Elaine C Smith plays it for laughs

COMEDY actress Elaine C Smith has opened her heart on the religious divide that almost tore her family apart.

IN the second part from new book Nothing Like A Dame, she tells how it made her grandfather try to stop her parents from marrying.

WITH typical good humour, Elaine also talks about her hilarious botched audition to drama school - and how love struck like lightning.

IN A way, I owe my very existence to sectarianism and the Orange Order.

Never thought I would ever write that sentence.

John McGarry, my grandfather, was a bright Irishman who landed in Scotland at the age of seven from Magherafelt in Derry.

When my mum Stella and dad Jim decided to marry, her father went as far as trying to get my dad sacked.

The story goes that John, as a works manager, had a talk with one of the managers at Clyde Crane Engineering, where my dad was a turner.

It would have taken place in the pub, where Papa did most of his scheming. His wife and kids scrimped and saved but he was always flashing the cash and buying friendship.

Ironically, my dad was saved because his foreman and shop steward were Orangemen and my dad's sister was in the local Orange band so it was assumed that he was one of them - although he'd no religion at all.

They were determined to protect him from this overbearing man, who didn't want a Protestant to marry his daughter on the grounds that he came from a poor family and wasn't good enough for her - and that he wasn't a Catholic.

So there was a time, just after my parents married and before I was born, when there was no contact between my mum and her family at all.

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Growing up in 1960s Bellshill in Lanarkshire, I didn't realise that being an actor was a real job.

Maybe I was just especially thick, but apart from Hollywood films and watching Doris Day, I was clueless.

Because I had piano lessons, I knew there was such a place as the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, but I didn't ever understand what the 'and Drama' bit meant.

Musicians, and especially my piano teacher, pursed their lips as they said 'and Drama', indicating that it wasn't up to much.

We did piano exams there so I'd been in the hallowed building for music but I couldn't have told you what they did in the 'and Drama' bit.

In fourth year at high school a girl in my class changed my life. Bored out of my skull in maths, I was gabbing to Christine Crichton and she mentioned that she went to elocution lessons. After the initial guffaw from me I was sworn to secrecy as this, along with oboe or violin lessons, could be a hanging offence in the eyes of some. Accordion, piano and flute were OK, and obviously the drums (preferably a big one) but anything else and you were a weirdo. Elocution - well, forget it.

She said it was to teach her to speak properly. I was confused as I could understand her no bother, then I realised she meant she was learning to talk without a trace of working-class roots.

This was still in the days when it was believed that a heavy accent was a sign of poor education and class (wait a minute, what am I talking about, it's still the bloody same now).

Anyway, she said that she was going to be trained as a teacher of speech and drama. The skies opened, the sun came out and angels started to sing - well, not quite but you get the picture: a whole new world opened before me.

I was desperate to be a teacher but I didn't know what I wanted to teach - well, children obviously, but the subject was another matter. The know- ledge that you could teach something practical and creative was amazing. IContinued from previous page

wrote off for an application form, and got my audition date. I was ready with The Death of Marilyn Monroe by Edwin Morgan, a poem I had loved in class, and I also had to read a piece from Dr Zhivago.

I was 17, had never been in a theatre or had a dancing or singing lesson. I put on my good navy blue, three-piece suit with my huge platform shoes from Goldbergs and breezed into Glasgow.

It wasn't until I was shown into the waiting room that I started to suspect that I was out of my depth.

There were all these girls in leotards and tights, with hair swept up tidily in a bun, limbering up.

I had entered a whole other world. When I watched Billy Elliot, I cried at the audition scene because that feeling of being in another country was done so brilliantly.

The language, the building, the whole environment was as foreign to me as an African desert.

I was called in for improvisation. What the hell was that? The three lecturers explained they'd give me a situation like a fire and I had to act how I'd behave in that situation.

"Fair enough," I thought. Then came the bombshell. "Would you take off your shoes, please."

"What?"

"In order to move properly you have to take your shoes off."

I'd be five inches shorter and my perfectly fitting blue trousers would be five inches too long.

Suddenly all those girls in the leotards and tights made sense.

But in true Lanarkshire style, I got stuck in. I was asked to climb an imaginary rope ladder, so I stood there, jacket off, sleeves of lovely white blouse with the fashionable puffy sleeves and row of buttons at the wrist pushed up, trews rolled up and barefoot, feeling RIDICULOUS!

I did an awful mime which lasted about five seconds. I laughed and apologised for how rubbish it was and the panel smiled benignly.

Next I had to play tennis. "By myself?" I asked, and they said yes.

My literal interpretation was that I had to be both players. Instead of standing on one side of the imaginary net and serving, volleying and smashing the ball, I hit the shot then ran to the other side to hit it back.

I did this for a few minutes until I was red-faced and sweating (complete with trousers flapping around my ankles), and slightly confused at the looks of amusement from the panel.

It was obviously a first.

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Next was the dramatic fire scene. I opted for the last bastion of the rubbish actor, running back and forth with a panicked look (I was already panting and sweating from the tennis match so that seemed to help). Just as I was getting into it I ran to the door to pretend to get out. I miscalculated and it opened wide. End of fire scene. I walked out of that room with as much dignity as a sweaty red face, a flat hairdo and flapping trousers would allow.

I then had to sing in another room and the lecturer said I had a "fabulous singing voice, dahling". No one had ever called me "dahling" before so it was a bit of a shock and I started to feel a wee bit better.

Next was the reading part and I assumed they would have a copy of Dr Zhivago there. They didn't.

The shock of the improvisation combined with the realisation of what I had let myself in for with this stupid drama stuff had started to sink in, and I just wanted to cry.

They took pity when they saw how upset I was, and I compounded this with my self-berating habit of apologising, and saying how stupid I was.

I can't even remember what they gave me to read. I left the building in shock, trembling and thinking: "I don't want to bloody go there anyway with all those weirdos!" By the time I reached our dinner table and told everyone what had gone on, they were in fits of laughter.

It had my mum in stitches and she made me retell it to various aunties so it just grew bigger the more I remembered and the more I played up the ridiculousness of it all.

My ability to turn a scary or upsetting event into a funny tale has been one of my saving graces and it works as a sort of therapy for me.

A week later I got a letter telling me I was in. I nearly passed out.

ADAPTED from Nothing Like A Dame by Elaine C Smith, published by Mainstream, £17.99.

READ MORE HILARIOUS EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK ONLY IN THIS WEEK'S SCOTTISH NEWS OF THE WORLD

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