Jeni Barnett

Well, it’s 1.01, or too-late-for-my-own-good.

The old man has just arrived home from Hornchuch where he’s been giving his Trinculo in the Tempest. I watched some TV after driving for two and a half hours from the centre of London, where I did a voiceover for an advert that I WANT. Sorry, I don’t mean to shout but we jobbing actresses have to take whatever we can get.

I didn’t know that Jane Asher, she of no middle name, started acting when she was five. She is of indeterminate age, a step grandmother, with a sylph-like body and a fab sense of humour. She made cakes on the show and all the time I wanted to ask her what she thought about Heather Mills, or as she was so aptly described in the paper recently as ‘that one legged charity campaigner’, but Ms Asher has class and discretion and she would never reveal what she really felt about anybody, and certainly not an act like Mrs Mills.

Longevity in the business does equate with how many people you have miffed. June Whitfield is renowned for being a lovely woman. My mentor Betty Marsden, of the same generation as Miss Whitfield, and the female voice in ‘Round the Horne’, pee’d off everybody she met. If she didn’t like them, she told the truth. She taught me to do that in both my acting and writing.

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One of the best things about getting older is that you really do know what you are doing.

In today’s ‘wrinkle free, let’s pretend we haven’t lived for years in case we look a day older than 28’ culture we actually deny all experience. We’re turning into denuded rats without a grain of pain on our smooth uplifted faces.

I admit that I am one of the lucky ones. I don’t have many lines although I do have the down turned mouth which afflicts so many of us old peasant women. It makes me look sullen and miserable even if I am hysterical on the inside.

If I catch myself in the window of ‘Top Shop’, I grin – yes, inanely – or if I feel the scowl, I try and smile, even if it is only passing bus drivers who notice. Indeed, I do get that inner glow when the sewage truck comes to empty the cess-pit in the garden. I know the geezer with the pipe (his son used to learn cello with my daughter) so we always have a chat as he empties last month’s waste. He says I don’t look a day older. The reason I mention this is because today’s programme bore testimony to the good old, and I mean that – the GOOD OLD.

We had Jimmy Hill (Oh, behave!) on the show (he of the footballing pedigree) with his delightful wife Bryony. She talked about her gardening book, her painting, jam making, her breasts and her husband’s long career. It was quite a chinwag, which is exactly what she was. Probably one of the first ever WAGS there was, if ever the WAGS there is. But the point is that we all chatted so easily because we are old.

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Thank you for the kind comments. So many and too many to answer individually, but be rest assured they are noted and gratefully received.

We had a little hangover cushion on today’s show. Stuffed with herbs in brown silk, it smelt intoxicating, and was hand-crafted in Nepal. You can buy them from Wild Earth. They’re sweet and buying them gives decent people some pennies.

I brought four back to the flat: one for hangovers, which is great for today; a yellow one for dreams; a pink one for energy; and a deep crimson one for passon. I think I may leave the passionate red one in the airing cupboard just in case. All the herb combinations are different but they all assault the nostrils magnificently.

Uncle Leo, the floor manager, is in Dubai doing some kind of horse racing (floor managing it, not entering the fray) but he says he will be back for the last week, we have 7 shows to go. I am managing to get through them. I’m not sure how, although pulsatilla, a homeopathic remedy, helps.

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