Playing the real life Lady In The Van has had quite an impact on North-East actress Rosalind Bailey, she tells Viv Hardwick about the Gala play.

MOST of us wouldn’t fancy the idea of someone living in a van in our front garden for 15 minutes, let alone 15 years.

Then most of us aren’t Alan Bennett who turned this unusual relationship with well-educated tramp Miss Mary Shepherd into the memorable book and play, The Lady In The Van, which is being revived by Durham Gala Theatre artistic director Simon Stallworthy next month with North-East actress Rosalind Bailey in the leading role.

“Bennett had become aware of a yellow van parked outside his home and then the council wanted to paint yellow lines, by which time he had a relationship with Miss Shepherd because she was always asking him to help start the van or move the van.

She was in such a state when the council wanted to move her on that he said ‘bring it into the garden’. And he only had a tiny garden like a postage stamp with this huge yellow van. It was supposed to be three months but she inveigled herself and it went from three months to 15 years,” Bailey says.

She points out that Bennett, who is played by two actors, David Hedges and Hugh Osborne, probably needed someone like Miss Shepherd in his life because during the same time Bennett’s mother was in failing health with Alzheimer-like symptoms.

His neighbours, of course, were horrified and considered Bennett’s actions saint-like “and of course that’s why there are two versions of the playwright, one to interact with Miss Shepherd and the other revealing his true thoughts and the Machiavelian alter ego.

“A neighbour says ‘I hope she goes soon’ and he says ‘but not yet’ because he wants to write about her and it’s a wonderful story. She’s awful a lot of the time but there’s a profound sadness about her story and that comes out at the very end,” she says.

“This is also a story about the slow disintegration of his mother who is delusional and doesn’t know who he is towards the end.

The bits of the story are woven together and he has the double whammy of getting comfort from Miss Shepherd because growing older hasn’t affected her mind and she was extremely intelligent and funny.

“It’s wonderful to do because the play is so well written, but it is sometimes difficult not to hear Maggie Smith’s (who played the role on stage and in a radio version) voice because it’s so distinctive. She is also very tall and angular and we’ll have to do it differently because I’m not as tall,” says Bailey who jokes about having to drop her usual Geordie accent in favour of Miss Shepherd’s upper class and slightly old-fashioned tone.

She’s been delighted to discover that her first TV series, When The Boat Comes In, is being repeated on satellite and cable channel Yesterday and her elderly mother is “in seventh heaven because she can watch it all again” says Bailey who was in three of the four series.

“Looking back it is astonishing how values have changed in family and very sad really that so much of that has gone. I worked with James Bolam a lot and we admire him so much in New Tricks and his wife, Susan Jameson, plays Alun Armstrong’s wife,” she says.

Her view of Bolam is that he is very much like the late Paul Schofield in terms of his approach to the job of acting.

“Schofield was very solitary and would never do anything social.

After a show he would come off stage and say goodnight to everybody and go home on the train and be completely private.

He never did any publicity and he allowed his work to stand for him.

“I understand that. We are now in the cult of celebrity and I always find if difficult to step outside the character I play. I find it difficult to go for commercial castings where you have to be yourself and I find that so false,” she says.

Back in 1999, Bailey’s private life did feature on TV when BBC2’s The House Detectives came to the North-East to look at her efforts to restore the Georgian harbour wall home of Cliff House in Cullercoats.

“As you see with all of these programmes about people trying to mend these very old buildings, it’s heart-breaking and it’s a black hole financially, you need an awful lot of money. It was a strange period in my life and completely took me over and all my energy. It was about six or seven years ago and my hair went white through taking on Cliff House. I took it as far as I could, but it was sold to a local man and then there was a terrible fire and then I think English Heritage got involved and helped out the next owners. It was restored and I went back to see it. So that was a good resolution.

“I sometimes dream about the house and there’s a speech as Miss Shepherd which always reminds me of that time.”

■ The Lady In The Van, Durham Gala Theatre, February 18-27.

Tickets: £15 (13). Box Office: 0191-332-4041 galadurham.co.uk