Kitty: Three

Kitty is caught unawares, sipping her fifth cream sherry, and chatting affably to Morag.

Kitty

No, honestly Morag, I do think that Brillo has helped your freckles. What? Oh, hello. We’ve been having a running buffet for the last programme. We all mucked in on the nosh; I did my butter-bean whip – it’s over there in a bucket. And the director did us a quiche. I suppose it’s his acne but I definitely detected a tang of Clearasil.

The producer didn’t cook, thank goodness. She’s a nice girl, but when someone chain-smokes Capstan Full Strength and wear’s a coalman’s jerkin, you’re hardly tempted to sample their dumplings.

Her empty sherry glass is replaced with a full one.

The first day I met her she said, ‘I’m a radical feminist lesbian’; I thought what would the Queen Mum do? So I just smiled and said, ‘We shall have fog by tea-time.’ She said, ‘Are you intimidated by my sexual preferences?’ I said, ‘No, but I’m not too struck on your donkey-jacket.’ Then it was, ‘What do you think of Marx?’ I said, ‘I think their pants have dropped off but you can’t fault their broccoli.’ She said, ‘I was referring to Karl Marx, who as you know is buried in Highgate Cemetery.’ I said, ‘Yes I did know, but were you aware that Cheadle Crematorium holds the ashes of Stanley Kershaw, patentor of the Kershaw double gusset, to my mind a bigger boon that communism.’ I said, ‘Don’t tell me the Russian women are happy, down the mines all day without so much as a choice of support hose?’

Her glass is topped up.

It’s all right, leave the bottle. In Russia, show the least athletic aptitude and they’ve got you dangling off the parallel bars with a leotard full of hormones. And what has China ever given the world? Can you really respect a nation that’s never taken to cutlery? We bring them over here and what do they do? They litter the High Street with beansprouts. I know what you’re going to say – what about the Chinese acrobats?

Kitty is a little inebriated by this stage.

Over-rated. I could hop up on a uni-cycle and balance a wheelbarrow on my eyebrows but I’m far … too … busy. If I was to turn to juggling I should never get any rummy played.

Not that I think Britain’s perfect. I see life each week from the train window of my Cheadle Saver, and I think I can safely say people today aren’t pegging enough out.

If I was Prime Minister, and thank goodness I’m not, because I’ve been the length and breadth of Downing Street and never spotted a decent wool shop. But if I were, I would put a hot drinks machine into the Houses of Parliament and turn it into a leisure centre. The income from that would pay off the National Debt, and meanwhile we could all meet in Madge’s extension. I would also put three pence on the price of a flip-top bin, because I don’t like them, and use the spare cash to nationalise the lavatory industry, resulting in a standard flush.

I would confer knighthoods on various figures in the entertainment and sporting world, namely David Jacobs, Pat Smythe and Dolly from Emmerdale Farm.

Before I leave you, I must say I’ve much loved coming here every week to put you right, and I’d like to pass on a piece of advice given to me by a plumbing acquaintance of my father’s. It’s an old Didsbury saying, and I’ve never forgotten it.

Kitty has forgotten it. She sits blankly. No, she can’t remember it.

Cast

Kitty

Patricia Routledge

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