it. You might even find that you're good at it. You

19:53

know, it's always more interesting opening doors than closing them,

19:55

I think. I must

19:56

say being a stand-up comedian must

19:58

have been terrifying. The first time I did

20:00

it, I locked myself in the toilet in

20:02

the pub and I thought, it's to be fine, I can just stay

20:05

in here and start my new life living in a toilet in the

20:07

pub and slide things under the door to me.

20:09

Well that's a good line, stand up in itself.

20:13

And then I went out and did

20:15

it. Did it go well? Well it's funny, because

20:17

at the time, you stand up and you

20:19

get introduced by the MC and then at the end you

20:21

leave and the MC comes out and goes, ladies and gentlemen, Sophie!

20:24

And everybody goes, yeah! And you're like, this can go on

20:26

for as long

20:27

as it can. It's pure dopamine

20:29

being added to my nucleus accumbens, I

20:31

will take it, it's just bliss. And then I listened

20:34

to the recording again and all, I could hear it was a really scared

20:36

woman from Blackburn, which is not

20:38

what I was going for when I was talking. You can sort of

20:40

hear how scared I was at the time.

20:41

But the first laugh must have been fantastic. The

20:44

first laugh is just, you can see absolutely

20:46

why people get addicted to it. There's

20:48

very few things that are as rewarding as that

20:50

and aren't actually kind

20:51

of chemically involved, it's quite extraordinary.

20:59

But I suppose in this country at the moment, Hattie,

21:03

your name is almost synonymous with those

21:06

two deathless words, carry

21:08

on. Carry

21:09

on, yes, now that strikes

21:11

a bell. Christmas

21:13

is unbelievable, an early crescent. You'd

21:16

have about 20 people, their family and friends,

21:18

Joan Sims and Kenneth Williams. They

21:20

would start about seven o'clock in the morning with champagne

21:23

and oysters.

21:24

By now, you see, it's become a club.

21:26

All the chums, all my very dearest and oldest

21:29

friends, we've sort of grown up together

21:30

in the carry-on films, you know. We

21:33

all sort of gather every day for six

21:35

weeks and have a good old laugh. There

21:37

were three ovens going, early chrisons.

21:40

She would actually buy Christmas crackers, undo

21:43

them, buy more expensive, more

21:45

interesting presents, put them in the crackers

21:47

and tie them up again.

21:49

It is like a club, it opens a touch

21:51

early in the morning, you know, the seven

21:53

o'clock a.m. touch. But nevertheless,

21:56

you know, it is fun and it's lovely.

21:58

We love being together.

21:59

They're great fun to do. We've

22:03

done Hattie the the honor of not

22:05

going on and on about the carry-on films because

22:07

there was a lot more to her but just

22:09

give us a recap either of you of

22:12

the parts

22:13

that she played in these films. One

22:16

thinks really of her only always playing

22:18

the same part and give younger listeners

22:20

a sense of what the carry-on films were

22:23

about Sophie, what were they about?

22:25

Gosh, that's a very good question, isn't it? I

22:27

know, it's impossible. They

22:30

were sort of like a very pure distillation

22:33

of

22:34

British seaside humor,

22:36

postcard humor, lots and lots

22:38

and lots of double entendres, lots

22:40

and lots of different kinds of imagined workplaces.

22:43

So like here's a factory, here's a taxi

22:45

cab, here's a hospital, here's a prison or whatever, you know,

22:47

and then the same sorts of characters turning up in it.

22:49

So you always, it was a repertory thing, which always

22:51

had the same people and you would have

22:53

the same people playing similar roles.

22:55

So Bernard Bresler was always a bit stupid

22:58

and Sid James was always a bit lecherous and

23:00

in this and Hattie

23:02

Jakes was frequently, although not always,

23:05

somebody who was quite authoritarian,

23:07

quite uptight, but who often had like

23:10

deep passions once they were unleashed

23:12

and

23:13

rolling around with Kenneth Williams. I'll

23:15

be starting with an example of that. It

23:17

wasn't always the case, the one set in a taxi

23:20

cab film, she got to be sort of funnier

23:22

and more feminine from her perspective and sort

23:24

of younger and looser

23:25

in her attitude. Of course that was her favorite.

23:28

Her first film was Carry On Sergeant,

23:30

I think, and then she made about 14

23:33

until Carry On Dick

23:35

was the last one she made and she

23:38

couldn't get insurance. Producers couldn't

23:40

get insurance for her in her latter

23:42

years because she had put her in so much

23:45

weight she was unwell. She smoked

23:47

a lot. She was a constant chain

23:49

smoker and she liked to drink, but you know

23:51

not too much but enough to cause

23:54

his trouble. She must have made a lot of money. No,

23:58

no, they didn't make very much money.

23:59

in fact it was a constant bugbear of

24:02

all the cast really. They

24:04

were paid flat fee and that was it, no nothing on the

24:06

box office, no nothing repeats. Very little.

24:08

And the women were paid about half of what

24:10

the men were paid. Yes, no it was awful. And

24:12

it never went up.

24:21

How long Andy did her professional career

24:23

last and what did she do in the

24:26

last part?

24:27

She had a few television series in her own

24:29

name which weren't particularly successful

24:32

and she worked right until the end

24:35

really. She worked with Sykes on the TV

24:37

show and then they did touring. Was she good on TV?

24:40

Was she good? Yes. Oh yes. Yeah,

24:42

excellent. Yes, yes. They bear re-watching.

24:45

They've got some, again they've got some

24:48

uncomfortable kind of cultural

24:51

tropes turn up occasionally but what doesn't from the 1970s

24:54

but they're funny and they're well written, they're very surreal.

24:56

Yes, yes they are. We're having her

24:58

as a twin sister for us as stars. Showed

25:02

you where it was

25:02

at and there were very few jokes about her weight if I were...

25:04

No, I think there's literally one. Like

25:06

she said he let her be funny and

25:08

silly and soft. Which was terribly

25:11

sad because he was very unkind

25:13

to her at the end. When

25:14

they went on tour

25:16

she wasn't, well

25:19

she had a heart condition, she had arthritis, she

25:21

had ulcerated legs and so she had a dressing room

25:23

near the stage and he did and also she got a bigger

25:25

round of applause.

25:26

Because she was still more famous. Yes. She was still

25:28

more famous than him. She was still a big star.

25:30

Yes, so she got a bigger round of applause when she

25:33

appeared on the stage and he didn't

25:35

like it and it was very sad really how

25:37

that happened and he was the only person that wouldn't talk to

25:39

me. Really? Attie Jakes died

25:41

on the 6th of October 1980. She

25:44

was only 58. Just

25:47

a couple of last questions that I'd

25:49

like to ask you. Sophie, if she had

25:52

lived longer or perhaps if she

25:54

had lived now can

25:56

you imagine a third act to

25:58

her career and perhaps be...

25:59

being cast in more serious roles? Yes,

26:02

I mean if you look at the career of people like Maggie Smith

26:05

or some of the interesting things people get to

26:07

do on films like the Harry Potter series, I

26:10

could absolutely see her like a Miriam Margulis,

26:12

you know, absolutely chewing the scenery

26:14

and being amazing.

26:15

And Andy, we've talked about the

26:18

things that she missed in her life, we've

26:20

talked about her being stereotyped

26:22

and having a lot more to give

26:24

perhaps than the comedic

26:26

role in which she was cast

26:29

aloud her. But I wonder

26:31

whether in the end this was just someone

26:34

who was very good at one thing and at

26:36

being one thing and looking like one

26:38

thing. And I wouldn't say cashed

26:41

in because she didn't earn a lot of money from

26:43

it, but made that the

26:45

staple of her career. And we

26:47

can all think of other things we might have done or

26:49

other things other people might have done, but perhaps

26:52

we should just celebrate her not only for

26:54

what she was but for whom she played. Yeah.

26:58

Yes, absolutely. And she works, you

27:00

know, but she was the time from her first job

27:02

she worked till the end. She

27:05

didn't always like the parts that she made, but she always

27:07

was always ultra professional.

27:09

And I don't

27:11

think she regretted any of it, really. No,

27:14

I think it was it was as you said earlier, Sophie,

27:16

in her personal life, that's where the self self

27:19

esteem came in and how she looked. But

27:21

on

27:21

stage, she knew she owned it. Yes. So

27:24

which brings me to my last question to you,

27:26

Sophie, would she do you think listen to this

27:29

fairly affectionate discussion

27:31

of her and her career and

27:34

be pleased that we were talking

27:36

in this way and that we were talking about

27:39

her?

27:39

I think that she would be

27:41

pleased. She seems to have left the

27:44

world a better place for her having been in it. She

27:46

did things really well. She was a great friend and she

27:48

raised a very happy family and things weren't always

27:50

smooth, but she tried her best to do that. You

27:53

know, and that's more than you hope for at the

27:55

end of your life that you achieve that. So I think

27:57

she would be pleased. I think she would be very pleased that people

27:59

like.

27:59

acknowledged how extremely good she was

28:02

as a performer and I think she would be

28:04

pleased to be being talked of

28:07

what 43 years after her death that's

28:09

a thing she's she's still we met yeah she'd be amazing

28:11

I think I think she would be pleased she

28:13

earned that absolutely I agree with you Sophie

28:16

and she might like to know that she's one of those

28:18

people from that time most of whom

28:20

have now slipped our imagination

28:23

and our memory but she she hasn't she

28:25

hasn't at all my thanks to Sophie

28:27

Scott for choosing the life of Hattie

28:29

Jakes and to our expert Andy Merriman

28:32

and for the final time here's Hattie

28:35

speaking to Terry Wogan about what

28:37

she might have been

28:38

goodbye your big ambition

28:41

of course was to be a ballet dancer oh of

28:43

course and

28:46

still is oh I

28:53

did want to be a ballet dancer terribly

28:56

badly but there

28:58

were reasons why I got

29:01

well one big reason why