Speaking breathlessly between sips of tea, Su Pollard is talking about her stage debut, which took place at the age of six. She was playing one of the Angel Gabriel’s sidekicks in a nativity play and, for some reason, had been made to stand on a cardboard box. “I was telling Mary, ‘Fear not! Angel Gabriel will –’ And then I disappeared into the box. The teacher hadn’t made it strong enough.”
Little Su, demonstrating the professionalism that would come to define her career, climbed out and finished her line: “– be coming to give you a sign.” As the audience howled in delight, she realised that it was her destiny to make people laugh. Or at least so she says, with the advantage of hindsight. There is something very Chumbawamba about Pollard: the woman best known for playing Peggy, the chalet cleaner in the BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, keeps getting knocked down, but she gets up again. She’s so dogged in her relentless cheerfulness, so unstoppable once she gets going.
Sitting opposite me at a hotel in London’s Covent Garden, Pollard is about to tour the country in one of the few straight roles she has taken on since that debut 64 years ago. Fingers crossed, she won’t be upstaged or injured by the scenery. But it remains a possibility since she is playing an extreme hoarder called Birdie who lives alone in her flat, surrounded by a lifetime’s tat, of which more later.
Hopefully Pollard won’t go all Mrs Malaprop as she did during her professional debut in 1972. Appearing in a musical called The Desert Song, she was supposed to tell John Hanson: “Come one step nearer and I’ll fire!” But instead she said: “Fire one step nearer and I’ll come!” It might have destroyed some careers, but not Pollard’s. She carried on regardless, starring in panto, TV, more musicals and her own one-woman touring show.
Fast-forward two years and she’s in the final of TV talent show Opportunity Knocks, only to be beaten into second place by a dog. The Jack Russell terrier, Pollard recalls, was being held in the arms of a man who sang Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin. At certain notes, the dog would howl in tune. Britain had talent in those days, but not much. One theory about what was going on was advanced by Pollard’s ex-husband Peter Keogh in his memoir My Hi-De-High Life: Before, After and During Su Pollard. Keogh speculated that the dog only howled because, at key moments, the singer put a finger up its backside.
But Pollard reckons her rendition of I’m Just a Girl Who Cain’t Say No (also from Oklahoma!, curiously) failed to win her first place because she had removed her glasses and so sang into a speaker rather than the camera. “Plus the fact that the dog was owned by a headmaster who got his pupils to vote for it. If only I’d sung I Don’t Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar – it might have been a different story.”
Then there was that traumatic incident on the set of Hi-de-Hi! when Pollard was playing the back end of a horse. Unaccountably, there was a real horse on set that took a shine to the fake one’s rear end. “Help! Help!” she could be heard screaming from inside the costume as it tried to mount her.
But perhaps Pollard’s most heroic moment came in 1965 when, aged 15, she played Basford Hall Miners’ Welfare Club in her native Nottingham. She and her three-piece had been making hardy miners sob into their pints with My Way and You Don’t Love Me. When Pollard came off stage, she was asked if she’d like a beer. Which, sensibly, she did.
Then the patriarchy reared its ugly head. “I was at the bar,” she says, “and the chairman came up and said, ‘This is a men-only bar. You can’t drink here.’ I said, ‘This is prehistoric.’ He said, ‘I’m not having it. You can drink over there.’ And he pointed to an area outside. I said, ‘I don’t want to drink there.’ He said, ‘It’s not seemly. You’re sacked.’ I was well peeved.” Understandably – and not just because she’d been earning £35 for two 20-minute slots. “It was in clubs like that where I made my name,” she says. “It never occurred to me to get a solicitor and fight my corner. I was only a girl.”
Today, the 70-year-old is trying to overcome a less expected setback. Last year, it was reported that she attended a drinks party for Tory MPs and their spouses at No 10, as the guest of her friend, the Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell. Under the headline “Hi-de-Hi, Theresa!”, the Mail on Sunday wrote: “Sitcom star Su Pollard causes havoc at Number 10 as she wolf-whistles and berates PM and demands that she speeds up Brexit.”
Guests were reportedly rendered speechless by Pollard’s antics, although someone did manage to blab to the press. “Breaking off a conversation with energy minister Claire Perry,” the report continued, “Mrs May said, ‘Hello there, Su.’ The actress and singer shouted back, ‘Hi-de-Hi, Theresa!’” Pleasantries over, the conversation foundered. “The prime minister is not great at the smalltalk at the best of times, so it looked pretty painful. Su just kept saying, ‘We want Brexit’ and, ‘What’s happening with Brexit, why is it taking so long?’ and, ‘We want Brexit now.’”
Pollard takes a breath. “That’s not what happened at all. What happened was I had a lovely chat with Philip [May’s husband]. I said, ‘I wish someone had my back like you have hers.’ I gave him a big kiss on the cheek. And then we talked about cakes.” Cakes? Not Brexit? “Which would you rather talk about?” Good point.
“I’m not a political person at all,” she says. Actually, that’s not quite right. When Pollard tells me where she lives in London, I ask if she voted for Emily Thornberry, her local Labour MP. She declines to answer but does say: “I really like Emily Thornberry. She’s a strong woman, tough as old boots. I admire that in a woman. She’s continually writing to me, asking if I can help, but I try to be unbiased.”
I take a sidelong look at Pollard and wonder if Thornberry has really thought this through. Today, Pollard is gamely sporting a chain mail-effect jumper she bought from a shop called Utopia in Islington that really sets off her zebra-pattern shoes. “I do dress flamboyantly and I don’t care what anyone thinks,” she says. “Ever since I walked down Chapel Market and someone yelled out, ‘Hi-de-Hi!’ and I yelled back, ‘Ho-de-Ho!’ I’ve not hidden away. Why should I?” More sips of tea. “I could always go out with a bag over my head. People would ask, ‘Who’s that?’ And I’d reply, ‘Mystery Bag. It’s Mystery Bag.’” Don’t do that, Su.
Pollard’s English eccentricity and doughty spirit is no doubt what attracted Philip Meeks to write the role of Birdie for her. “We were in panto together,” she says. “He was the dame and I was the evil queen. He kept saying, ‘I’ve written something with you in mind; will you look at it?’ I finally did and was really touched.”
The play, called Harpy, starts with Pollard singing into a hairbrush while the neighbours bang on the wall. Then we start to realise something’s not quite right. Towers of tat seem poised to tumble on her and yet Birdie negotiates her way through this labyrinth singing, chatting to her fish, conversing with her unseen off-stage social worker and, like a Beckett heroine, keeping up a monologue that suggests her grip on reality is fragile. “What’s that Japanese woman called who sorts out your home?” Marie Kondo. “Marie Condom! Birdie needs Marie Condom.” She giggles as Mrs Malaprop rides again.
“I know Philip was inspired by someone who lived near him. But we all know hoarders, don’t we?” Are you one? “Not as much as Birdie, because I have clear-outs. I remember taking a lovely decanter I’d had for 30 years to a charity shop. It had just sat there unused. And the woman in the shop said, ‘That’s lovely. I’ll have that.’ Can’t blame her.”
Pollard thinks the play is important for the light it throws on attitudes to solitary, often elderly people. “Birdie gets called harpy and harridan and hag. What a way to talk about a woman! It’s about respect and care for the elderly. And also, how we tend to judge people we don’t bother trying to understand. As the play unfolds, we learn that something happened to Birdie when she was younger – I won’t say what. But it’s meant to be both funny and poignant in dramatising mental health.”
Like Birdie, Pollard lives alone. “That’s the only parallel! I’m nothing like her. There is no psychic wound keeping me at home. I’m loving working and I’ll never retire. I feel as though I’m ageless.” She’s also childless. “I’m glad of that. I’ve never wanted grandchildren scampering around the place. I can look after myself, thanks very much.”
Harpy is at King’s theatre, Portsmouth, 12-13 March. Then touring until 2 May.
