A quick run-through of some of the 20th-century icons that Su Pollard has met. Can I have your autograph? For my mother.’” The show was, of course, the hugely successful BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, set on an Essex holiday camp and for which Pollard, playing chalet maid Peggy, will for ever be best known.
Queen Elizabeth, after a Royal Variety Performance? What struck me – I’ve always said this – was her skin. And beautiful smile, her own teeth.
Very regal, very straight-backed, not very tall, and quite a voluptuous bosom.” Diana, Princess of Wales, did a little tap-dance with Pollard at a function. Although she was classed as quite shy, I don’t think she was. She was very open to meeting people, but perhaps it was a slow burn with her.” At a club in Earl’s Court in London, Pollard was “having it large”, she says, when a man approached her and asked if he could join in.
It’s never you, is it?’” It was – Queen singer Freddie Mercury. She does an impression of him too, overbite protruding. His friend took a picture of us.” At various Downing Street functions, Pollard met Margaret Thatcher – “marvellous, but it was very fleeting” – and Theresa May.
Getting on with the job the best she could.” Tony Blair? How do you know that?” Granita was, you may remember, the venue of the 1994 pact, where Brown agreed Blair would run for the Labour leadership. That’s what they were talking about!” I mean, we don’t know that’s what they were discussing at that precise moment, but let’s go with it.
I bet they thought: ‘It’s that Hi-de-Hi! person.’” We meet in London at the Club for Acts and Actors, the social and support organisation of which Pollard is president, in a room surrounded by old portraits of stars and posters for shows. Pollard, 76, has just written her memoir, Fully Charged, hoofing through her 52-year career, which has spanned theatre, musicals and TV. She is such funny company, and her book – which one can’t help reading in her throaty Nottingham accent – has some gems.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
