The Times Magazine 53late Nineties, when the programme had press
officers to oversee publicity for the show, but
not the individual stars.
“Melanie would say to me, ‘Don’t do this
PR, do that,’” Callard remembers. “She had
your best interests at heart, not the company
you’re working for. She filled a void.”
Claire King puts it more succinctly. “She
got me out there and kept me out there.”
The way Blake tells it, soap actors are the
best in the world, who should be “revered and
respected like listed buildings”. Instead, people
are snobby. It doesn’t help, of course, that
successful actors who got their first break
in soaps can be only too keen to forget it.
“What I hate most about the ones who
jump and reinvent themselves is that they
then thumb their nose at their past. I mean,
hello, where’s Suranne Jones’s voice from?
That’s not her voice. Joanne Froggatt, Sarah
Lancashire, Katherine Kelly, suddenly they
rock up on TV shows and it’s like [she puts on
a strangulated voice], “Oh Graham, it’s so
lovely to see you. Yah, I’m doing Downton...”
Jenna Coleman made it in Emmerdale but
there’s never any mention of that. Ever. You
should never forget what gave you that
moment. Sarah Lancashire! Would it have
killed her to do a talking head for the 60th
anniversary of the show that made her?”
You can protest that maybe she wasn’t asked,
but Blake is unstoppable. “She would have been
asked, 100 per cent she would. It’s the snobbery
of where they’re from and there’s nothing
wrong with soaps. Soaps are wonderful.”
Not that it makes its stars particularly
happy. Blake says they’re invariably paranoid,
insecure, terrified they might be exposed for
something or other by a tabloid and neurotic
that at any moment they might be out of a
job. They’re a toxic combination of enormous
self-confidence and low self-esteem, and it’s a
recipe for disaster. Or, as Blake puts it, a deal
with the devil. And that’s when they’re young.
“God forbid women should age. A producer
can come in and decide he doesn’t like an
actress and erode her confidence. He can
change her character, make her mutton, dress
her in dowdy clothes or rescript it so she’s
called a granny even though she’s only 50.
It’s why so many soap stars have breakdowns.
Beverley Callard had a ginormous breakdown
that came from nowhere, but she realised it
was the pressure of the soap. You lose all
sense of what’s real outside those walls.”
Still, one woman’s career crisis is another
woman’s business opportunity. Blake
painstakingly added to her books a roster of
“broken-down soap stars who needed to be
rebooted and put back together. My job was to
find an off-road soap star and drive her back
into the same lane – get her back into the
show. I took great relish in it.”
She claims that it was her idea to bringGillian Taylforth back from the dead in
EastEnders (“Wonderful woman. Nicer woman
you would not meet. Terrible taste in men”),
and her idea to bring Kim Tate out of prison
in Emmerdale. She got Daniella Westbrook
back onto EastEnders as Sam Mitchell, years
after she’d been written off with substance-
abuse problems, and in spite of the fact that
the role had been given to another actress.
“If a celebrity is a mess, they make a lot
more money. Being a soap star is one thing.
Being a soap star with a major problem and
loads of issues is a blank cheque. It’s not in
their interests mentally to go off the rails, but
financially, it is. Misery sells. So do divorce,
deceit and bankruptcy.”
Blake was brought up in Stockport. Her
mum was a cleaner; her dad was a printer.
She found a Jackie Collins book in the local
library as a teenager and it changed her
life. Dreaming of bigger, better and more
glamorous things, she ran away from home
at 15. She worked her way to London via a
stint in a squat in Oldham, handed out flyers
for a time, then blagged a job on Top of the
Pops by lying about her experience. She now
describes herself as one of the most successful
women in the entertainment business.
“I’m from a rough area and pulled myself
up by my bra straps. A lot of people don’t like
that. They want you to do well, but not better.”
Currently single, she denies that she scares
men – “I scare men my own age. Younger
men like me” – but insists that she doesn’t
want a boyfriend just now. She wants to
reinvent herself as a full-time author, for this
to be her moment, “because I’ve spent my
entire life making other people’s moments”.
She’s therefore rolling the dice again and
moving to Amsterdam as soon as the world
returns to normal. She’s going to rent a big
house on a canal for six months, leave behind
the trappings of her comfort zone, which she
lists as hairdresser, nail technician, facialist
and Botox doctor, and “meet some dude at a
flower stall and sit on the back of his bicycle”,
which may or may not be a double entendre. ’s
She’s going to work on a sequel to Ruthless
Women, which, she says gleefully, is called
Ruthless Men: Revenge Can Be Murder.
“It’s about all the rotten men in
showbusiness and how awful they are. I love
all the women that I represent. Even when
they were awful, I had a grudging respect for
them because it takes a lot to be a bitch.”
Possibly it takes one to know one.
“Absolutely not,” she says, not taking
offence in the slightest. “I’m very tough and
I’m very driven. I would never stick the knife
into anyone’s back. I’d stick it in their front
and tell them it was coming.” nRuthless Women by Melanie Blake is published
on February 18 (Head of Zeus, £12.99)BONKBUSTERS
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE
Georgette Heyer
Bath Tangle (1955), Venetia (1958)
Setting Regency England.
Typical line “He bore himself with a faint
suggestion of swashbuckling arrogance...
his arm tightened round her, something
that was not boredom gleamed in his
eyes, he ejaculated: ‘But beauty’s self she
is...!’ Venetia then found herself being
ruthlessly kissed.”
Colleen McCullough
The Thorn Birds (1977)
Setting Australia.
Typical line “Each of us has something
within us which won’t be denied, even if
it makes us scream aloud to die.”
Jackie Collins
The World is Full of Married Men (1968)
Setting London.
Typical line “I met this man once. He
promised me a yacht in the south of
France, a villa in Cuba, lots of jewels and
all that jazz and then he just disappeared.
I heard later he was a spy and got shot.
Isn’t life funny?”
Shirley Conran
Lace (1982)
Setting New York, Paris, London.
Typical line “Which one of you bitches
is my mother?”
Jilly Cooper
Riders (1985), Rivals (1988), Polo (1991)
Setting Rural England.
Typical line “He undid the buttons of her
shirt with trembling hands and buried his
face in the billowy cleavage.”
EL James
Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)
Setting New York.
Typical line “Why don’t you like
to be touched?”
“Because I’m fifty shades of f***ed-up,
Anastasia.”
Julia Quinn
The Duke and I (2000; Bridgerton, book 1)
Setting 19th-century England.
Typical line “His kiss was that of a
starving lover, not that of a gentle suitor.
‘Oh my God, Daphne,’ he moaned, his
hands biting into the soft curve of her
buttocks, pulling her closer, needing
her to feel the pulse of desire that had
pooled in his groin.”