Caroline had two big health issues. The first was cancer, the other a deep depression she battled for years. I’m glad she’s out of all that, because she suffered appallingly. But I’m desperately sad that she’s not here any more, that I’m not going to get any more of her crazily misspelt texts.
We met at ITV in the late 1990s. Caroline was fascinated by people, what made them tick. She had a great eye and ear. When we wrote together, we’d push each other on. There’s a saying that you can kill a script with improvements, but Caroline loved that the writing process was open right up until the moment it was shot. She’d be on set and hear the actors reading the lines, and spot some way it could be better. She had a strong work ethic but would tire easily. She was always quite frail.
She had depression all through the period when she was very successful. She’d tell me: “I just don’t want to live any more.” She tried all sorts of drugs and brutal treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy. At that time, she lived in a beautiful rooftop apartment in Covent Garden, and would be so low, so lost, that she’d go to a cashpoint and take out £200, find some homeless person sitting in the plaza begging, and give it to them – just for the look on their face. It lifted her spirits for a moment, then it was back to the blackness.
I think Caroline liked that I was always asking her questions. She’d joke that when she was with me, she was a perpetual Parkinson guest. We talked about all sorts, and she’d apply as much inventiveness to making me laugh as she would to entertaining a TV audience. It didn’t matter to her who her audience was.
Everything got turned into a funny story. Even the time when she tried to kill herself. She told me that afterwards her mum, Maureen, had come down from Manchester to stay with her and had become obsessed about cleaning the windows. The press were camped outside, so she told her not to open the curtains because they’d start to take photos. Maureen thought about it and then decided to clean them anyway, just putting her hand up underneath the curtains. And that was the story she told about trying to take her own life.
She suffered but never ever complained. She and her brother, Patrick, were both born with retinoblastoma. With that kind of cancer, there is a high chance of secondary tumours, and she did go on to develop bladder cancer. When she was having surgery on her bladder, it looked for a while as though she might have to have a urostomy bag. She was obviously worried and told me later that she had given into despair one day with Maureen, saying: “If that happens I’ll never meet anyone, never have children.” “Yes you will Caroline,” replied her mum, “and he will also have a bag.” Remembering that always made her laugh. She could make herself happy in seconds with the tiniest things.
I feel bitterly sad for her that she didn’t have children. She was worried about passing on the cancer, but Patrick did become a father and she was thrilled about that.
Caroline made and spent fortunes – she gave lots of money away – and in the end came full circle, ending up in a suburban semi in Manchester. That was all she really wanted. I’ll remember her best, sitting cross-legged on her sofa with a bag of Minstrels, watching her enormous telly. She texted me recently saying: “My bucket list is watching box sets.”
She’d watch heavy dramas I’d made about the Yorkshire Ripper or Stephen Lawrence, but equally she’d fill me in about Three in a Bed or Coach Trip. I’d go up to see her for a few days to do some writing, and first we’d have to go and say hello to Maureen, then we’d sit and watch Jeremy Kyles that she’d recorded specially. By day three, I wouldn’t have done any work.
Maybe it sounds cheesy, but it was just really good fun. That was Caroline, she loved to have fun. There’s a bit in The Royle Family’s Queen of Sheba special where Nan asks Dave to spell funeral for her. He starts and Nan says: “Stop. F.u.n. that’s what I want my funeral to be.”
Interviews by Liese Spencer.
