Maureen Lipman CBE is an English film, theatre and television actress, columnist and comedian.
As a member of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1971 to 1973, she made her stage debut in a production of The Knack at the Palace Theatre, Watford.
Known for her roles in The Pianist (2002), Educating Rita (1983) and Oklahoma! (1999), she has also appeared on Coronation Street in two roles: firstly in July 2002 as Lillian Spencer, relief manager of the Rovers Return and then in September 2018 as Evelyn Plummer, the grandmother of Tyrone Dobbs.
Maureen’s late husband was English playwright, Jack Rosenthal, who was born in Cheetham Hill and wrote 129 early episodes of Coronation Street.
My earliest memory of Manchester is…
Arriving on Fog Lane in Didsbury at the digs I would share for the next fifteen months.
I was twenty-four and joined twenty-two other actors in forming a brand-new theatre company, The Stables, in the back yard of Granada Television. Among the cast were Richard Wilson, John Shrapnel, William Simons and John Fraser.
We were all over-excited at the thought of rehearsing new dramas in a fringe theatre which would be transferred to television.
We had our own bar which soon filled up with everyone who worked at Granada, and within a month I had met the man who would later become my husband, playwright Jack Rosenthal.
My favourite place to eat in Manchester is…
I’d say San Carlo and WOOD, the latter because it is on Jack Rosenthal Street, named after my late husband of thirty-three years.
I wandered in with a friend and I plan to take Corrie there en masse one night for the seductive tasting menu.
I have lunch daily in the Coronation Street canteen where the chef, Leon, has been known to make chicken soup specially for me.
My favourite Manchester bar or pub is…
If I fancy a drink, I’ll probably sit on the terrace at The Botanist in MediaCity. The turnover of scripts is huge on the street and I can’t learn as effortlessly as I did when I was young, so most nights are spent in the flat going over them.
In my husband’s day, when Corrie was only three episodes a week, the actors rehearsed all week in a studio then filmed it all in a day.
Nowadays it's filmed every day from seven in the morning to seven at night. You arrive in one of four studios filled with the sets of the Rover's or the Dobbs House, read through with the script in your hand, then block it i.e. move it on your feet, then film it.
It's challenging stuff, but I like it.
My favourite place to shop in Manchester is…
Well, my flatmate Rula Lenska took me to Primark for my first visit and we bought wonderful black pyjamas with white piping for ten quid a pair!
We float round the apartment pretending to be Lauren Bacall and Katherine Hepburn, though mostly we're more like Lucille Ball and Agnes Moorhead!
We've also done some serious damage at The Lowry Outlet. One day I will make it to Harvey Nichols…
The last show I saw in Manchester was…
Gypsy at the Royal Exchange. It is a stunning musical and the actors and direction were true and gutsy.
My favourite hidden gem in Manchester is…
I stayed at a hotel in central Manchester when I first arrived to film Corrie and walked down a picturesque little street by the canal with lots of small cafes.
It looked enchantingly like Amsterdam and I went into the first restaurant and sat down happily with a glass of wine. Then a couple of men dressed as women followed me in and then another and I couldn't help but notice quite a few drag queens walking about.
I rang my daughter, Amy, who had been at university in Manchester and said 'I'm in this lovely cafe on the canal and it's strange there are a LOT of men dressed in drag here - 'Oh, Mod!’' she said laughing -'you’re in Canal Street…the gay area of Manchester…they'll love you in there.'
They did.
The best Manchester band of all time is…
I’m pig ignorant about any pop music after Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and I'm a fervent lover of Radio Four – a dinosaur.
Manchester has everything except…
Well it has everything, full stop. MediaCity could do with chemists and hairdressers and the village shops I have in Paddington where I live in London.
But in recompense it has such beauty at dawn and dusk where Canada geese fly past my windows and starlings murmurate against streaked mauve and apricot skies.
The sunset on the canals and the tower blocks of steel and glass blend seamlessly with the LS Lowry-scope of industrial, barge and chimneys. Breathtaking.
People’s biggest misconception about Manchester is…
Mancunians are hard. When I left my backpack in a cab with my precious iPad full of paintings, I was in pieces. But then I got a call from a lady who had found it, abandoned in a park in Stockport.
The iPad and beloved sunglasses had gone but she found a prescription and took the trouble to phone my chemist in Bayswater, who phoned me.
We then met up in Piccadilly Station for the handover. People said 'ooh, take someone with you, she may be a weirdo' but I said 'don’t be daft, she's a Manc! No worries.'
The thing I love most about Manchester is…
Oh, the Metrolink is brilliant. Why, oh why, does London not have one?
Maureen Lipman is supporting Marie Curie’s Great Daffodil Appeal this March, mariecurie.org.uk/daffodil
Marie Curie’s ‘Great Big Daffodil’ will be at the Trafford Centre on Tuesday, March 3, to launch the charity’s biggest fundraising campaign.
The event gives everyone the opportunity to share their personal memories and stories behind the daffodil pin they wear by writing a message or memory on books within the giant daffodil’s petals.
