Comic actress Elaine C Smith polarises opinion. You either love her or hate her. But one thing you should never do is upset her because she's got clout, says JACKIE McGLONE
IT WAS the best sex she's ever had, sighs Elaine C Smith in a bosom-heaving stage whisper that sets the teacups rattling in the posh Edinburgh hotel where we're discussing this earth-moving moment.
The Scottish actress, who always shoots from the
lip and is a gallus gal if ever there was one, is not, however, doing a kiss-and-tell. She is talking about the best sex she's ever had while everyone else was laughing, remembering the one occasion when she was inspired to tell a joke that literally had them rolling in the aisles.
"It was about Scotland's women's curling team winning Olympic gold," she recalls, explaining that she did a riff about Scotswomen spending their lives sweeping up for a dead weight.
The sound of the laughter was "orgasmic". Now she knows what it's like to be Billy Connolly. It's never happened before or since, admits the comely, curvaceous comic and all-round entertainer, who will for ever be preserved in the collective memory as Rab C Nesbitt's long-suffering Mary Doll, and who is about to open at Perth Theatre in a new production of the highly acclaimed play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.
Glasgow-based Smith plays the sexually predatory mother of a reclusive girl (newcomer Debbie Salomon) whose virtuoso impersonations of the great singers, among them Shirley Bassey and Judy Garland, contrasts with her almost total shyness. The great Andy Gray plays the sleazy agent who is prepared to endure the attentions of the loud lush of a mother, as long as he can make some money out of her daughter's voice.
With her larger-than-life personality and undoubted acting talent, the much-loved Smith is central casting's ideal for the monstrous mother, a role skilfully created on stage by Alison Steadman, then played by Brenda Blethyn in the 1998 film version of Jim Cartwright's tragicomedy.
"Ha! Much-loved!" exclaims Smith, arching her eyebrows into ironic quotation marks. We might as well add to that "and much-reviled", she acknowledges, for no other Scottish female entertainer can so polarise opinion as the 49-year-old Lanarkshire nippy sweetie who is seen by some critics as being much too mouthy and far too big for her boots – which, by the way, are black, spike-heeled and very glam today. All the better for spearing a theatre reviewer or a political pundit perhaps?
Certainly, some of them – usually men, but the odd female Daily Mail columnist has got in on the act, too – come armed with freshly sharpened hatchets when Smith has star billing. She's been called "prolier than thou" and berated thus: "It's too marvellous, isn't it? Elaine C Smith, with her middle-class lifestyle and her £20-a-ticket gigs, on the socialist rant."
What does the C stand for? "See Me", one of Scotland's most prolific playwrights and critics used to claim. Others, though, have described this peerless pantomime dame as "a national treasure", with "the voice of an angel".
"I know, I know," says Smith (the C is for Constance), her husky voice edgy with weariness. "I am definitely not regarded as 'quality' by arts writers. I'm too tabloid, too working-class, too commercial and I'm a woman, who doesn't act in the classics, so how dare I speak up?" But it is delicious, she reveals, her eyes glinting wickedly, that one male critic is now absolutely terrified of her. "It's brilliant!"
This reviewer called Smith "a racist", an outrageous allegation that cut her to the quick, since she may be a funny woman – it's the way she tells them! – but she's also dead serious about her politics, her right-on credentials and her profound belief in feminism, which she wears like her heart, upon her sleeve.
A couple of years ago Smith, an RSAMD graduate, gained her BA in drama from Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh. She campaigns vociferously for Zero Tolerance to protect women against domestic violence, and Alex Salmond appointed her to his commission looking at the future of broadcasting in Scotland. She's also chair of the Independence Convention.
"It's been a hard bridge to cross as a socialist," she admits. "But the more independent I've become as a woman the more I've come to see certain virtues in nationalism. There is movement in Scotland at last. We're changing." Her friend Muriel Gray doesn't agree. "We get pissed and shout furiously at each other about politics."
So, Smith has clout. The aforementioned critic is now banned from reviewing her work. It was her husband and business partner, "the Al Pacino lookalike" Bob Morton, with whom she has two teenage daughters and who runs their successful production company RMP Arts, who insisted on pursuing the matter. "Bob wanted to deck him," she says. "Still does."
All of this emerges in the first five minutes as Smith – she's famously remarked that she'd never met a man who could measure up to a Curly Wurly – orders something chocolatey to nibble on. Over the next few minutes it emerges that she is now menopausal – and always exhausted because she's an insomniac – and that her very chic, capacious handbag was a Christmas gift from her "dear pal", Scotland's Solicitor General Eilish Angiolini, one of many close friends who have sustained her through personal sadness.
Her adored mother, Stella, died of cancer almost three years ago and she misses her dreadfully, feeling ambushed by waves of grief. "My mother did have a wonderful death, though," she says. "She had no pain. We had her at home with us and she died with her three daughters – I'm the eldest – beside her telling her that we loved her."
Seven months later tragedy struck again. Smith's younger sister, Diane (40), was disagnosed with a rare form of cancer of the blood. "She's a hairdresser, a marathon runner, with two children aged five and eight. The blow was devastating. We were still grieving for mum, but we had to put that to one side while we got on with what was facing Diane. It's her illness and hers to talk about, but I have her permission to talk about it now for the first time."
Smith's blood was not a perfect stem-cell match with Diane's, but their sister Louise's was. "So this Christmas, to have Diane sitting at the table with us, smiling, laughing and having a glass of wine – although mum wasn't there – was joyous. She has all her hair again and is no longer six stone. It's a miracle. She's in remission, though you have to wait 100 days – and it's the longest 100 days ever, because the three of us are emotionally very close. Diane's amazing. She has all my mother's tenacity. What stamina! Bugger marathon running, the race she's just run so courageously has been for her life," says Smith. She was appearing in panto at the King's in Glasgow when her sister underwent the stem-cell transplant. "Halfway through the second act I got a text from Diane saying, 'Awake now. Hope the show goes well.' We were in this crazy world of joy and light while she was in a netherworld of darkness, chemo and radiotherapy."
Acting kept her sane, Smith insists. "I've never understood when people said they wanted to go back to work immediately after a death in the family, but it was weird. My mum's funeral was on the Monday and on the Tuesday morning I was on a train to Newcastle to begin rehearsing Thoroughly Modern Millie. Laughter's the best tonic." Nonetheless, life was a blur for months on end. "Thank God, I did do stuff like the panto and wrote my one-woman show. But I almost stopped performing. I was so low I wanted to die. But since mum's death I don't do anything I don't need to do. Certainly, I don't need to do another sitcom."
There was a proposal recently for Smith and Karen Dunbar to do a major new TV show together. "There was a lot of money involved, but I just thought, 'This is wrong'.
"Nothing to do with Karen – she's lovely and we get on well. But the thought of going back to the BBC Comedy Unit in among all those men in that environment made me feel physically ill. Finally, I turned it down – their arrogance and the disbelief that I had refused that amount of money! Afterwards, I was running around my house yelling, 'I'm free!' I need to listen to the little voice inside my own head more often." In any case, says Smith, she's older and wiser now. "I've been through so much. Refusing to do a sitcom is not like having cancer," she says, adding that her elderly aunt is very unwell at the moment and that's another worry.
"As for the work, nobody died. I think that actor ego of mine that ruled me in my twenties and thirties is no longer paramount. I've been lucky to have a partner who's been very protective and respectful of me.
"Thanks but no thanks, I don't wish to do a Channel Five sitcom and I certainly don't want to go into a soap. It's not snobbery. I'm a big Corrie fan and as for River City, where else would so many fine Scottish actors get work? When I was speaking in the Newsnight debate about the Act of Union, Ian Rankin asked: 'What are we going to get through cultural independence: more River City?'
"I lost it! How patronising! That show keeps many Scottish actors, directors, writers and cameramen and women alive. Actually, I think Ian's frightened of me now."
He's not alone.
&149 The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Perth Theatre, March 14-29; the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, March 31-April 5, then touring to Dundee, Aberdeen, Kirkcaldy, Glasgow and Stirling until the end of May.
CITIZEN SMITHBORN in Baillieston in Glasgow, Elaine C Smith's first major television appearance was in 1986 on the BBC sketch show Naked Video. At the same time, she also starred in the sitcom City Lights, which ran for four years.
• Her role as Mary, the long-suffering wife of Rab in the BBC sitcom Rab C Nesbitt remains her most famous and popular. The show ran for nine years, ending in 1999.
• Since then she has appeared in the hit series Two Thousand Acres of Sky and the Tyneside police drama 55 Degrees North. In October 2005 she worked on Nina's Heavenly Delights, an independent film production set in Glasgow and starring Art Malik.
• Also known for her roles in panto, Smith has headlined the King's Theatre in Glasgow for many productions, starring alongside Gerard Kelly in performances such as Aladdin and Mother Goose. She stepped offstage and became its creative producer in 2006.
• Last year she starred in a sell-out Scottish tour of the Jim Cartwright play Two and, in 2006, played Mrs Mears in the touring West End production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. She also directed a production at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, A Limited Run, which went on to the 2006 Glasgow Comedy Festival.
• Over the festive season last year she appeared in her sold-out one woman show, 12 Nights of Xmas, at Glasgow's Oran Mor.
• On the big screen she has appeared in Women Talking Dirty and in Richard Jobson's critically acclaimed film Sixteen Years of Alcohol. Her autobiography, Elaine's World, was published in 1998 and has sold more than 15,000 copies.
