Lynda Bellingham: Nude and loving it with the Calendar Girls
Being part of Calendar Girls is well worth casting off your inhibitions, Lynda Bellingham tells Diane Parkes.
Every night actress Lynda Bellingham is stripping off in front of an audience full of theatre-goers. But far from being intimidated by the experience in the show Calendar Girls, 61-year-old Lynda has already come to see it as just part of the job.
“It was very nerve-wracking the first time but once you have done it you just think ‘sod it’ and get on with it,” she says. “You actually become quite trigger happy with it.
“And it isn’t as if it is sexual or anything. It is difficult doing love scenes because that involves all sorts of things. The whole purpose here is that you don’t see anything. We are naked to each other but no one else is supposed to see anything.
“What is interesting is that everyone is really interested in the nudity but actually it is only a very small part of the story.
The story is actually about some real women in a small village in Yorkshire who were prepared to do this.”
Lynda first signed up to Calendar Girls in the West End in 2008 and enjoyed it so much she was keen to return to the touring version where she is joined by a cast including Gemma Atkinson, Hannah Waterman, Letitia Dean, Jan Harvey and Judith Barker.
Playing in Birmingham for the last week in February only, it sold out months ago. So great is the interest that the show returns in June, although with a different cast.
Based on true events, Calendar Girls tells the story of a group of friends and members of the Rylestone Women’s Institute who created a cheeky calendar to raise money for leukaemia research.
Following the death of John, the husband of one of the women Angela, from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1998, the group decided to pose for pictures naked but hiding behind teapots, cakes and sunflowers, John’s symbol of hope.
The story was made into a film with Helen Mirren, Linda Bassett, Annette Crosbie, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, and Smethwick actress Julia Walters.
And the stage show, written by Tim Firth and directed by Hamish McColl, has been a runaway success with sell-out performances in London and on its tour of the UK.
And Lynda says the story is irresistible.
“Historically we are talking about a group of women of a certain age, an age at which they were used to being ignored by general society, who did something very special,” she says. “It is a wonderful story.
“When I first took the job in 2008 the first thing I did was read the diary of Tricia Stuart, the woman I am playing. It was a fascinating insight into what they were doing.
