From Birds of a Feather, to Emmerdale and Broadchurch, and also founding a successful stage school, actress Pauline Quirke tells Steve Pratt how time has flown 

PAULINE Quirke had her first taste of acting when she was nine, joining a school drama club with her friend Linda Robson. Now, 45 years later, the pair are still on stage together – in the stage revival of the 1990s BBC comedy series Birds Of A Feather.

The tour is proving so successful that it’s “looking very likely”, she says, that Sharon, Tracy and Dorien will soon be back on TV screens in a new series.

“There’s been a script commissioned.

We shall have to wait and see what happens.

We would love to do it again and, judging by the feedback of audiences, they would love us to do it.”

In between touring in Birds Of A Feather – which comes to Newcastle and York in the coming weeks – Quirke was part of the phenomenally successful ITV drama Broadchurch, following an 18- month stint in the Yorkshire-based soap Emmerdale.

Off stage and screen she’s behind a successful stage school, the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts. As someone who began acting as a child, she was keen to help youngsters today.

“We have 45 academies all over the country. They are blossoming,” she explains.

“I’m very proud of them. I can’t take much of the credit because we have fantastic principals and teachers. I am just the lady who pops in and says ‘hello’.

I try to get to academies nearby while I’m on tour.”

The first academy opened in 2007.

“After 40 years as an actor I believed there was room for something different.

As a parent, I was slightly concerned about the whole thing with celebrities and fame, and wanted to shift the balance,” she says.

“The children get to see all aspects of film and television. It’s learning and having fun. We have some who may want to do it as they get older, but a lot of them have no intention of doing it as a career.

“It can help children who are less confident or who never seem to get picked for anything at school. We work on projects as a group and that takes commitment.

It’s very disciplined.

“It’s about enjoying themselves. It’s not about being obsessed with grades and parents putting pressure on kids.

I’m just thrilled and delighted we’ve stuck to what we believe in and the kids are having a great time.

“It’s not like a creche, it’s a serious business. The majority of our principals have performing experience. Everything has to be done properly.”

The care and attention has been extended to the stage version of Birds Of A Feather which, she points out, is not just a few episodes lumped together but a newly-written play that catches up with Sharon, Tracy and Dorien 15 years after the end of the TV series, which ran throughout the 1990s.

She’s loving being back with Feathered friends Robson and Lesley Joseph.

“It was like we’d never been away, it really was. After all those years it still seemed the most natural thing for us to do,” she says.

She hadn’t been on stage for 25 years and never toured before. She’d done some theatre, including panto, when her children Emily and Charlie were young, but nothing since.

Eighteen-year-old Charlie has been playing Linda Robson’s stage son, while Linda’s son Louis has been playing Pauline’s son.

“Charlie wants to be an actor and is the right age for the part – and he’s a good little actor. It seemed the perfect solution,”

says Quirke.

As for giving him advice, she says: “He knows what he’s doing, he doesn’t get any from me. The first couple of performances last year I was nervous for him, but he walks on like he’s been doing it all his life.”

Time has flown since joining that primary school drama group. “It was an after-school club. I loved it, but at age nine I didn’t say I’m going to be an actress.

It was fun and I enjoyed it – and here I am 45 years later.

“I don’t know where the years went.

I’ve gone from child actor into my teens and young woman and now a respectable old woman.”

The stage tour is attracting people who remember the series and they’re bringing their children.

“Obviously the series is being repeated on TV. There’s a new audience. We had lots of young people in last night,” she says.

“People are coming because they remember the series, but the stage play has a good story by the original writers. It’s not cobbling together a few episodes.

Theatre tickets are expensive and times are hard, so that wouldn’t be good enough. It’s not enough to wheel us three out and expect that to be enough.”

Theatre and television are different experiences. “Every show is different because every theatre audience is different.

You have to think on your feet because you don’t have the luxury of doing something again if it goes wrong. Theatre is much more immediate.

“We are each other’s security blanket.

So many things can happen – sound problems, someone passes out in the audience, Linda Robson throws up on stage because she has a stomach bug.

“But we know each other’s personalities and problems inside out. That’s what people watching the show are seeing – the warmth and chemistry. People who love the TV series don’t feel let down.”

Away from comedy, Quirke featured in one of the TV events of the year, the murder-drama Broadchurch, which had an audience of nine million glued to the box each week. Quirke played the mysterious Susan Wright and had another of her family by her side – her labrador, Bailey, played her screen dog, Vince.

“I saw from the first script that Susan had a dog all the time. That was part of her story, the only thing she showed any feelings for. My dog is extremely well behaved and obedient and will follow me anywhere. So he went to London to see the casting director and got the part.”

Then there was her time in the Dales as Emmerdale regular Hazel Rhodes who had one of the soap’s most dramatic storylines involving her son (played by Danny Miller who, she reports, had come to see the show in Liverpool the night before) and the right-to-die issue.

“Professionally and personally it was one of the happiest times of my life, bearing in mind I was away all week from my family. It was a 400-mile round trip every week.

“But I had a ball. The people, the production team, the fantastic storyline, Yorkshire were all wonderful. They haven’t killed me off, so who knows, Hazel might appear sometime in the future.”

BIRDS OF A FEATHER ON TOUR

  • Newcastle Theatre Royal, May 28-June 1. Box office 08448-112121 and online theatreroyal.co.uk
  • York Grand Opera House, June 25-29. Box office 0844-8713024 and online atgtickets.com/york