Knowledge is power for Maureen Lipman with new play

MAUREEN LIPMAN has an awful lot to live up to right now — and she’ll need every ounce of her Knowledge to get through it.

When she starred in The Knowledge, a 1979 British TV comedy-drama, it was nominated for a BAFTA and memorably described by one critic as “certainly the best TV play Britain has ever produced”.

It was written by the man she was married to for 30 years, Jack Rosenthal, who passed away in 2004.

Jack had also written 129 Coronation Street episodes, That Was The Week That Was, Spend, Spend, Spend — about Pools winner Viv Nicholson — and many more TV hits, not to mention the film Yentl, which he wrote with Barbra Streisand.

So, for Maureen, now directing a new stage version of The Knowledge and knowing what it meant to her beloved Jack, the pressure is on.

“Certainly it would rank at the top of Jack’s game,” says Hull-born 71-year-old Maureen, who has enjoyed success as an actress, comedienne, book writer and a certain lady on a British Telecom commercial.

“He also got three BAFTAs in a row for Bar Mitzvah Boy, as well as one for The Knowledge, so I think that is kind of unusual.

“Personally, I think it is his best, most- universal play.

“Jack also wrote the first London’s Burning, the one-off, when firemen were misunderstood and people thought they were just lazy blighters who played cards and slid down poles!

“In The Knowledge, he managed to give the London cab drivers a dignity in their profession, too, and a reason why they perhaps resented the other cars on the streets.”

The Knowledge, of course, is the extremely demanding tests budding cab drivers have to go through before being allowed to operate one of London’s famous black Hackney cabs.

Prospective drivers have to commit to memory the so-called Blue Book — it’s not blue, actually — which contains 320 point-to-point journeys within six miles of Charing Cross.

Once they pass written exams, they embark on all sorts of other tests and trials, having to find all manner of cinemas, theatres, shops and so on.

Regarded as the hardest such taxi exam on Earth, an astonishing 70% drop out and never get to drive a Black Hack around the capital.

Jack and Maureen were utterly drawn into this world, and she will direct the new version while being well aware her late husband has set the bar very high with his original.

“The reason it is so relevant to do it now is because 1979 in many ways mirrored society now,” she explains.

“Back then, we had the Ayatollah, the Three Day Week, strikes and rubbish in the streets, a time of significant unrest.

“Although we took a small subject — that of taxi workers and their rights to prosper — it also said something about the society we were living in.

“When it was written, it was the first year of Margaret Thatcher’s government, a time when one needed a strong and stable country.

“The fashions were pretty much as they are now.

“Also, today’s cab drivers are under threat from taxi company Uber, and phone apps, which will whip the trade into shape.

“But I personally just wouldn’t set foot in one.

“Today’s drivers also have terror on the streets again — ’79 was the year Mountbatten was killed and Airey Neave was blown up by the IRA, so once again, we are looking for safety on the streets.

“Safety in the streets is often to be found in a black cab.

“I was in theatre when a van came onto a bridge in London and slaughtered people.

“When we were allowed to get out and walk, we jumped into a black cab. We didn’t hail an Uber!”

Maureen admits that her beloved London these days makes her “chary” and as a regular user of the Tube, she admits she is constantly looking left and right.

“You’ve just got to keep your eyes open and be streetwise,” she insists.

“If you live in a capital city as vibrant as this one, you’re likely to encounter trouble, but you are also likely to encounter great kindness.”

She reckons her career, too, has been very kind to her.

Never one to find something that brings fame and fortune and just stick to it forever, the Lipman career has seen a bit of everything.

She’s done deadly-serious movies, such as the Oscar-winning The Pianist, but she has also loved being lighthearted on Have I Got News For You, Loose Women and The Paul O’Grady Show.

Anyone who can mix Educating Rita, Carry On Columbus, Doctor Who, National Lampoon’s European Vacation and The Wildcats Of St Trinian’s clearly likes a bit of everything!

“I don’t know whether I did the right thing, and variety isn’t really appreciated in our world” she shrugs.

“It’s much safer to just keep doing the same thing over and over again, because people find that quite comforting and reassuring.

“If you’re in a hit like Educating Rita or Oklahoma!, everyone remembers you in it.

“I don’t watch these things again, but funnily enough, I recently saw myself in something and thought: ‘I was actually quite good, wasn’t I!’

“The best thing I ever did was probably playing Joyce Grenfell in Re: Joyce!. I did that both on television and theatre for years, and I loved it.

“And I do get a lot of strange-looking Doctor Who fans outside the theatres because I was in that!”

She was once a fan herself, not of Doctor Who but of a certain Liverpool musician.

Maureen was still a nipper when she managed to get into an early Beatles concert, and says the sight of John Lennon in all his glory was a pivotal moment — and that’s putting it politely.

“It was about 1963,” she recalls.

“That was the night I became a woman, when I heard John Lennon singing.

“I suddenly realised why everyone was screaming, because he was raw sex on legs!

“The next day, according to the manager, there were hundreds of pairs of knickers left at the theatre.

“Not mine, though. My mother would have noticed!”

The Knowledge is at the Charing Cross Theatre, The Arches, London, from Monday, September 4, to Saturday, November 11.

There are shows at 7.30 each day except Sundays, and 2.30 matinees Wednesdays, 3.00 matinees Saturdays. Stalls are £35, balcony £25, slips £17.50.

See www.charingcrosstheatre.co.uk or call the box office on 08444 930 650.