Liz Smith

Every Monday I try to listen to Robert Elm’s listed Londoner on his BBC London show. This week he featured Liz Smith, star of The Royle Family and a number of Mike Leigh films as well Peter Greenaway’s ‘The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’. Hackneyed phrases like ‘National Treasure’ would have come to mind before this show but I will remember her interview for one comment she made in deadly seriousness amid all the jocular banter she and RE developed during the interview. Early in the interview she outlined the early part of her life. Her mum died in child-birth when she was two. At the age of 7 her dad (whom she adored) met her at the school gates and said he was going away for a while. She never saw or heard of him again. Her grandparents took her in and within a year her grandfather died. She created happiness in her life by entertaining and making people laugh and thus gave birth to the talent that would serve her so well later in life. She married young, had children and then her husband left her. As she said herself, her life up to that point had been one of loss. They went on to talk about her success as an actress which happened after the age of 50 (with her children now in their twenties) when a very young Mike Leigh cast her in ‘Bleak Moments’.

After the talk of success RE asked her if she was tempted to stick two fingers up to those who had abandoned her (and particularly her father). She was honest and said yes. But then said ‘…but I think these things are done so much better in deeds rather than words’. And the second half of her life has been an inspiring testimony to one who could have been bitter but who chose instead to live the possibilities in her life to the full. What a remarkable spirit. I will remember the way she described winning a BAFTA and getting her pensioner’s bus pass on the same day. At the end a clearly emotional RE came to realise that Liz Smith had been served vegetables at his mum and dad’s fruit and veg stall at the top of Portobello Road in 1946. My eyes moistened.

On Saturday I did very well not to succumb to temptation. Either age is reducing the desire for a good time (I hope not and think not) or age is telling me not to risk the long-term for the pursuit of the instant. What would my speech to 250 willing participants at The One Life exhibition at Kensington Olympia have been like had I done so? I suspect the answer actually has less to do with age and more to do with the dreadful cold I seem to have caught. I hope it doesn’t last four weeks like the last one. My resistance is low and it screams to me that I should be exercising more.

I am missing my daughters like crazy. Little Izzy spoke to me on the phone and kept saying ‘airplane’ to me. This is how she knows that daddy gets to France and it is her code for saying ‘daddy, when are you coming home?’ Soon, my darling, soon…

I must find out more about Oli Barratt whom I met through my good friend Adam last Thursday. He seems to be a networking entrepreneur extraordinaire and I would like to know more about he has become successful. I think he and his connections could be very useful in my new book. But I hope I have something to offer him? Bad networkers do it it for personal gain. Good ones do it for mutual benefit – although the motivation for doing so should always be through a genuine interest in the lives of others first.

Music of the Day: - The new Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam single.