Kitty

Good evening. My name’s Kitty. I’ve had a boob off and I can’t stomach whelks so that’s me for you. I don’t know why I’ve been asked to interrupt your viewing like this, but I’m something of a celebrity since I walked the Pennine Way in slingbacks in an attempt to publicise Mental Health. They’ve asked me to talk about aspects of life in general, nuclear war peg-bags…

I wasn’t going to come today, actually. I’m not a fan of the modern railway system. I strongly object to paying twenty-seven pounds fifty to walk the length and breadth of the train with a sausage in a plastic box. But they offered me a chopper from Cheadle so here I am.

I’m going to start with the body – you see I don’t mince words. Time and again I’m poked in the street by complete acquaintances – Kitty, they say to me, how do you keep so young, do you perhaps inject yourself with a solution deriving from the placenta of female gibbons? Well, no, I say, I don’t, as it happens. I’m blessed with a robust constitution, my father’s mother ran her own abbatoir, and I’ve only had the need of hospitalisation once – that’s when I was concussed by an electric potato peeler at the Ideal Home Exhibition.

No the secret of my youthful appearance is simply – mashed swede. As a face-mask, as a night cap, and in an emergency, as a draught-excluder. I do have to be careful about my health, because I have a grumbling ovary which once flared up in the middle of The Gondoliers. My three rules for a long life are regular exercise, hobbies and a complete avoidance of midget gems.

I’m not one for dance classes, feeling if God had wanted us to wear leotards he would have painted us purple. I have a system of elastic loops dangling from the knob of my cistern cupboard. It’s just a little something I knocked up from some old knicker waistbands. I string up before breakfast and I can exert myself to Victor Sylvester till the cows come home.

There’s also a rumour going round our block that I play golf. Let me scotch it. I do have what seems to be a golf-bag on my telephone table but it’s actually a pyjama-case made by a friend who has trouble with her nerves in Buckinghamshire.

Well, I can’t stop chatting, much as I’d like to – my maisonette backs onto a cake factory, so I’m dusting my knick-knacks all the day long.

And I shall wait to see myself before I do any more. Fortunately, I’ve just had my TV mended. I say mended – a shifty young man in plimsolls waggled my aerial and wolfed my Gipsy Creams, but that’s the comprehensive system for you.

I must go, I’m having tea with the boys in flat five. They’re a lovely couple of young men, and what they don’t know about Mikhail Barishnikov is nobody’s business. So I’d better wrap up this little gift I’ve got them. It’s a gravy boat in the shape of Tony Hancock – they’ll be thrilled.

Now, who had hold of my showerproof? It’s irreplaceable, you know, being in tangerine poplin, which apparently there’s no call for…

There’s a mauve pedestal mat of mine, too.

Kitty

Patricia Routledge

First shown on Victoria—Wood As Seen on TV, on BBC2 in January 1985.