Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 02:38:12 AM

Login with username, password and session length

90s Thora Hird Deso

Started by BlodwynPig, November 13, 2018, 01:56:55 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Glebe on November 18, 2018, 12:02:28 PM
Hird could be callous.

One time she swapped Francis de la Tour's stage make-up for rotten boot polish and blamed it on Gerry Cowper.

In the 90s?!

Hird had a Busted tattoo etched into her left buttock. It got infected and eventually resembled the Celtic Frost logo.

Glebe

December 1994. Blackpool. Hird is doing a stint as the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella with Christopher Biggins and Isla St Clair. Former Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Oompa Loompa Rusty Goffe is playing a diminutive Buttons, and whilst he imbues his performances with great zest like the seasoned professional he is, Hird has taken something of a dislike to him, possibly due to a delusion she has about one of her children being "stolen by the little people and replaced with a changeling child" some years back.

However, tonight Goffe can relax, as Hird has another, more pressing enemy to engage. Seated over to the left, about five rows back, is former Fresh Fields star Julia McKenzie, with her husband and children. They've just gotten back from a holiday break in Tuscany and are in fine form as they eagerly anticipate an evening of fun and laughter. And why shouldn't they?

Hird. That's why.

Unbeknownst to McKenzie, Hird has for some time now considered the future Miss Marple her arch-nemesis. As Hird would have it, McKenzie transgressed when she attempted to take one of her chocolate digestives during recording sessions for Let It Be, the two stars having been allowed into Abbey Road Studios one day in the '70s to watch The Beatles record. While the biscuit remained untaken, the intention was there, and Hird has harboured her grudge for over two long decades. She'll wipe that vacant smile off McKenzie's face tonight, however...

Biggins - playing one of the Ugly Sisters, natch! - had just delivered one of the night's funniest lines, and was basking in the warm glow of stage adulation. Hird's cue was coming up, and she waited 'til the peels of laughter had completely receded before breaking from script.

Turning unexpectedly towards the audience, Hird's eyes sought out McKenzie in the crowd. There was a pause. St Clair, playing a not-so-young-looking Cinders, looked nervous. Something was wrong.

Hird cleared her throat, and addressed the sitcom star head-on. "Julia McKenzie," she pronounced, "you are a whore, a cheat, a liar, a murderer and a sordid adulteress. You are a thief and a scam artist and your children are by another father."

A shocked gasp drew forth from the audience and McKenzie looked stunned. But Hird merely smiled and, turning to leave the stage, chirped "enjoy the rest of the show!"

With nobody to fill in on such short notice, Hird continued her run in the show, ever mindful of the legal proceedings McKenzie had begun. Meanwhile, poor Rusty Goffe felt the wrath of Hird ever more intensely, and, on the show's final night she pushed him into the orchestra pit. To add insult to injury, Willy Wonka score composers Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley were in the audience that night. They could barely contain their embarrassment.

But Hird had one final act of cruelty before all was said and done. Because that night, she had used up all the shit tickets in both the ladies and men's toilets.

BlodwynPig


Glebe

"I couldn't say I liked Thora Hird, but she was certainly a formidable presence."

So spaketh Peter Sallis, recalling his time working with Thora on The Last of the Summer Wine. And it was one particular incident - in the '90s - that perfectly illustrated just how intimidating Hird could be. It was just a seemingly ordinary day, in the '90s, and the Summer Wine cast and crew were busy filming in and around Holmfirth. During an extended lunch break, Hird took her good friend and confidante Kathy Staff out for a bite and a cuppa at her favourite local tea rooms. The pair took a seat outside in the reasonable spring air, and it looked like it was going to be another calm and easy-going afternoon in the popular Yorkshire township. But little did the pair know, the drama was only starting...

Hird had just taken her first sip of Earl Grey when she noticed a familiar-looking figure emerging from the town hall across the road. It was none other than Dad's Army's Clive Dunn, who was in town doing a production of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, in which he played Jack Lemmon's role. He had popped out during a break in rehearsals to get a Kit-Kat - his favourite treat (allegedly) - in the cornershop.

"My stars, but there's former Dad's Army and Grandad - "Charlie Quick!" - star Clive Dunn, Staff! The former Lance Corporal Jones, the butcher who always said "Don't panic!" and "They don't like it up 'em!" is directly across the way!"

"Oh, give over!" cried Staff, and was about to shoo Hird away with her trusty brush (which she always kept by her side) when her keen eyes managed to confirm Hird's suspicions to herself. "Coo, y'right, Thora! My days, but it is Dunn!"

Now Hird had been planning to get one over on Peter Sallis for some time, but she had no love for Dunn either (it's complicated) and an opportunity had now presented itself for her to use one against the other. And so when Dunn came back out of the shop, Hird excused herself and approached the man with a curious look on her face.

Later, back on the Summer Wine set, Sallis was taking advantage of a fag break to make himself a mug of Horlicks in the on-site catering tent. But just as the kettle came to the boil, he felt a strong grip on his arm and was turned around full-force.

"Oi, what's all this I've been hearing about you and my wife?!" It was Dunn, livid at an allegation of infidelity that had been cooked up by Hird. "Clive?!? I don't know what you're talking about, I've never even met your wife!"

But Dunn was too incensed to listen to any of his protests. "C'mere, Sallis!" he growled, and, marching the Norman Clegg actor out in front of the whole cast and crew, he pushed him into a prop bath which he promptly shoved down a dale. The whole cast and crew were in stitches and even Dunn himself had to stifle a chuckle, despite his anger, but it was no picnic for Sallis, who, like his rascally old castmates, was used to having a stuntman fill in for the more dangerous scenes. Sallis sustained a mild chafing and when he rose to his feet, the first face he saw in among the gathering crowd was Hird... smiling at him nastily.

Hird allegedly told Brian 'Foggy' Wilde later she had "been trying to fuck Sallis over for ages!", but this cannot now be confirmed.

I can't think of a proper moral to this story, but Hird is a stark warning to all that you should never trust anyone in the entertainment industry. Ever.



EVER VIGILANT... Hird always cast a 'knowing' eye over proceedings.

Fishfinger


BlodwynPig


Cuellar


Glebe

During the '80s, it was all "It's too orangey for crows, it's just for me and my dog!" with Hird, but by '90s she fond of crying "You've been Tangoed!"

However, on one memorable occasion in 1996, Hird and Nerys Hughes had been out strolling in the beautiful Yorkshire hills, when Hird went into a bit of tizzy. She had been observing a burger van in the village below, and noticing a lovely picture of a clown painted on it's side. But suddenly she became all a-fluster.

"Ooh, Nerys," she cried, "I can't make out the clown's features properly. I think I'm wearing me lookers when I should be wearin' me seers ! I think I left them on the side in the parlour... you wouldn't mind popping back to mine and fetching them for me, would you? Here's the door key... and a pound to buy yourself a Double Decker, by way of thanks!"

Hughes soon returned with the proper prescription glasses, and Hird was subsequently in such good form that a passing steam train lifted her spirits no end. "Full steam ahead..." she chuckled, with poor humour, "...full steam ahead!"

BlodwynPig

The melancholy and nostalgia wrapped in that post has reduced me to tears

Glebe

One Friday morning in 1996, Thora was preparing herself for a day's filming on Songs of Praise when there was a knock on the door.

"Who could that be at this fine hour?" she asked herself, aloud. Opening the door a crack, she was confronted with the face of noted British TV and film actress Anne Reid. "Good morning, Thora!" she chirped. It's me, Anne Reid, out of Victoria Wood's Dinnerladies, although I won't be in that for two years. I've got us two tickets for Radiohead at, um, 'the Lancashire theatre'. You up for it?"

Thora frowned. But as the early-morning tiredness subsided, she let out a melancholy sigh and replied to Reid forthwith. "I'd love to go, Anne, I really would, but I'll be fucking bollocksed after I done with me day's filming. It's a pity because I'm quite a fan of the Oxford quartet, but I'll have to give it a miss. I suggest you pop round to John Savident, I reckon he might interested. I saw him at a Suede gig last year."

Anne had a bit of job on her hands as it turned out, as John was in Manchester filming Coronation Street. She met him on-set during a break in filming, and while he was appreciative of the distance she had travelled to offer him the spare ticket, he was none-too-keen on attending the show. "I'm too busy filming to go to the pop concert, love, I say I'M TOO BUSY FILMING TO GO TO THE POP CONCERT!" Then the director called for the actors to reassemble, and, adjusting his hat and tightening his butcher's apron, Savident simply turned around and walked away.

As for Thora, she managed to knock off early but was tired nonetheless from a hard day's filming, and, with mug of cocoa to hand, settled in to watch TFI Friday, an experience she quickly regretted, as indeed any right-minded person would.