Su Pollard is coming to the Fringe at Prestonfield House for one night only next month, to reflect on her 50 years in show business, with her old pal, Biggins. Best known as a star of some of the BBC’s most popular sitcoms – she played Peggy in Hi De Hi, Ethel in Oh, Doctor Beeching! and Ivy in You Rang M’Lord? – Su also boasts an impressive CV of musical theatre credits, including Godspell, Grease, Me And My Girl, Sweet Charity, Little Shop of Horrors and Annie, as well as guest spots in the TV shows Benidorm and Doctors, and a hilarious turn in Gimme Gimme Gimme. Here, she recalls the play that changed her life, a school nativity in Nottingham during which she discovered she had ‘funny bones’ and that she loved being able to make people laugh.
“When I was six, I was given the part of the Angel Gabriel’s Assistant in our School Nativity, I mean, I didn’t even know she had a bloody assistant, I think I was just offered it so I’d have something to do. So, there I was, standing on this cardboard box that the teacher had forgotten to secure properly with sticky tape. As I delivered my line, ‘Fear not Mary, the Angel Gabriel will bring you a nice child…’ or something like that, the lid collapsed and I fell through the box. Suddenly people were laughing and I thought, ‘Oh, I quite like that’. It was a joyful sound. They were laughing at the situation and I liked that I could make them laugh. From then on, that was what I wanted to do, make people laugh.
I remember that when it happened, my teacher was shocked. I saw her hand went up to her face as if to say, ‘Oh, f*** me…’ not that she said that, of course. She apologised afterwards but I just said, ‘It’s alright miss, it’s fine’. What had made it really funny was that I couldn’t get my foot free of the box and had to walk off with me foot still in it. It was hilarious really, I just carried on as if nothing had happened… with my foot stuck in the box. How ridiculous was that, the irony of thinking, ‘I don’t want the indignity of being seen to try and get my foot out of the box, so I’ll just keep in on as I walk off’.
It was really good fun but at that age I had no idea that I could actually do that for a living. It was only years later I began to realise. Then, when I was 14, we had to write an essay about a dream that we would like to see happen. I wrote that I ‘wanted to be at the London Palladium in 10 years time’. When I was 24, I found myself at The Palladium, on the stage, but not as an actor, as a tourist – I’d gone on a day trip by coach from Nottingham for a tour of the theatre. Later, when I was on The Palladium stage proper as a performer, I looked out into the auditorium and thought, ‘Blimey, this is my dream come true, the one I wrote about when I was 14, and that stared with my foot going through a box when I was six.”
Su Pollard – 50 Years In The Business: In Conversation with Chris Biggins, Fringe at Prestonfield, Prestonfield House Hotel, 16 August, 4pm. Tickets here.
