Maureen: Tragedy has forced me to grow up at 58

Jewish Telegraph, April 2005

ACTRESS Maureen Lipman has experienced every emotion under the sun since the death of her husband Jack Rosenthal last May.
“The last year has been all sorts of things,” Hull-born Maureen said. “It’s been bleak, it’s been amazing, it’s been busy, it’s been tragic. There are hardly any words I can’t use to describe it.”
The purpose of the interview was to publicise Jack’s life story, By Jack Rosenthal: An Autobiography in Six Acts (Robson Books, £17.99).
But the promotion is proving a little too much for Maureen, who is still best loved for her British Telecom adverts of the 1980s as Jewish grandmother Beattie.
“I’ve had to have hypnotherapy to stop me weeping all the time,” she said. “It’s all been a bit soon for promotion. I should have done what Sheila Hancock did after her husband John Thaw died. I should have waited a few more years.”
And she added: “With John Thaw, Inspector Morse will always be shown on television, but will they still show Jack’s work in years to come? Will they hell. They might bung a few things on radio or on BBC 3.
“So I wanted the book out while people remember Jack and while the debate is on about what television has become. Is there still a place for a playwright?”
Maureen — who was awarded a CBE by the Queen in 1999 — avoided finishing the book for as long as she could. She said: “I didn’t want to do it. I kept putting it off. I went away to New York, then I went back to work.
“I was in a pantomime at Christmas and then I went to Ethiopia. I had to write about the trip when I came back, so that took up more time.
“But the publisher telephoned to say they needed the finished manuscript for an April print.
“I suppose I wanted to do it, but it upset me. There was stuff I couldn’t write because it was upsetting. There are things I just can’t talk about.
“I can’t share everything with the public, but why should I have to.
“I wanted his book to get out there. Jack thought no-one would read it because of the format, but I wanted to prove him wrong. It was a completely unique way of writing an autobiography.”
By Jack Rosenthal is written as a play, following his early days in Manchester including his time in the navy and writing for Coronation Street.
As Jack did the hard work in writing the book as a play, could it be turned into a television drama?
“It is not dramatic,” Maureen laughed. “He dismisses his first marriage very economically, while meeting me takes just one paragraph.
“I wanted to fill in the gaps; give more of a flavour of what he was like with us and his friends.
“Jack was a very humane writer and a loving man. He could never describe himself in the autobiography as a great bloke. If someone did that, you’d think he was a big-headed git.
“Jack wrote speeches for his friends’ birthdays which were hilarious. A lot of his friends have them framed. He was a very funny man and I want to let people know that.”
Maureen, who made her acting debut in The Knack in 1969, added: “After his death I received 1,700 letters of condolence and I answered them all.
“It’s incredible what he meant to people. It amazed me how many of my girlfriends loved him.
“He was sociable but he didn’t really need anyone — they needed him. He was a real home body.”
Maureen, who had a a major role in the Oscar-winning film The Pianist, recalled a cruise the couple went on after Jack was first diagnosed with myeloma (bone marrow tumours).
She said: “Everyone used to ask me, ‘Is your father coming down to dinner’. It was pretty upsetting on one hand, but quite funny on the other.
“Within a few days he had got them. Everyone thought I was the vivacious one but it ended with them always wanting Jack.”
With so many stories to choose from, the couple’s daughter Amy had to decide what to put in the book and what to leave out.
“She is a wonderful editor and was able to cut things out,” Maureen said. “We had no problem with embarrassing stories but I had wanted to include all the speeches he had written for friends.
“We had trouble formatting the book because of the screenplay format. But I wanted everyone to know how brilliant he was.”
Apart from the hypnotherapy and bouts of weeping, how is Maureen coping?
“I’m not abandoned or lonely, but there is a danger of building Jack up into something he wasn’t,” she said.
“We had an ordinary marriage. Things went wrong occasionally and there are things I regret.
“But after 35 years together, he was always the only bloke I wanted to go home with.”
And the future?
“I am going to have total plastic surgery, go to South America and marry a multi-millionaire,” Maureen joked. “I don’t know what the future holds. I’m having to grow up at 58.
“I would also like to raise awareness of myeloma.”
Maureen held Jack’s stone setting on Sunday.
She said: “It was a beautiful summer day. I had a lovely time with everybody back at the house; Manchester United won 4–1 and I saw a copy of the book for the first time.
“It’s given me some kind of closure, while the book launch (held yesterday) is an opening. I have to keep the flame flying but get on with my life.”