Actress, writer and producer Sally Lindsay MBE — star of Coronation Street and creator of The Madame Blanc Mysteries— sits down with Scott & David to share the three stories that shaped who she became, spanning a grandad's bookshelf, a working-class childhood in the 1980s, and the 18-year-old from Salford who changed British theatre forever.
Stories Discussed
Story 1: A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
Type: Novella. Read to Sally by her grandad — a railway labourer who kept a shelf of classics in the front bedroom of his terraced house. Sally now reads it to her own boys, watches every adaptation every Christmas Eve in strict order, and believes its message — keep your Christmas all year round.
Story 2: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ — Sue Townsend
Type: Novel. Sally first heard it serialised on Radio 4 in her mum's car on the way to school — a mum who insisted on Radio 4 and slightly posher schools. Townsend captured the exact texture of Sally's 1980s childhood: Findus Crispy Pancakes, fishing down the back of the sofa for swimming money, and a 13-year-old boy somehow saying everything about the state of the nation. It still makes her laugh out loud.
Story 3: A Taste of Honey — Shelagh Delaney
Type: Play. Written by an 18-year-old girl from the slums of Salford in 1958 — and, Sally argues, the play without which there would be no Coronation Street, no kitchen sink drama, no working-class storytelling on the British stage at all. Sally played Helen at the Royal Exchange after auditioning three times, performing in the theatre she'd queued outside as a kid to get fiver tickets.