Here we are again. Another year, another eclectic range of guests and topics for discussion. Due to other commitments I am only able to attend two presentations this year, but what a couple of crackers. Both of them had special relevance to me, so, thank you LeedsBID and Chapter81 for scheduling them on the days I was free. I don’t know how you hacked into my calendar but I am glad that you did.
My first treat was called I Predict A Riot and featured the incredibly talented playwright Sally Wainwright and the equally esteemed actor, Tamsin Greig. The ‘Fireside Chat’ was hosted by Gaynor Faye, star of many a television and theatre drama, and daughter of the much missed Kay Mellor.
Before I left for Leeds Playhouse, where the Festival is being held, I checked that my health insurance was up to date and the life assurance policy covered me in the event of murder. The title of the event should give you a clue.
Ms Wainwright’s latest television series ‘Riot Women’ has just begun on the BBC, so I binge watched it on iPlayer. Like most of her other works it is set in the Calder Valley, around Sowerby Bridge and Hebden Bridge, an area where I lived for twenty-two years until 2011, when I moved back to Leeds. It is about a group – literally – of five menopausal women who decide to form a band in order to enter a competition, Hebden’s Got Talent, at the local school. After toying with the idea of doing ABBA covers, they harness their mood swings, hot flushes and anger at suddenly becoming invisible to the rest of society, by switching to punk. The only problem is that they only have six weeks to learn to play their instruments.
Sally Wainwright OBE
Obviously, being Sally Wainwright, it is not as simple as that, and each of them has their own back story as well as links to one or more of the others. Whilst hilarious in parts, it is also a challenging watch and intricately crafted. Any series which opens by having a character stand on a stool in their lounge and slip a noose suspended from a roof beam around their neck, is obviously not going to be all laughs.
The characters not in the band are also key to its story. The women, including a couple of musicians’ mothers, who are in different stages of dementia, are, quite rightly, treated sympathetically, whilst the men, apart from one, the hapless Gerry, are out and out slime balls, hence the reason for my trepidation. I assumed that the audience would be full of ladies of a certain age, who, like myself, are Wainwright fans and, for once in my life, I was correct. Had I been twenty years younger, this would have been my ideal night out, but, due to the content of the drama, I was in constant fear of the crowd turning into a mob out of association with the band and tearing we few chaps present, limb from limb.
The other man in the audience!
You will probably be wondering what Ms Greig’s role is in all this, well, she plays the part of bassist, Holly. Her real job is as a police officer, on whose retirement day her first scene is played out. She and a young female officer, are sent to sort out a woman in a supermarket, who is wielding a knife and drinking the booze from the spirits shelf. They arrest her, but get a thumping for their troubles. She is charged and released on bail in the custody of Holly, who puts her up for the night, oh, and asks her to be the singer in the band – as you do!
Tamsin Greig
There were obviously a lot of details revealed by the two guests as to the making of the show and where the inspiration came from. It was a series from 1976 called Rock Follies, about a girl band, which had fired the desire in Sally Wainwright to become a writer for tv when she saw it as a youngster. Since then she has done a five-year stint writing scripts for Coronation Street, as well as several of the best loved, and respected series in television history, including, At Home With The Braithwaites, Unforgiven, Scott & Bailey, Last Tango In Halifax, Gentleman Jack and, the seminal, Happy Valley.
One piece of nostalgic gold was that she first met Tamsin Greig whilst writing scripts for The Archers! For those of you not living in the UK, that is a radio programme and the longest running serial in the world, being first broadcast in 1950. It is just about the furthest you could get from Happy Valley, being set in a farming community in the fictional middle class village of Ambridge. Although not afraid to deal with pressing agricultural issues, it was mainly a comfortable bucolic programme concerned with church fetes and harvest festivals. It was her first writing job and Ms Greig recalled being impressed by this young writer when, in one of her first episodes, she shattered the inertia by including an armed robbery at the village post office. In the chaos which followed, the actor had to rush to a phone box to ring the police, but it was out of order and so she smashed the receiver against the coin box with a tirade of abuse which included the word ‘bloody’, the first time a swear word had been used on the wireless.
The chat was superbly handled by Gaynor Faye who brought out the best in the two guests, both in their reminiscences and their wicked sense of humour, especially that of Ms Greig, who seems to have progressed somewhat from the term ‘bloody’. She also skilfully kept the audience in check during the Q&A session which traditionally follows the main event, and which I normally find excruciating, as no one asks any questions, but just go on about themselves. The first contributor was one such woman who Ms Faye politely interrupted by enquiring as to whether there would indeed be a question at the end of her statement. Actually, the person concerned had been soundly booed shortly before, as she seemed to be about to drop a spoiler, having watched the whole series, whilst most of those present had only seen episodes one and two. Talk about mood swings!
Gaynor Faye, enjoying the evening as much as the rest of us. As were the two BSL interpreters.
I trust you will excuse me as I need to finish this piece rather abruptly as I am due to have my dressings changed and more painkillers administered shortly. They are very punctual here in the Intensive Care Unit. That Tamsin Greig certainly knows how to land an uppercut.
Returning to the topics being discussed in the Festival, whilst we were in Courtyard enjoying the chat about menopausal women, the simultaneous panel discussion in Quarry, was Where Have All The Good Men Gone? examining the meaning of masculinity in the modern world. Inclusive or what?
Riot Women is broadcast on BBC1 at 9.00pm each Sunday, and, as already mentioned, the full series is available on iPlayer. By the way, it was also revealed that the actors really do play their instruments rather than mime to a backing track. Amazing.
Leeds International Festival Of Ideas 2025 is organised by LeedsBID and continues at Leeds Playhouse until Saturday, 18th October. For full details please see the programme at https://leedsinternationalfestival.com/programme/
To see what is coming next at Leeds Playhouse it is https://www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk/whats-on/
For more information as to what LeedsBID do, see https://www.leedsbid.co.uk/
Photographs supplied by Chapter81
Tyke It To The Limit 