When you’ve been in showbiz as long as I have, you know that being purist doesn’t always pay the bills
However much flack I’ve had for whatever I’ve done, there isn’t a single job I regret because I care deeply about each of the projects I put my name to
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Your support makes all the difference.When I was at drama school one of the first things we were taught was “career snobbery”. It was drummed into us that “theatre was good, telly was dodgy, adverts were desperate, panto was ghastly and regional theatre was the ‘kiss of death’”.
Lord knows what they would have thought of reality TV shows.
I have no problem with those who have carved out a career in show business doing only the very high brow stuff – good for you, with your Shakespeare/Ibsen/Pinter credits, it's all very commendable – but I have equal respect for those who have a more varied CV.
As someone who has never been employed even as a spear carrier in a Shakespeare production, I’m slightly fed up of having to defend my career choices to folk who haven’t got a clue what it's like to hang on to a freelance career for 38 years. Yes actually, I would do a soap; yes, I’d love a nice sit down afternoon quiz show; yes, I’d kill to do Strictly, and yes, I did enjoy my stint on Loose Women (before I was sacked).
Over the decades, I’ve done a huge variety of stuff, some things better than others. I’ve been in a Channel 4 sitcom described as a “Texas sized turkey”, booed off stage at comedy gigs, experienced the West End flop, looked out at empty auditoriums and had gigs moved from “the big space” into the foyer.
There have been golden moments too – awards won, radio series re-commissioned, a novel hitting The Times top ten, some standing ovations and just that quiet satisfaction now and again of having polished a joke into a beautiful thing.
As I approach 60, I can see my career as it stretches out behind me, a series of roads twisting and turning and frequently going round in circles and however much flack I’ve had for whatever I’ve done, there isn’t a single job I regret.
Which brings me to my latest gig. Around a year ago I was approached by a pharmaceutical company looking for a face to front a new hormone-free vagina moisturising cream. I was in the right age group, i.e. menopausal, and I belonged to the unlucky percentage, i.e. roughly half of all 50-plus women who suddenly experience severe itching in the pant area.
This skin irritation is quite mad, at first I didn’t know what was up. I’d heard of vaginal dryness, but I hadn’t realised that it affected the area surrounding the vagina and that it itched like a bitch. Back then, I would wake up at 3am convinced that a mosquito had got into my pyjamas, fortunately my doctor soon put me right.
It's not just menopausal women that suffer from vaginal dryness, women undergoing chemo and those suffering certain autoimmune diseases can cop it too, and unless the condition is managed, it’s miserable and so that’s why I jumped on board.
Let’s not be naive here, they did pay me and handsomely, but once the filming was done, I was really proud of it. The ad is very straightforward, they haven’t tried to disguise the product under a heap of metaphorically withered flower petals or some dried fruit, it's just me sitting on a sofa and talking to the camera about a medical condition that affects up to half middle aged women and what can be done about it.
It’s not the first ad I’ve done on the telly. Many years ago, I advertised a certain type of vacuum cleaner. The TV ad was accompanied by a billboard campaign which featured the tagline, “nothing sucks like an Electrolux”. At the time, Kings Cross was a red light area and across a billboard by the station, a sex worker scrawled “I do, phone Karen on 7999…”.
But this is only the second national TV campaign that I’ve fronted as myself. The ads began airing last week and apart from a few men getting in touch with me on twitter with “trying not to puke” memes or gifs (I don’t know the difference), the reaction has been positive. In fact, I don’t think many viewers have batted an eyelid.
Ok, so some people have questioned its pre-watershed appearances, but that’s down to the advertising authorities, I have no control over that sort of thing and by the way, your squeamishness isn’t my problem either.
As for those sneering at performers like me, who juggle their work from month to month, mixing passion projects with the practical, for your information, this week I didn’t just feature in a television ad for a vaginal dryness cream, I also contributed some material (along with other writers) for an updated version of The Assemblywomen, a play originally written in 392BC by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. So for all the purists and snobs out there, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.
All I want to do is work until the legs go, and at that point, if there’s a Stannah Stairlift gig up for grabs, then it’s mine.
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