Mel: Now she has swapped her Pride and Prejudice bonnet for dreadlocks in her new film This Year's Love. She's touchy, she's feel-y, she's Jennifer Ehle.
Mel: .... .... is the woman who partied with Abigail, went nuts in May and whose praises were sung in the singing detective. I'm a big fan, Sue's a big fan, so please welcome Alison Steadman.
Mel: Can I just say Alison Steadman is wearing glittery shoes.
Alison: There are my party shoes.
Mel: Yeah, they're looking good.
Alison: There are my party shoes.
Mel: Are they ?
Sue: Do we have a shoe cam to reveal the glittery nature of them?
Mel: Alison Steadman's glittery shoes.
Alison: Which camera ?
Sue: Don't worry they will find them.
Mel: Yeah, they're lovely.
Alison: Will they find them ?
Mel: Come and take a seat, please tuck in. Trisha has whipped up a bit of a stir-fry, so.
Alison: Great, lets tuck right in.
Jennifer: It's hot.
Mel: We've seen you both on screen together in Pride, Pride and Prej. Did you called it just Prejudice ?
Alison: Just P and P.
Mel: P and P, okay. Alison you were Mrs. Bennet, Jennifer you were Lizzy Bennet. Have you got together often ? since filming it ?
Alison: No, hardly at all have we ?
Jennifer: Hardly at all.
Alison: We were mother and daughter, now can you believe it ? Can you believe that I am her mother ?
Sue: No !
Mel: No !
Alison: No, of course you can't.
Mel: Do you find as actresses, am I allowed to call you actresses ? or do you have to say actors ?
Sue: Is actors the generic ?
Jennifer: I think that actresses is all right.
Alison: I think it is.
Sue: I think it is quite good.
Alison: I hate all this actor business.
Mel: Do you ? I think in America people get a bit annoyed if you call a woman an actress or something.
Alison: I know. Right here he go.
Mel: Okay, tuck right in. Right, jump right in Alison Steadman. How good is that ?
Alison: Very good.
Mel: It is. She rocks. Did you find the whole sort of costume, corsettry period thing a bit of a nightmare ?
Jennifer: The corsets were a bit of a nightmare, aren't they ? They wasn't too bad though, they were fairly soft.
Alison: They weren't that bad. Not as bad as the Victorian costumes, they were really tight, they really lace you in and are really horrible.
Sue: Is that Whale bone ?
Alison: Yeah, all sorts. Any old bone they put around you. But for that period the dresses were loose, so although there was corsets it's not that fierce kind of lacing, so you can eat and breath.
Mel: But you do have help sort of getting into the costume ? and all you need ?
Jennifer: You have to have someone to help you do up all the buttons though.
Alison: You have to. You can't get in otherwise.
Mel: What about, when you have to go to the loo ?
Alison: You have to get someone's help. You just open...
Mel: Yeah, that's all okay. Okay, I just wanted to know.
Sue: Mel has been very keen to ask the loo question.
Mel: I know.
Sue: It's been preying on her mind.
Alison: Good question, big bloomers and all that you know.
Mel: Yeah.
Alison: Stockings and garters and boots. It must have taken them hours to get dressed.
Jennifer: They didn't wear knickers.
Mel: What ?
Alison: I wore knickers.
Mel: What? Why didn't they wear knickers ? It must have been a hell of a draught up there. Why didn't they ?
Jennifer: I don't know.
Mel: In Pride and Prejudice, you're saying that Jane Austen wouldn't have worn knickers?
Sue: Oh no, Jane Austen must have worn knickers.
Mel: Surely?
Sue: You don't see her as a free spirited, knicker-less lady do you, Jane Austen really ?
Alison: When they started to wear knickers, the Victorians wore knickers with big splits, because they couldn't take all that stockings off. No, well they had legs.
Mel: Sort of crotchless bloomers.
Sue: Pre-pornographic cotton, Victorian, crotchless bloomers.
Alison: So you know, it's handy. They were handy.
Mel: Okay, from knickers very much so to hairstyles.
Sue: That's a great link.
Mel: But we seen you have got your new film, out on Friday, wasn't it ?
Jennifer: This Year's Love.
Mel: This is Love.
Jennifer: This Year's Love.
Mel: This Year's Love. This Year's Love, just testing, and you've got, you're wearing some amazing dreadlocks.
Jennifer: Yeah, I had hair extensions and I wore them for two and a half months.
Mel: Could you take them out every night, or ?
Jennifer: No.
Mel: So how do they do them on? Are they woven in or something?
Jennifer: They are tied on. It took about nine hours to tie them all on, and they were horrible.
Sue: Do you find it slightly suspicious, we had The Steps on last week and Faye's dreadlocks had gone missing. Exactly the same time as you had your dreadlocks, have you been swapping dreadlocks with someone from The Steps ?
Mel: Do you, did you find that you attracted a different kind of man with the dreadlocks, as opposed to the curly, wurly hair ?
Jennifer: People reacted very differently with them. I had a real problem with security guards following me around shops.
Mel: Really?
Jennifer: Hmmm. Yeah, they would just sort of hover.
Alison: Thinking you were going to be nicking things.
Sue: Pilfering things.
Mel: But you were wearing your ordinary clothes with just the dreadlocks on top?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Mel: Oh right, and you still got sort of, you got followed?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Sue: Did you get that with the ringlets with Pride and Prejudice? She's suspicious, she's a nutter.
Mel: I want to ask both of you what your vibe is, vibes are about the Oscars. Have you got any hot tips, and inside info?
Alison: Oscars, well I don't know really.
Mel: Have you ever been Alison?
Alison: No, I have never been. I have had some friends which have gone.
Mel: It sounds quite bizarre.
Alison: Well, friends have said that it's great when you are nominated it fabulous. Everyone is really excited and everyone is buying you champagne, and you feel it's tops. And you get there and it's very exciting and everyone is wonderful to you. But if you don't win, forget it. You are literally being trampled on, elbowed out of the way, you know you are personna-non-grata, immediately and you fell so, in the end...
Mel: Bleaks-ville.
Alison: Bleaks-ville. So in the end, you either win, or get out very quickly.
Mel: I hear that in the ceremony that if you get up to go to the little girls room or whatever, that they get someone to come and sit in your place who is dressed like you.
Sue: No, not a looky-likey. How can they get a looky-likey for 2000 people?
Mel: Okay, maybe not that.
Sue: The Hollywood looky-likeys they would be working their faces off, they would be going mad with it.
Sue: I think they get someone in a DJ or a dress. It's quite sinister.
Alison: It has to always look full.
Mel: Yeah, Oh dear.
Sue: One of the categories of the Oscars its either best actress or best supporting actress, four out of six or five out of six nominees are British. Judi Dench, best supporting?
Mel: Yes, best supporting.
Sue: What do we think about the sort of Britain's chances of getting an Oscar this year? because we had a lot of nominees last year and it was not a good year. The British were not coming.
Alison: It's sort of tantalising isn't it, because they often do this. They pick one movie and go for it, giving it this... and then in the end they sort of give it to the Americans. So they sort of wet your appetite and get you over there, and then go, "Oh, sorry".
Mel: But your are half American aren't you, half American and half English.
Jennifer: Yes. But I have never been nominated for an Oscar.
Mel: You will be, oh yes, oh yes!
Alison: With those dreadlocks.
Mel: Have you ever been tempted by going to Hollywood though?
Jennifer: No, not really.
Mel: You wouldn't like it?
Jennifer: No, I like it here.
Mel: Would you Alison? Would you do a stint there?
Alison: A lot of people say they, but I think it's well, if you haven't been to Hollywood by the time you are kind of forty, I don't think there is much point really. You know I'm really quite happy living in North London, popping in to do my show in the Theatre and generally enjoying myself, but the idea of sitting at home and longing for Hollywood and waiting for that phone to ring, is so...
Mel: Bleaks-ville.
Alison: Bleaks-ville. And it's not really me, really.
Mel: And the play is going really well, Memory of Water, it's going on at the moment.
Alison: Yes, at the Borderville Theatre in the Strand.
Mel: Because we had Julia Sawalha a few weeks ago, she came on the show and she said that Alison Steadman was the mother hen of the cast, is that true?
Alison: I don't, what this rubbish she's talking about, no, it's a lovely cast it's just six of us and it's a really nice play because it's an equally shared play. There is no one who is the star and everyone else coming on doing just one line, it's the kind of play where everyone gets a fair crack of the whip. Everyone has a nice scene to do.
Mel: Good call.
Sue: Is there whip-cracking in it ? is that part of it?
Alison: Er, No.
Mel: It's not Annie Get Your Gun doll. It's Memory of Water.
Sue: I was only joking.
Mel: Was Alison a bit of a mother hen on Pride and Prej ?
Jennifer: Yeah, you were.
Alison: Was I ?
Sue: I like that.
Mel: I'd confide in you Alison, I would confide in you. You have an aura of ... of confiding... thing.
Alison: The thing is that there were five daughters, or that right ?
Jennifer: There were five daughters.
Alison: There were five and not six.
Mel: Lizzy, Kitty, Lydia...
Sue: And the other two!
Mel: ..Jane...
Jennifer: Mary... Jane..
Alison: So, they were obviously all in their twenties, so I did at one point did feel a bit ancient. Because you do go around and think, I'm young, I'm with it, I'm still 25 and then suddenly when I was with all you lot chatting about boyfriends and this, that and the other... I thought I was an old granny there.
Sue: Rubbish!
Alison: Girls coming to me for advice.
Sue: I think that that's a nice thing though, because you can make up rubbish and see what happens. And then they pass it on, and then there is just a chain of rubbish. Is that just me? I don't know. Now it's time to preen the big, hairy beard of chit-chat and pluck out the crumbs of truth, because it is time for my last Late Lunch big three.
Sue: Resonant of horror films Dan, but never the less very, very impoverished. Now right, the first question to Sue in a sort of two Ronnies-type way looking through her questions, what's you best old wives cure? For both of you.
Jennifer: Vinegar and Sugar for hiccups.
Mel: Mixed together?
Jennifer: Hmmm..
Sue: Is that so because it would make you vomit so much that you would forget about the hiccups?
Alison: A boiled onion, cut in half, one on each ear for ear ache and bind it around. Guaranteed, yeah.
Sue: And also you look like Princess Leia from Star Wars which is an added bonus.
Jennifer: What's that for?
Alison: Ear ache. Have you not read Angela's Ashes? the poor guy was always getting boiled onions.
Sue: I have only got half way through that. The boiled onions, the sugar and the milk, now I'm with you. It's a very good book.
Mel: Garlic, for a cold.
Sue: Yes, that was a joke Melanie. Someone told Mel that if you put a Garlic up your rear to cure a cold, and she managed to put the whole bulb. Anyway, what sound sets your teeth on edge? First to Jennifer.
Jennifer: What sound?
Sue: Is it my voice?
Jennifer: I can't think of anything.
Mel: Nails on blackboard?
Jennifer: Not as much as some people.
Sue: That thing at school.
Alison: I think chalk has gone out of fashion, hasn't it ? They don't use chalk now. But it's that squeak. I tell you what make.. woollen gloves. I had a friend when I was at school and we would be standing waiting for a bus in the cold weather and she would go like that, with her woollen glove on.
Sue: And her teeth would go..
Alison: Yes, don't, don't !. Take your glove out !
Mel: Rippy cotton wool. Rippy cotton wool.
Sue: Any artificial fabric, touch it and my hand goes weak.
Mel: Claw, total claw.
Sue: What is now the most difficult tongue twister you know?
Alison: I have one, which is a bit rude.
Sue: How rude?
Alison: Not terribly, terribly rude, but a bit rude.
Sue: If it's fairly rude than we will say, and if it offends they we apologise, but we are going to crash on never the less.
Alison: My kids used to love it when they were little. What you do is say, "One smart boy, felt smart" and then "Two smart boy, felt smart" and you have to say it as fast as you can and see if you can get to fifty. And obviously its an exercise for actors.
Mel: Crashing on, crashing on. Join us after the break when three grown up, professional women will be throwing hoops over seasonal, erect vegetables. See you in three...
Sue: Welcome back to this Late Lunch with Jennifer Ehle, Alison Steadman and Trisha.
Mel: Thank you Trisha for a lovely lunch. It was the.
Sue: Yes it was very good.
Mel: It was absolutely delicious. Can I do a very quick thing in front of Trisha. I want to apologise to perky for er, er, taking the Mickey out of the cat impression.
Sue: That's okay, I don't mind.
Mel: Sorry, we've done that, we've shared that. That's why we are here.
Sue: And we shared that and resolved it in a kind of Catholic type way.
Mel: Did you have a good lunch in the audience with Brian the fireman ?
Trisha: I had a bargy, and I had a mouthful of a doughnut which must have been very nice, must have tasted, it must have tasted beautiful..
Mel: ....the valentine doughnut?
Trisha: Yes
Mel: Stepped on, when I was in the audience.
Sue: So you like eating her foot ?
Trisha: Yeah, well, it would have been nice six months ago.
Mel: Are you talk show fans ?
Alison: Talk show fans ?
Mel: Yeah.
Alison: Occasionally, I don't watch an awful lot of telly I suppose. I watch more late at night sort of kind after I get back from a show. I sit down with a glass of wine and the telly. Hmmm.. but not...
Trisha: Me...
sue: How about you Jennifer, do you want any sort of Springer, Trisha, Vennessa ?
Jennifer: I don't, I don't even have my television hooked up at the moment, I've just moved to a new flat and..
Mel: How can you survive without it ? You haven't even got the Arial plugging in or anything ?
Jennifer: No.
Sue: You've missed Trisha, but to be honest big cat diary which is my favourite programme isn't on at the moment, so you're not missing masses...
Mel: We're going to press on to a game now. It's been away for a few weeks, but today it's back by popular demand. Yes ladies the time has come to enter the late lunch fairground and try your luck at winning a prize. How good's your wrist action? Good ?, quite good ? I feel it's good, because it's time to play.. vegetable patch hoop-la.
Sue: Oh happy days, vegetable patch hoop-la. The rules are very, very simple. You each have a designated vegetable and you have to peel the backing of these stickers first. Your designated vegetable is the aubergine. And you designated vegetable is the cucumber and yours is the carrot. Now you each have five cabbage patch rings which you must endeavour to hoop around your designated vegetable in your, or rather our, unique, rotating, erect, vegetable patch. Okay, you have got your badges on, everything is clear there. The person whose designated vegetable has the most rings around it is the winner. There is no marks for a parsnip, not in this game, that's another game its on late at Sky we know that. Okay, you've got your hoops, pick your hoops up. Are you ready to put your rings around a corset ? Excellent, off you go ! And the band are playing a theme tune for the 47th week running, oh yes ! Err, it's all over far too quickly. And now for the silly dancing lady...
Alison: Shall we leave the ones on we got ?
Sue: The scoring has gone out of the window, just luss 'em !, luss 'em at an erect vegetable. It doesn't matter about the rings just hook.. Trisha that's cheating in anyone's book. Oh, very good. Oh, you've got an aubergine. And in the last dying seconds.
Sue: I have to say Trisha you weren't the most accurate with the style. I am sorry, it's Alison, Alison wins the bag of .. stuff..
Mel: Candyfloss.
Sue: Well, there you are.
Alison: Better than a bag of cash.
Sue: If you would like to come over.
Mel: Make yourself comfortable, sit yourself down because the phone lines are as crazy as a bear trapped in a sleeping bag, although not in a cruel way, in a nice way, because the bear wanted to be in the sleeping bag. The bear wanted to be in the sleeping bag, not cruel. So let's go to the first, hopefully NOT phoney, guest on the phone.
Mel: Sorry about that. hello, who's there ?
Nick: Nick Stopparni from North Hampton.
Mel: Nick Suffarni, lovely to hear your voice.
Nick: Stopparni that is Mel.
Mel: Hello doll, what ?
Nick: Stopparni, not Suffarni.
Mel: Suffarni, Stopparni.
Nick: That's the one !
Mel: Got it, okay.
Sue: .... ??? ......
Mel: I wear one of these things and I've got a large build up of wax in the old ear. Sorry about that, now What's your question?
Nick: My question is for everyone, it's if you could wake up anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Mel: Yeap, good question. Groovy.
Sue: For me Croydon, obviously.
Mel: How about you Alison ?
Alison: God, there are so many places to choose from. Probably in a tent somewhere I think.
Sue: Rural, we like that.
Alison: Yes, somewhere rural. Yes a nice spring day, something nice like that.
Mel: Trisha, how about you?
Trisha: I think mine would have to be a float in the up and coming Sidney Lesbian and Gay mardeegra.
Mel: Good call. How about you Jennifer ?
Jennifer: I have just got back from Cuba, I would quite like to go back to Cuba.
Mel: Nice. Jennifer, Trisha... Alison too...
Sue: Well, that's some money for who ever wrote that song.
Sue: Hey line 2, Sarah from Brighton. Hello Sarah ?
Mel: There is no Sarah.
Sue: Have I angered you in some way ?
Mel: Lets have a fax. Dear Alison, I have watched Abigail's Party at least one hundred times. Will you please, please say "give us a top up tone", Margaret from Rochester.
Sue: This is .... question.
Alison: The thing is, this is quite true Margaret from Rochester, I meet so many people these days who can do that voice better than I can, because it's been so long that I don't do the voice now, and I think, if I do it I will let people down.
Sue: I think we should let her off the hook. She shouldn't have to do it, the memory is there.
Mel: Let us remember collectively, the memory of Alison saying "Top up tone".
sue: We've got it there, so lets keep it. We have just got time to thank today's quiet brilliant guests, Trisha, Jennifer Ehle and Alison Steadman. And we thank you for watching.
Mel: Don't forget to join us next week for the last ever Late Lunch. Good evening..
Sue: Take care..