Hookers owe Kay Mellor a big debt

The last time Kay Mellor's film unit rolled into Bradford, the city folded its arms and pretended not to notice.

She might, we feared in that curiously ostrich-like way of ours, give the place a bad name.

Prostitutes on the streets, murders... whatever would Britain think of us?

Britain, as it happened, appreciated Band of Gold a good deal more than Bradford did. With some 13 million viewers tuning in weekly, it became the most popular drama series for a decade.

Nevertheless, the city declined to allow the television people back in to film the sequel. Public order might be at risk, it was argued.

Bradford's lack of co-operation notwithstanding, the success of Band of Gold made Kay Mellor Britain's leading television playwright.

And if the city remains ambivalent towards her, the feeling is not reciprocated. Miss Mellor likes it here, and by way of proof she has chosen the district to be the location for her new cinema feature - her debut as a director.

Fanny and Elvis is, she says, a tale of everyday life in the run-up to the Millennium.

"It's about a woman who's got a year left to get pregnant. A romantic comedy about the times we're living in - falling sperm counts, deteriorating eggs and dating agencies - and how we're losing our instincts."

It will be shot this autumn in Bradford, Otley, Ilkley, Skipton and Mellor's home town, Leeds. And though it does not promise to be a public relations exercise, it will at least show the area in a less seamy light than before.

"Bradford is a very vibrant place," says Mellor. "That's why I like it."

All the same, she admits, the attacks on Band of Gold from within the city sometimes upset her.

"I used to think it was just a handful of people who were stirring it up and creating a big furore," she says. "It annoyed me that some of the Muslim fundamentalists were getting themselves terribly wound up about women who work as prostitutes being on the lane, when women had been on that lane for half a century. You start to ask, 'Who was there first?'

"But to be honest, the problem was there before Band of Gold. There had been related riots in Birmingham before the series even hit the screens.

"And ultimately, it's done a lot of good for prostitutes. The community is now working to educate young women to the dangers and to the problems of pimps - some of whom are highly intelligent, manipulative men, preying on young girls who are ripe for affection."

With Band of Gold and Mellor's subsequent work - most recently, BBC1's Playing The Field - in mind, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts presented her last month with the coveted Dennis Potter writers' award.

"I could hardly believe that," she says. "I had to pinch myself to believe it was real.

"But you see, I never expected anyone to watch Band of Gold. I thought six people and a dog would see it. No-one was more surprised than me when it took off in the way it did."

Her new film, which she says is "a massive step", will start pre-production just as her previous work arrives in the cinemas. Girls' Night, which she wrote as a tribute to a friend she lost, is the story of a factory worker diagnosed with a brain tumour, who takes off to Las Vegas with her best friend. Julie Walters, Brenda Blethyn and Kris Kristofferson are the stars.

The movie was premiered at the Leeds Film Festival last autumn, to much praise. But right now, the public's reaction to it is of less concern to Mellor than their assessment of her current "live" project.

Despite finding herself in the near-unique position of being able to take on almost any job she chooses, she has decided to submit herself to the rigours of a solo stage performance.

Her one-woman show, Queen, which she has also written, opened this week - just previews, so far - at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

"To be honest, I'd forgotten how knackering it all is," she says. "I used to act in a lot of my own stuff, but it's six years since I was last on the stage. And when it's just you out there, it's all the harder."

Queen explores a world which has long fascinated Mellor - that of the television soap matriarch.

She plays Susan Heaven, a soap actress whose life off-screen is as turbulent as that of her character - a Bet Lynch-ish landlady in a show called Castle Grove.

"This is someone who's given her life to a soap," says Mellor. "She started as a singer-comedienne in the clubs. A simple working-class lass who made good.

"I've spoken to lots of people and it's usually a similar story - from Sue Johnston who played Sheila Grant in Brookside and brought up a little boy on her own, to Julie Goodyear, who became a soap icon.

"It's fascinating. It's a world which I was privileged to be part of for a little while (she wrote episodes of Coronation Street and Brookside) and I studied the actors.

"I loved to meet people like Liz Dawn (The Street's Vera Duckworth). I think the public are fascinated by people like that, and rightly so."

Soap runs in the Mellor family - Kay's daughter Gaynor is Coronation Street's Judy Mallett - but mum insists there is no part of herself in Susan Heaven.

"No. I never wanted to be in the public eye. But at the same time, it's important for me as a writer to have this sort of contact with the public.

"I didn't want to spend my whole life behind a word processor. I felt I needed to go out, live a little."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.