AUSTRALIA'S FIRST EFFING LADY OF THE STAGE

The title for Rose Collis's engaging biography Coral Browne: This Effing Lady, published in 2007, comes from the polite version of a story about an attempted hijack. Miss Browne flagged down a cab one rainy evening, but before she could get into it, a man on the other side, who hadn't seen her, leapt in. The driver protested, 'Sorry, mate, this cab's already taken, by the lady.' 'Which lady?' said the man, and Coral Browne, opening the door on the other side and sliding into the seat beside him, announced, 'This fucking lady!'

Born, raised and trained, at least in her early years, in Australia, Coral Browne was a woman of sides, opposite and in competition. She looked like an aristocrat, but she had the mouth of a sailor. Her acid wit could reduce her victims to tears, yet she was horrified at being the cause of their pain. She was a lover of men, and of women, yet her apparent worldliness hid insecurities that damaged her relationships.

Her most famous roles were in films and on television. She won a BAFTA in 1984 for playing herself in Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad, which described Coral's meeting with the spy Guy Burgess in Moscow in 1958 (Alan Bates played Burgess); in 1972, she was Chloe Moon, a bitchy theatre critic who has an electric encounter with camp-as-Christmas Vincent Price in Theatre Of Blood; and as vile theatrical agent Mercy Croft, she fingers Susannah York for special treatment and spirits her away from Beryl Reid, in the movie of The Killing Of Sister George.

On stage, there were equal successes. Most notably, she took the title role in Mrs Warren's Profession, George Bernard Shaw's treatise on prostitution that so shocked its Edwardian audience when first played, but which delighted theatre-goers in the '70s; and there were many other triumphs.

In her private life, Coral reportedly had an affair with an unnamed actress, possibly Beatrix Lehmann or Mary Morris, both unconventional in looks but fiercely passionate in their work, and, presumably, their play. This story comes from Victoria Price, Coral's stepdaughter from her marriage to her second husband, Vincent Price. There's no other verification, but Coral's sexuality is satisfyingly indefinable. It was Vincent himself, when asked at her death if she had any favourite hymns, who replied, 'Yes - and quite a few hers.' A good joke, but with a grain of truth.

Her male lovers were many, and included the singer Paul Robeson, actor Michael Hordern, multi-talented Jack Buchanan, the designer Cecil Beaton, and her husbands Philip Pearman and Vincent Price. Philip was almost certainly gay, so this was something of a marriage of convenience, but there is no doubt the couple loved each other, even to the brink of consummation. When Philip died, Browne was devastated, as her many friends testify to this day.

Her second marriage lasted until her own death in 1991, and Vincent himself died not much beyond that. The nearly 20 years they had together started passionately, and involved much travel. Attempts to work together were limited, and dismal, but their private life was healthy, at least until their health started to decline. Coral became possessive, timid in her outlook, jealous and afraid. It must also have been difficult to stand by watch as her husband got all the work, while she was largely forgotten. The success of An Englishman Abroad largely made up for this, and a couple of other jobs, notably Dennis Potter's Dreamchild, helped to consolidate her renewed currency.

One perennial thorn in her side was her mother, Vicky, who was constantly and persistently critical of her daughter's style, her choices, her perceived neglect. In later life, after the death of her husband, she took a flat round the corner from Coral, in Eaton Place, so it seemed there would be no escape from the matriarchal punishment, until Coral and Vincent decided to live in America, not exactly abandoning her, but ensuring a satisfying distance. Ultimately, she ended her life in a retirement home at the age of 100, scant months before Coral herself was taken by cancer. It was Coral's disappointment that she was never able to enjoy life without the nagging disapproval of her mother.

Rose Collis's book is a treat. Meaty, sparky, littered with theatrical stories and witty asides, she writes with heart and a solid appreciation of her subject's impact on her profession. The sadness of no longer being able to experience the great stage performances of one of the most glamorous and affecting actresses of the twentieth century, is tempered by the litany of witness statements from those who acted with Coral, and clips from contemporary reviews. It seems there were few who had a bad word to say about her skill and talent. She was sometimes the only bright thing in a sea of gloom, and could make up for a production's multitude of disappointments just by being there.

Her idiosyncrasies are beautifully described: the athletic eyebrow, arching at a moment's notice to make camp comment; the litany of filthy phrases that would give her free entry to the most earthy haunts; the insistence on only the best couture, and hang the expense. Brittle sometimes, but big-hearted, an absolute professional, and uncommonly kind when it really mattered.

Read many biographies, and they leave you with a feeling that you might just as well have gone to Wikipedia, since some writers think a list of performances and bald facts make a biography. This is a red-blooded telling of a white-hot life, and stands a Cecil-Beaton-hat taller than the rest.

MORE THAN JUST A TRAMP'S TRAVEL DIARY

George Orwell is principally known for two novels, Animal Farm, published in 1945, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948). They're his last two works of full-length fiction, and both engage in highly politicised polemic, offering grim warnings against totalitarianism, though the first speaks against Communism and the second against Fascism. They're brilliant books, full of terrifying imagery, horribly prescient, and essential reading.

Still well-known, but perhaps less feted, are Orwell's non-fiction books, the first of which was Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), describing his experiences of poverty and life on the streets in those two capital cities. I finished reading it this morning, which is why I'm writing about it today.

Orwell describes it as 'fairly trivial', and 'interesting in the same way as a travel diary is interesting', but I think he does himself a disservice, and knows it. He talks also of the English propensity to experience the shame of poverty, yet another trait is false modesty, which is what he shows here. It's not a long book, but it is jam-packed full of intense and visceral descriptions of a life lived at the very bottom of post-First World War society. His intention must have been to highlight the horrendous conditions in which many people lived, and how those conditions could be alleviated quite simply, rather than just to tell a mildly diverting story, and in that he is profoundly successful.

The book is divided in two: the first part tells of Orwell's life as a plongeur in Paris, and the second as an itinerant (he uses the word 'tramp') in London and its near surrounds. In Paris, a plongeur is the lowest form of life in the catering swamp, an amoeba of such worthlessness that he is trampled on, insulted, and degraded by everyone else in the kitchen and above. I've read that Orwell was there to research the scandal of poverty in a major city, and so it could be that he wrote an exaggerated account for the purpose of increasing sales of whatever he intended to publish, but I doubt it was just that. The squalor of the underclass exists even today, and it's no stretch of the imagination to extrapolate backwards, the struggle out of the shocking expense and personal toll of full-scale war, the terrible grind of recovery, the abandonment of the weak and impoverished.

The contempt in which scullery staff were held is vividly related by Orwell, and I think he means to say that we should consider that the doer of any menially-considered occupation was treated in the same way. He is simply describing what he experienced. We're told that kitchens were filthy places, dirty, sweaty, rubbish and mess everywhere, greasy, intensely hot, and of course with none of the appliances, such as washing machines or dish washers, that we're used to today.

So many bodies crammed into such a small space, so much frustration and anger, all taken out on each other, so few opportunities to take oneself mentally or bodily out of that situation. In many places, smoking was banned, so you'd sneak a quick puff in the toilets or at the bottom of the lift shaft. If you were caught, you'd be sacked, and back on the streets with no money to pay your rent. You'd get some food, a little, to supplement your already poor diet, and some wine, but often you were swindled by the person who paid your wages; they'd take a cut, and no good came from complaining, for who would you complain to? Who would care? Hours of work, perhaps fifteen a day, or more, including Saturdays, and even Sundays sometimes, when it was required, and how could you argue?

What little spare time you had was passed in a bistro, spending a tiny amount of money on whatever might last the longest. Or you'd go home, a filthy boarding house, and sleep in dirty sheets, being marched over by bugs, barely sleeping because of the discomfort, or the fear that someone might come into your room and steal what little you had. This was working life in Paris. Working life, in a civilised country's capital city. This barely scratches the surface of Orwell's story.

It's not all misery though. The Parisian passages contain some funny stories, perhaps wry, that do raise a half-smile. And since I was in Paris in early December, I was able to read about places I knew, including the very street in which we stayed, and where some eighty years earlier, Orwell had visited with a friend to tap an acquaintance for a few francs, ending up with a fight in the street.

The London passages are if anything worse, because here Orwell had no work and lived on the streets (or at least, that is how he chose to approach this part of the book). His descriptions become if anything more grotesque, and yet are totally believable. Homeless men (for they were almost exclusively men that he encountered) crammed together in box-like hostels, jammed up one against another, the stink of enforced confinement, the cold, dirt, sweat, sour stench. Indignity is the watch-word here, and it's palpable and terrible.

Orwell makes a calm plea for changes, in the law and in society's attitude in general, as a result of the shocking things he witnessed, and of course the world is different now. I don't know if things changed as a consequence of this book - the welfare state was still fifteen years away - but change they did. Let's not pretend, though, that our world is perfect, because that is very far from the truth. The internet is littered with statistics that show, for example, that around 18 per cent of people are in poverty at any one time in the UK, that hundreds of people still sleep rough on the streets (most of them in London), or that a fifth of children are living with poverty. All of which leads me to conclude that Down and Out in Paris and London is as relevant now as it was when it was first published.

“MUNT MAD!”

It's the line in Doctor Who that everyone's having a laugh about at the moment, because last Monday, the 1972 story The Mutants, starring Jon Pertwee, was released on DVD for the first time. The story begins with a striking homage to Monty Python's Flying Circus, as an old man, dishevelled and dressed in rags, staggers through a misty wilderness, right up to the camera, at which point the entire audience expects him to look at us and announce: “It's ...” But he doesn't, unfortunately. Instead, the Marshal of the planet (Paul Whitsun-Jones) huffs and puffs into view, dressed in a fetching two-tone number that does nothing but accentuate his Weeble-like figure, and start shouting: “Mutt! Mutt!” After him come a couple of guards, Stubbs (Christopher Coll) and Cotton (Rick James), the latter of whom has the deathless line: “Mutt-mad, he is!” You see, the native population are mutating, and the Marshal wants to kill them all. But if the script hadn't changed at the behest of the Head of Serials, Ronnie Marsh, the line would have been: “Munt-mad, he is!” Imagine the chortlings around the country at that! And you don't have to imagine the chortlings on the DVD commentary, because they're there for all to hear, thanks to script editor Terrance Dicks' very funny telling of the story.

I can't really remember when I first saw The Mutants. I had a vague recollection that I might have glimpsed a Mutt's claw raised in the cave, but it was only ever shown once on telly, in Spring 1972, when I was three years old - possible, but … More likely I'm remembering Jeff Cummins' amazing cover of the book Doctor Who and the Mutants by Terrance Dicks, published by Target in 1977, and taking that as a memory of the series.  (That's my copy on the left, a 1984 reprint, distinguished by the white Target logo, fact-fans!)  It's a great image, and a superb painting, but I doubt now that I did see anything of the programme at the time. The memory cheats …

My first viewing of the whole story was a copy leant to me by my boss in the early 1990s, when all of Doctor Who was being shown on UK Gold. It was a second generation copy, and his satellite dish played up every now and then, so the picture wasn't as good as the DVD is now, but still, it was watchable. I didn't think much of the story at all though, particularly the unconvincing special effects, the drawn-out, over-politicised story, and the dreadful acting. I was really very critical in my early twenties, and that didn't even change when it was officially released by BBC Video in 2003, by which time I was in my early thirties. I don't think I even bought the video, because I just wasn't bothered about it.

The DVD has changed all this. The unofficial Restoration Team are gods amongst men, because the work they do to revive the pallid colours and muted sound is miraculous. The Mutants looks so much better than it ever did to me before, and perhaps better than it ever has, full stop. The sound is pin-sharp, giving a beautiful clarity to the dialogue, and as importantly the amazing music created by Tristram Cary, as well as Brian Hodgson's extraordinary sounds. Just on those recommendations alone, the DVD is essential viewing.

There's always more to it than the restoration work alone, of course. My kink is to watch the whole story through with the commentary first of all. Don't know why - that's just the way it is. The Mutants is blessed with no less than seven contributors, plus the laid-back moderation of Nicholas Pegg. Alternating and sharing the six episodes are actors Katy Manning and Garrick Hagon, writer Bob Baker, director Christopher Barry, designer Jeremy Bear, special sound maker Brian Hodgson, and script editor Terrance Dicks. They all add value, and have many fascinating things to say about the making of the programme. Some share stories that are already told elsewhere on the documentaries and production subtitles, but still, it's good to hear these things from the people who were there, as they remember it.

During episode three, Christopher Barry recalls that a book he owns, written by Mark Campbell, describes the acting in the story as 'dire'. Barry himself says he doesn't agree, and he's right not to, since Campbell's book, Pocket Essentials' Doctor Who, is merely opinionated guff dressed up as serious analysis, which any fan - literally, any fan - will offer unheeded at the drop of a hat - it's no more meaningful than that. And yes, I include this blog - it's just a way of getting things off of our collective chest.

Also in the episode three commentary, Christopher Barry and Terrance Dicks talk about black actors, specifically the notable Rick James - notable for the fact that he is not only the sole speaking black character in this story, but in the whole of Doctor Who's ninth season. Barry says he was on the side of the black actors and tried where possible to get them into Doctor Who, then qualifies himself by saying it was only one, and he actually uses the word 'token'. Dicks says Barry was 'progressive', but only compared to others.

This leads neatly on to the stand-out documentary on the disc, RACE AGAINST TIME, directed by Thomas Guerrier, about the appearance of black and other ethnic minority actors in Doctor Who, and on television in general. It's narrated by Noel Clarke, who can justifiably claim to be the series' first black companion, Mickey Smith, first appearing in the 2005 relaunch episode Rose, and then joining as a companion proper at the end of School Reunion (2006). He's now a pretty big name in British movie-making (Kidulthood, Adulthood, 4,3,2,1), sounds matter of fact in his delivery, but not disinterested, and it works because it avoids dominating the documentary with starry, actor-ish speech. He just delivers the lines as written and allows us to take what we want from it. It begs the question then why it's necessary to have a star name, but the publicity would do no harm.

Some really good points are made in the documentary. For example, there is a clear racism metaphor in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, in which two distinct Dalek factions are fighting each other for control of an ancient weapon. They hate each other because each believes the other faction to be impure. There is also a scene in which the companion Ace (Sophie Aldred) takes down a sign hanging in the window of the boarding house in which she's staying. It reads: NO COLOUREDS, and it shocks her, as well as us. Further, in part two, there is a lovely scene with John (Joseph Marcell), a night cafe worker, and the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) talking about the consequences of small actions, and a moving and thoughtful moment of quiet reflection in an action-packed adventure. Yet Marcell is the only black actor in the whole four episodes. There is much better representation in the following year's stories, but quite simply, the documentary shows that there was not enough throughout the series' original 26 years on television.

For for the 2005 revival, Clarke's Mickey Smith is an idiot in Rose, but he becomes a better person thanks to the Doctor's influence, or rather his enabling, from his next appearance in the same year, Aliens of London, since he bravely attacks the Slitheen to save Jackie (Camille Coduri), and uses his computer skills to help the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) in the next episode World War Three. By Boom Town (2005), he's much more confident, and it only improves from there on. Not only that, but there are many other prominent actors of colour throughout the next few years in great roles, so new Doctor Who does do it better.

Nevertheless, the documentary comes to the conclusion that the old series shouldn't necessarily be blamed for its poor showing. That's just how things were. We still had some great performances from such as Earl Cameron and Carmen Munroe, to name but two, to enjoy.

Doctor Who has a worse behind-the-scenes record, in that Waris Hussein, who directed the programme's first four episodes back in November 1963, is the only non-white director ever to have worked on the show - a dubious record he holds to this day - and of course there have been no black producers, script editors, writers even, though Noel Clarke has written for Torchwood.

The other notable item is an interview with costume designer James Acheson, who is now a multi-Oscar-winner and lives in New Zealand. He created such memorable designs as the Mutts themselves, the Zygons, and the Time Lord costumes for The Deadly Assassin (1976) which have become so iconic and lasted into the series revival. But none of that is the reason why this interview is so good. It's because Acheson is just so funny! Two or three times he tries to tell an amusing story about his time on the show, and he stops because he's laughing so much himself. It's hysterical, and very endearing, and I hope we hear from him on DVDs to come.