Choosing fun and glee over fame and glory

Pauline Quirke and her family were as gripped by the live final as the 20 million others who tuned in, but a few years ago she began to feel a creeping unease about the instant celebrity offered to its contestants.

“I love the show, but when you see very young people saying: ‘This is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me’ and ‘If I don’t get through my life will be over’, it gets a bit worrying,” she explains.

“As a parent more than an actor, it felt like it was all getting a bit out of hand.”

Rather than making any “hell in a handcart” pronouncements, Quirke made the decision to press ahead with an idea that had been germinating since her son had spent a summer at a kids’ theatre workshop at Bristol’s Old Vic.

Roll forward to today, and 1,000 students aged six to 18 are enrolled in 24 Pauline Quirke Academies across the country, with the latest opening at the Southwick Centre.

Charming and endlessly self-deprecating in conversation, Quirke explains she founded the network of weekend performance clubs on a “back to basics” philosophy.

Yet their billing as “academies” seem something of a misnomer in that each of the kids is given a chance to perform, and the emphasis is on fun rather than the pursuit of fame or professional prestige.

“I think most parents have gone to school plays and you see the same few kids getting up each year. But we’ve tried to get away from that whole thing of children getting picked. We don’t have a big end-of-term production. Instead, each of the kids showcases something they’ve done during the year that they’ve enjoyed. We’ve tried to create an unpressurised environment where they can get better at what they do, but also make some friends and come out of their shells.”

If it sounds too softly softly for some, then Quirke isn’t concerned; she says the goal lies in giving kids in the classes more confidence in their everyday lives, rather than grooming a new generation of professional performers.

“I went to something very similar when I was young.

It was a little club after school, and although some of us went on to make it a career, at the time it was just meeting up with my mates twice a week and enjoying myself.”

Having become a household name in her 30s as one half of the Birds Of A Feather sitcom sisterhood, it’s easy to forget Quirke actually has more than 40 years in the business behind her. Her easygoing manner was spotted when she was just a teenager, when she hosted her own TV shows Pauline’s Quirkes and Pauline’s People (which also featured her future screen sister Linda Robson).

Today, she’s back in a regular slot on the small screen playing Hazel in Emmerdale, a role that had only been scheduled to last a few months before her popularity with viewers saw her contract extended.

Despite the gruelling journey from her Buckinghamshire village to Leeds (where Emmerdale is filmed), she says she’s thoroughly enjoying her work on the show.

“It’s been really lovely to be part of an ensemble cast, where it’s not really about any one person, because we’re all part of something bigger.

“What I love about Hazel is that she’s tied up with so many different characters, so each day I’m working with different actors, different crews and different directors [the show has five crews who all work simultaneously].”

One of the actors in question is Quirke’s pal Suzanne Shaw, the former Hear’Say pop starlet who plays feisty and flirtatious Eve in the show. The friends live in the same village, but rarely see each other at work.

“I’ve seen less of Suzanne since I’ve been working on Emmerdale than before. Funnily enough, I saw her in the village yesterday and it was the first time I’ve seen her in two weeks. We had to come home to see each other.”

For all her experience as an actor (including an early appearance as a slapper without a heart of gold in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man), Quirke has suffered from stage fright throughout her career.

“It’s never going to change for me. I was terrified for the first day in [Emmerdale’s local boozer] The Woolpack and I think it’s just how I am.

I love it when I’m up there and I never want it to end, but the build-up is just terrible – it’s like having a horrible dentist’s appointment at 5pm but being asked to sit in the waiting room from 9am.

“We did 101 episodes of Birds Of A Feather and I was physically sick before every single one.”

It was the exploits of the Chigwell sisters and their uber-glam neighbour Dorian that made stars of Quirke, Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph, of course. There have long been rumours of a reunion show, but Quirke says there would have to be a very well-written reason to get “a group of old ladies back together”.

“We were right to stop when we did, and I think people remember it in a nice way, which they might not have done if we’d carried on for a few more years. We’ve all seen shows when we’ve thought ‘Maybe they should stop now’.

“But first and foremost, the BBC has never asked us to do any more, so that’s one thing. There has been talk about doing a theatre tour, so who knows? Maybe that’ll be another excuse for me to throw up every night!”

As things stand, Quirke seems more than happy with her lot. She’s enjoying life in Emmerdale, and speaks with uncontrived warmth of her life with her kids and her husband, TV producer Steve Sheen. Her time away from filming is spent putting the hours in at her academies (she excuses herself for a moment during our interview to stop her dog chewing a delivery of masks for the kids). She tries to get around to all of the academies – which are organised on a franchise basis – to check on progress, meet the kids and give talks, but the teaching is co-ordinated by a group of principals.

Much of her time off is spent cooking – she had a crack at Celebrity Masterchef in 2007 – and watching television. She’s a self- confessed telly addict and “Gleek”, a fan of the smash US show Glee, which follows an after-school singing outfit. She says the show has already had an impact on her own young protégés.

“I absolutely love it,”

she says. “We use a lot of the tracks from Glee with the groups, and I think what’s good about the show is that it does show how hard these kids have to work to get better at what they’re doing.

“I always try to get across to them that the whole fame and celebrity thing is just a by-product of being successful at something.”

* For more information or to register for a place, go to www.pqacademy.com or call the academy on 08456 732022.

Emmerdale is on Meridian.