Margaret John Welsh Greats

Oh, you've got a great face, Gavin. Gorgeous!

And a great pair of lips.

Ooh! Look at you.

How's your leg?

As an outrageously saucy old woman on screen,

Margaret John became a national treasure.

Oh, yes, I was a stripper.

She got away with murder because she had that lovely innocent face, you know.

-How far did you go?

-All over the South Wales area.

But she only achieved fame at the end of her career.

-Hello, Bronwen.

-Hello, Dai.

Her comic roles came after half a century of playing tragic, suffering women.

I deal in fundamentals - life and death.

-Ohhh.

-Gwen, are you all right?

-Yes.

What few knew was that her own life had seen more tragedy

and romance than most of the television dramas she appeared in.

Margaret John was born in Swansea in 1926.

She grew up in Manselton,

a solidly working-class area of the city.

Maggie was the youngest of two sisters born to Ivor and Dorothy John.

Ivor was a wages clerk and Dorothy

worked in the haberdashery section of a local department store.

She was a fine figure of a woman, very extrovert.

And she was the dominant figure in the house.

And I'm sure Margaret got that theatrical strain

from the unintentional theatricality of Dorothy.

Though she was never fluent herself,

Maggie grew up in a Welsh-speaking household.

Her grandfather was a staunch defender of the language

and this would cause problems when the war broke out.

The family were the only ones in Monterey Street

that didn't have an Anderson shelter

because my great-grandfather refused to speak English to people,

so the people from the council never delivered

the materials to build the Anderson shelter.

So, when there was an air raid siren, it was either

the children in the laundry basket in the 'cwtch dan y star',

or over the garden wall, to each side of the neighbours' Anderson shelters.

In 1941, when Maggie was just 14, the Luftwaffe carried out

a series of sustained bombing raids on Swansea,

over three consecutive nights.

This was the Swansea blitz.

And, one night, when they knew

there was going to be a heavy bombing raid,

she had to walk from Manselton down to Mumbles,

along with streams of other people, with the city on fire in the background

and the planes coming in, and the ack-ack firing going off.

It was a very exciting time as she used to describe it,

you know, being a young teenager when all that was going on.

But terrifying nevertheless because they lost neighbours, they lost friends.

Luckily, it was only the roof of their house that was blown off

but other houses were completely flattened, together with all the occupants.

After the war,

Maggie got together with some friends to former youth club.

And it was there that her talent for drama became apparent.

They put on plays and my older brothers,

and Maggie, and various other friends,

all got together and got involved in doing that.

They put on Blodeuwedd, I remember, the Saunders Lewis play

and I'm pretty sure Maggie was in that.

By day, Maggie was now working for the coal board.

But, in the evenings,

she took to the stage with local amateur company the Landore Players.

Their director encouraged her to apply for a place in drama school.

In 1949, Maggie was accepted at the age of 22,

to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

After a year's intensive training,

she returned to Swansea, in search of professional acting work.

It was there that she encountered fellow actor Lindsay Evans.

When I met Margaret, I suppose in the early '50s, roundabout 1953,

one knew about Margaret John.

She'd been to drama school.

She was very good to look at and she was very popular, obviously.

Slightly older than I was then, but admired her enormously.

But there was something different about Margaret.

We'd say in Welsh, very 'agos', very close to you.

And that was a great characteristic she had for all her life, really.

I think that's why we all loved her so much.

She was pretty and vivacious and good fun.

All the young lads were all vying to go out with her and things.

I think she got engaged several times, you know.

Briefly, each time, to all the most eligible young Adonises around in Swansea.

She was actually engaged six times.

One of the engagements I know broke off because he asked her

whether she was any good at make do and mend.

That was the end of that relationship.

When she wasn't fending off admirers,

Maggie was trying to get her foot on the ladder as a professional actors.

Work was hard to come by, but during her 20s,

Maggie began making appearances in repertory at Swansea Grand Theatre.

They had a resident company

and they could only afford to have one extra member in per week.

So it was either Margaret John or Islwyn Morris.

So there was very little theatre.

People don't realise how arid things were in the 1950s.

Hardly any television. There was very, very little radio.

This didn't deter Maggie.

She wrote letter after letter to the BBC in Cardiff, in search of radio work.

"18th of April, 1961.

"Dear Miss Evelyn Williams, I would be most grateful

"if you could consider me for some broadcasting.

"I have worked on sound for John Griffiths, Aled Vaughan, Emlyn James..."

"Dear Miss John, Thank you very much for your letter.

"I fear that I cannot offer you a part in the immediate future.

"Yours sincerely, Evelyn Williams."

The letter-writing paid off when Maggie was offered roles

in radio dramas such as Smoke In The Valley,

playing the wife of a struggling novelist.

Paperbacks! Those are the books people buy. Yours, they borrow.

What's the new one you've got coming out? Smoke in the Valley?

I suppose it'll sell the usual library copies.

Thanks for the encouragement(!)

Gareth Richards, the great Welsh author(!) Huh!

Darling of the critics. Man of principle.

-The writer who despises success.

-I don't despise success.

I just don't agree that people like Gwyn Llewellyn are successful.

Oh, Gareth!

Most of the people who did radio were amateurs.

They were schoolteachers or, very often, solicitors,

or commercial travellers.

And they did it always in the evening.

So, such a thing as doing drama by day was very, very rare in those days.

By the time she'd turned 35,

Maggie had become frustrated by the lack of opportunities in Wales.

In 1962, she took the plunge and moved to London.

Well, one always admired people like Margaret for having the guts to do that.

Come what may, this is what she wanted to do.

Maggie was one of a group of young Welsh actors

keen to make their mark in the city.

They all stuck together. They all socialised together.

They all went for interviews together.

And, yes, lots of periods of signing on in the employment exchange and interviews.

"May 19th, 1962.

"Dear Mr Michael Bakewell, Would you please consider me when you are casting?

"I have been broadcasting for 12 years in the Welsh regions

"but this year, I have come to London to live..."

"Dear Sir, Mr John Gibson suggested that I should write to you.

"I would be most grateful if you would bear my name in mind, but not only..."

"Dear Mr Evans, Would you please grant me an interview

"with regard to some broadcasting in the future?"

"Margaret John, audition report.

"General remarks.

"Bit older than her looks. Restful, can't sound nasty.

"B."

Maggie's persistence paid off and, in 1963,

she was cast opposite Tom Bell in the television drama The Stag.

-Hello, Bronwen.

-Hello, Dai.

-You remember John James?

-Yeah.

Yeah, I remember John. How are you, Johnny?

Oh, pretty well. How are they treating you, kid?

All right. Mustn't grumble.

For Maggie, the years spent learning her trade onstage paid off on screen.

She'd learnt a lot of the craft from the Landore players and the amateur scene in general.

You got frightened, didn't you?

Did I?

You thought I was in love with you and you'd have to marry me.

-Well, everyone kept on dropping hints.

-I didn't.

-No, I know.

All those were live shows, you see.

No such thing, no luxury like, "Let's have another shot at that."

And there she was, always absolutely on the ball.

You got married in the end, though, didn't you?

Oh, yeah. In the end.

And it didn't work out.

That's right. Didn't work out.

Well, then. In that case, it all worked out for the best, didn't it?

A lot of the actors and actresses in those days had come from the stage

and were quite capable of doing things live.

Very difficult, though, when people like Brian Blessed in Z Cars

would fart in the middle of a live scene.

But people just had to carry on regardless.

Before long, Maggie was making regular appearances in popular shows

such as Z Cars and The Troubleshooters.

Do you want us out?

Don't be so soft.

Grace, the whole thing will be carefully landscaped.

How do you landscape £30 million worth of equipment?

Alec!

Margaret spoke beautifully.

So she was very, very well-suited

for playing tidy roles, middle-class roles.

Look, it's not just a matter of preferring a tree to a pipeline.

Isn't it? Oh, come on!

A refinery'll cover a few hundred acres.

It won't cover every blade of grass in Morgannwg.

-All right, they're ugly.

-Hideous.

-Now, listen...

-Hideous!

In 1967, Maggie suffered the tragic loss

of her older sister Mair to cancer.

Suddenly, her nephew Chris was left without a mother.

Both her and my grandmother really saved me, after my mother died.

My father died also when I was quite young.

And she effectively became my adopted mother after my own mother died.

And we were very, very close.

And it was a very, very supportive family environment,

full of laughter, full of warmth, full of love.

And that's what made her.

And that's what made her the person she was

and made her give the things that she did to other people.

Maggie was balancing her family responsibilities

with an increasingly busy professional life.

She was now appearing in some of the most iconic

television series of the time.

It was an age with a constant turn-out of drama.

You know, police shows, Z Cars became Softly, Softly.

All the soaps, she was in all of them.

-Mrs Owen?

-Yes.

-Is your son in?

-Well, who is it?

-We're police officers.

It was just a normal part of life to see her appear on television.

Emergency - Ward 10, Z Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Softly, Softly.

All those early television series that she used to be in.

I barely sleep, you see. Not any more.

-Why, Mrs Owen?

-Because I'm worried sick.

MAN SPEAKS WELSH

-About your son?

-Yes, I'm afraid for him.

-SPEAKS WELSH

-Oh, belt up!

By the late 60s,

Maggie was appearing alongside leading men like Jack Warner,

the most famous TV policeman of the time,

and Patrick Troughton, who played a well-known doctor.

She was in all of them, but as a guest.

She was there for one or two weeks, or slightly longer.

I've been given this address and your name

in connection with the receiving of stolen goods.

-Would you mind repeating that, Mr?

-Crawford, Detective Sergeant.

You used to do one a series, you know, all the series.

You'd turn up, you'd do an episode.

And you just got to know everybody,

and it was lovely. It was like coming back to family, in a way.

The disappointing thing is that she didn't achieve her major breakthrough,

a series in which, you know,

she could have dominated and developed a much fuller persona.

The 31st October 1972 was a momentous day for Maggie.

Like thousands of other Welsh rugby fans, she was enthralled

when Llanelli took on the mighty All Blacks and won.

What a tremendous moment for Llanelli!

What she couldn't have known was that this would be

the day she found true love.

I met him right at the end of '72,

the night Llanelli beat the All Blacks 9-3.

He was quite drunk. And it was a brief meeting.

And they subsequently met again for a date.

Ben Thomas was a professional violinist.

He worked with some of the greats. I mean, he worked with Sinatra.

He played first viola for when Sinatra came over,

and he toured with Sinatra in Europe.

At the age of 45, Maggie had found her soulmate.

She and Ben were married on the 8th of January 1975.

The couple settled down together in a flat overlooking Hampstead Heath.

Maggie had found happiness in her private life.

But most of her screen roles at the time were tragic ones.

Oh God, I was always weeping and wailing over people and being

very emotional, and very restrained emotion a lot of the time, you know.

And a lot of the serious parts that she used to have

involved being an accident victim, heavily covered in make-up.

Although she used to quite enjoy those, she used to say,

"I wish I could do something funny every now and again,"

because she always did have a talent to make people laugh.

She was always funny. She was always full of anecdotes. She loved comedy.

She loved everybody from Jackie Mason to Dave Allen and Eric Morecambe.

She loved the American sitcoms.

She loved the one-liners.

She used to keep books of notes when she used to hear something funny

and then repeat them ad infinitum to people.

In 1975, Maggie got the chance to show off her flair for comedy,

in a series of sketches with impressionist Mike Yarwood.

The funniest one of all was she played Queen Elizabeth I

to Mike Yarwood's Walter Raleigh,

who he played in the style of Eric Morecambe.

-Evening, all.

-Welcome, Sir Morecambe.

Do you realise that England is near to defeat?

Don't blame me, blame Don Revie.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

He never takes one player from Luton.

-Have you brought me a gift from abroad?

-I have, indeed, kind sir.

I have brought you these.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

They are King Edwards.

Until the day she died, she said that she still felt

as though she had worked with Eric Morecambe.

You have returned just in time.

I have some very, very bad news.

Don't tell me little Ernie's under there!

No! Worse than that.

They're not bringing The Golden Shot back, are they?

No! The Spaniards are invading us and I need ships.

Have you still got the Golden Hind?

Yes, but it's OK if I don't sit down.

Maggie's first foray into comedy would be short-lived.

In 1978, she was cast in her biggest straight role,

in a long-running soap opera filmed in Birmingham.

Good afternoon, Mrs Morton.

Good afternoon. Have we met before?

No, but Dr Butterworth told me you're his only patient who always turns up on the dot.

Well, the Crossroads part gave her a good few years of stability

as far as work was concerned, you know,

rather than doing lots and lots of small jobs.

Oh, after only a very short time here,

I've decided to automatically log every appointment

half an hour forward, except for people like you.

It meant a lot to her because, of course,

she became part of a team, for a period of time.

And, when members of the cast got married, for example,

all the other members of the cast went to the wedding.

They spent time together during other social occasions.

And, you know, she was very, very fond of Noele Gordon and Kathy Staff from those years.

But, just as Maggie was finding stability in her professional life,

her personal life fell apart.

Ben was suddenly diagnosed with cancer of the kidneys

and was hospitalised.

She used to have to finish rehearsals at about 5 o'clock,

get the train to London, spend the night at the hospital with Ben.

Get the first train back to Birmingham in the morning

and carry on with rehearsals, recording.

It was all very quick. We had no idea.

And diagnosis to death was ten days.

It was ghastly.

I mean, it was a great tragedy, you know.

And it took her a long, long time to get over it.

In fact, I don't know whether she ever did get over it, quite honestly.

Ben was always with her, you know.

She wore what had been his watch for pretty much the rest of her life.

He was always there in conversation.

We never forgot him. He was such a big character.

But there were so many happy memories and so much fun, I can't tell you.

There was a lot of laughter involved and it was great.

But, um...

31 years ago and the knife still goes in sometimes, you know.

After Ben's death, Maggie threw herself into her work.

Oh dear, look at the time!

I usually put up a couple of dinners for Bryn and Hugh about now.

From 1983 on, she appeared regularly in one of Wales' best loved series,

playing housekeeper to Nerys Hughes' district nurse.

She was never the prima donna.

Never moods or, you know,

"I can't go on, this is too much."

It was always bang on time in the morning.

All the disciplines, no problem.

But carried with ease and poise, elan.

She was just a joy to work with.

My husband put on the gloves and went wading in for the rest of them.

Come them back down,

the bosses remembered some faces better than most.

Black till the day he died.

Grabbing for jobs, anything he could lay his hands to.

For Maggie, this was the latest in a long line of maternal roles

that had come to define her career.

She was almost about to inherit the mantle of Rachel Thomas,

the Welsh mam.

She was cursed, in a sense, by that kind of role.

Nothing like the wicked Maggie we know now.

She was always the girl next door, the decent type, the goody.

And she played those well, of course.

But, in the green room, off camera, she was, as always,

what we now know her to be - wicked.

Maggie got a chance to show off her wicked humour in 1999.

At the age of 73,

she appeared in a new comedy set in the South Wales valleys.

You don't think it might be them, do you, Richard?

-Them?

-Aliens.

They might not be like us.

They, they might be like big... er, octopuses.

Perhaps that's why the knocking is so quiet.

They may be tapping on the door with their testicles.

Maggie played the key role of archetypal Welsh mother Elsie Hepplewhite.

She was a pleasure to work with as an actress.

She had a twinkle in her eye.

She would actually talk to you and listen to you,

which a lot of actors don't.

They're just waiting for their cue, you know.

But Maggie didn't.

Maggie was an experienced actress who actually knew the business of acting.

Your son is Richard Hepplewhite the murderer, isn't he?

-Ex-murderer.

-Axe murderer?!

-No! Ex.

He used to be a murderer but he's given it up.

-He's got agoraphobia.

-Frightened of spiders, is he?

No! Frightened of going out, he is.

In case spiders get him, I expect.

She's called Mam, and a mam she is.

But we wanted to give her some sort of edge

so we gave her this history of being an erotic dancer.

And we also gave her a sort of, um...

er... a frisson of sexual libertarianism.

Young girls today, they're too fussy, they are.

I never turned any man down, not as long as he was clean and tidy.

Yeah, right, all right, Mam.

Once in a blue moon she'd say, "Ooh, that's a bit..."

But we'd convince her.

Well, we didn't have to convince her, we'd just say to her,

"You say it, Maggie, and you're going to get a big laugh."

And she, being a sort of old ham,

would look for the big laugh, sort of thing, and get it, you know.

-Oh, look, Richard.

-What's that, Mam?

This young girl here in this magazine.

She's only 19, she comes from Norwich.

Annabelle, her name is, and she likes animals.

She's got a cat and she shaved it to make her boyfriend happy.

But she really, really enjoyed that.

She enjoyed the people she worked with.

She enjoyed the fun that that gave to people

and she enjoyed the fact that people told her how much she made them laugh,

how much the programme made them laugh.

It was a tremendous irony of someone who has a distinguished,

if rather unfulfilled,

professional career as an actress finally achieves fulfilment,

in the last decade or so of her life, in a completely different persona.

Because she becomes, you know, a really great,

outstanding comic actress.

High Hopes ran for six series,

making Maggie one of Wales' best loved comic actresses.

But, a year short of her 80th birthday, she was cast in a role

that would show the whole of Britain what she could do.

I do remember when we were casting Gavin & Stacey,

and we had this character of Doris, the next-door neighbour,

who was a little bit rude, and

Chris Gernon, our director, said,

"I know exactly the actress to play that part."

"It's Maggie John."

We're having a fish supper later. Fancy joining us?

Oh, I would love that. Are you sure?

Course! You don't want to sit in on your own.

Hey, stop it, you! You're a married man now.

Although, if you are interested in that sort of thing, you know,

I'm very open-minded,

and discreet. OK?

She could get away with things that, normally, people would find quite vulgar and distasteful.

Not with Maggie,

because she had the big flappy eyes and the innocence

and a way with saying these extraordinary lines

in a way as if she was reading from the Bible.

It was a fantastic quality.

And, thanks to directors who brought that out in her,

she understood old Mae West's line, you know,

"When I'm good, I'm very good.

"But when I'm bad, I'm better."

-All right, there you go.

-Thanks, Gav.

Now, you sure you don't want to come in for a coffee?

Nah, I better get back.

All right, love.

Well, you know where I am.

People seemed to like Doris because she's rude.

I think that's why, don't you?

It's because she's rude and everybody likes somebody being rude.

Chillax, Bryn. Get a beer down you. I'm not going to stir things up.

Oh! Thanks, Dor. I appreciate it.

Jean.

Coming to comedy so late has been a revelation for me, actually,

because I wasn't aware how important comedy is to people.

Ordinary punters out there who...

I get it now and they say, "Oh God, you know, all we need is a good laugh, you know.

"Life's too miserable anyway. So a good laugh is a tonic for us."

And you know the effect it's had on people.

And when people see you, and the minute they see you, they smile.

And that is lovely, you know.

I always watch you on the telly and I love you cos you fantastic!

-Bless your heart. That's very nice of you.

-Marvellous.

-Thank you very much.

Bye.

WOMAN TALKS INAUDIBLY

In January 2011, Maggie fell ill and was admitted to Singleton Hospital.

But she was only really ill for the last two weeks or so of her life.

And, up until then, she was still Maggie.

She was furious that Andy Murray didn't win the Australian Open.

She wanted to know how the Swans were doing.

She knew how important that was to me.

I'd always get a phone call five minutes after the match had finished.

Very, very keen follower of Wales rugby as well.

If she'd have had a tattoo,

it would have probably been of Shane Williams, I would think.

The actress Margaret John, described as a national treasure,

has died at the age of 84.

One tribute today said she was a Welsh icon.

She had a career that spanned 60 years.

In her final hours, Maggie had told a close friend,

"I want to tell you something.

"I've had a great life."

I think she'll be remembered a lot

for the things that she did

when she was younger.

But I do think she'll be remembered

for being a dirty old woman in Gavin & Stacey!

A saucy old lady!

Maggie's funeral service closed with a song

her husband Ben had once played,

Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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