Sue, how did you react when you were asked to play Sheila again?
I was a single parent worrying about what I was going to do when my little boy started school, as I wouldn’t be able to do theatre in the evenings. I’d started applying to teacher training college when someone suggested I get an agent. That’s how I got Corrie and then Brookside, and it saved my life. I owe Brookside a lot.
It was different, and relevant to people’s lives. Although [conservative activist] Mary Whitehouse went berserk in the beginning because of the swearing! All of us were learning on the job, and that excitement transferred to the screen, you felt the commitment and love for it.
Ricky and I have chemistry and history, obviously, because after Brookside we did The Royle Family. I remember Caroline Aherne telling us we were going to be her mum and dad, she loved Bobby and Sheila and wanted to bring us back together. I love Ricky, but we work very differently, he calls me “the classical actress” just because I went to drama school!
Ricky Tomlinson (Bobby Grant 1982–1988)
When Brookside was getting started in 1982, I hadn’t long been out of prison and had only done one TV job, a BBC Play for Today called United Kingdom. Andy Lynch, one of the original Brookside writers, was watching me in that and picked up the phone to Phil Redmond and said: “I’ve just found Bobby”. That’s how it happened — I got the job.
Why do people remember Brookside so fondly after all these years?
Did you ever think you’d play Bobby Grant again?
If Brookside was to return full-time after this one-off special, would you consider being part of it?
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