But others did. In the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year of 1977, I got my greatest, meatiest television role so far. I was cast as the monstrous Reverend Ossie Whitworth in Poldark. It was probably the most delicious part I could have imagined. The show was based on the books by Winston Graham, a pal whose own life was as fascinating as his fictions – though not always in the way he might have wanted. He had written a novel called The Walking Stick, he told me. And the moment it got published his wife came down with a mystery illness and had to use a stick for the rest of her life. But what an inspirational woman Jean was. Her disability never got in her way. It never stopped her living, or having fun. Big groups of us from the cast went for days out on the beach in Cornwall with them and once I joined them on holiday in Menorca. To this day I can picture Jean swimming around in a rubber ring and yelling, ‘Get me a gin and tonic, darling,’ as I watched from the shore.
