Bucket of fun

THE lady of the house answers the phone in her best put on airs and graces manner.

Rachel Bell is, in old-fashioned parlance, a good egg when it comes to talking about her role of the infamous Mrs Bucket in a stage version of TV favourite Keeping Up Appearances.

The actress has had a fine career as one of the what’s-afaces of TV, appearing in everything from Midsomer Murders to Miss Marple, but has fallen on her feet with this stage tour to Darlington, York and Whitley Bay. Original creator Roy Clarke, just like with Last Of The Summer Wine, has come up with a new script.

Bell jokes: “I know I’m a familiar face on TV but not a familiar name. People say to me ‘I know your face. Do you work at Marks and Spencer? Or the Post Office? Then I’m obliged to say ‘No, I’m an actress’ and then we have to go through ‘what have I seen you in then?’.”

So, for the record, her bestknown three roles are: Margaret Holmes in Grange Hill (1997- 2002), Edith Pilchester in The Darling Buds of May (1991-1993) and Louise, the bossy chair of the divorcee support group in Dear John (1986-1987).

When I mention her links with the region, through having been a founder member of Hull Truck Theatre Company, Bell surprises me with the news that she was born in Newcastle and used to live in Whitley Bay.

“Then we moved to York where I grew up and went to school and then went to university in Hull,” she explains.

So is Darlington familiar? “I know it well,” comes the reply.

“I used to know the lady who ran the box office because I went out with her son. We are going back a bit now. We used to come up and see her and she lived in Newton Aycliffe and then we’d see shows at the Darlington Civic. It’s a lovely little theatre which I’ve played two or three times so I know it from both sides of the curtain.

I’ve sat and watched things and played it and it’s a cracking little theatre,” she says.

Suitable enough even for Mrs Bucket? “Oh, Mrs Bouquet dear.

Oh yes,” Bell adds.

It was she and, then, boyfriend, Mike Bradwell who went on to form Hull Truck in 1971. He later ran the Bush Theatre in Shepherds Bush.

“But I’m not married to him.

It was a passing thing,” says mother-of-two Bell.

Try as we might, the subject of Hyacinth can’t be ignored.

“However you might like to stamp your authority on something what people expect is what they are used to, and that’s perfectly fair. No, I have studied episode after episode of Keeping Up Appearances and we try and do the characters as people would expect, otherwise people would be disappointed.

❛THE thing about Hyacinth is that she doesn’t see all the insults to other people.

It’s a kind of monstrous egoism and she doesn’t realise that everyone else can’t stand her.

It’s great to play her. When I told my kids I was doing the role they said ‘oh my God mum, you were made to play this role’ and quite a few other people have said the same. I’m told I look a little like her and I could easily sound like it. I think it’s because we both come from the North,” Bell says of TV Hyacinth, Patricia Routledge, now 81, who was born in Tranmere, Mersyside.

Bell reveals it’s the Hyacinth hats that help her to get into character.

“She wears these hats which sweep up at the front and the kind of handbag like the Queen’s, that seems to do it,”

adds Bell, revealing that her long-suffering husband, Richard, doesn’t appear in person.

“I’m not joking. The set-up of the play is that Emmet (Steven Pinder) is directing a play in the village hall featuring the characters you’re used to seeing on TV and desperately trying to keep Hyacinth out. She manages to push her way in and Richard is imagined to be sitting at the back of the hall and she keeps shouting instructions at him, but we don’t see him. But we have lovely Gareth Hale playing Onslow and we’ve all been envying him because he gets to wear the string vest which in this weather is definitely the costume of choice,” she says.

Bell confesses that she has followed Patricia Routledge into a role before during a run of Victoria Wood’s play Talent.

“Because it only lasts an hour. I went out for about 25 minutes, front cloth on my own playing Kitty, the character who used to be in Victoria’s TV series, coming on for five minutes with a handbag, pontificating about something or other. So I’ve done Patricia before. I’ve got form,”

Bell jokes.

She reveals that writer Roy Clarke has been to see the play twice since the run began and has told Bell that he’s pleased both with the play and her performance.

“For Roy to say that he thinks it’s great, you couldn’t have a nicer accolade than that as it comes from the creator. And when you create a monster like that, it’s nice to know that he likes it. And, by now, Hyacinth has a mobile… ‘you have reached the personal mobile of Hyacinth Bouquet, this is she speaking’,” Bell says.

“Most of the challenges are down to me wearing two wigs and two costumes at one time and then I run about a lot of fall down. I shall be as fit as a flea by the end of it,” she adds.

■ Keeping Up Appearances, Darlington Civic, Monday- Saturday. Box Office: 01325- 486-555 darlingtonarts.co.uk; then York Theatre Royal, October 11-16. 01908-623-568 yorktheatreroyal.co.uk and Whitley Bay Playhouse, October 25-30. 0844-277-2771 playhousewhitleybay.co.uk