MAUREEN LIPMAN reveals what happened with she and Rula Lenska became flatmates in their 70s 

Pictured: Maureen Lipman and Rula Lenska at the Women of the Year Lunch and Awards in London in October

Why, in the first quarter of my eighth decade, do I find myself sharing a high-rise flat in Salford with fellow actress Rula Lenska? I’m not exactly a student and Rula was more an acquaintance than a friend until a few months ago, when we both washed up on the cobbled shores of Coronation Street.

The answer is that we spend all week working 200 miles from our London homes and don’t want to spend vast sums of money on bedding down at the Premier Inn.

The last time I shared a flat was in 1966 and my flat-mate was actress Lesley Joseph. We were second-year students at Lamda, The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and the flat was two rooms and an unkempt kitchen in Earls Court owned by an eye doctor who lived in the other half of the apartment.

In a whole year we never once opened the oven, so when we left it probably crawled out after us.

Half a century later, I am happily sharing my life with Rula, a foot and a half taller than Lesley but equally congenial and, by our 1966 standards, infinitely more concerned with hygiene.

Rula is your basic Polish Catholic/Buddhist countess and I am from Hull. But via Lithuania, several generations back, so perhaps we both see life in a rueful, minor key.

Now that we inhabit the same mythical Street, we have decided to pool our resources and rent this box-like two-bedroom flat high up above the Manchester Ship Canal.

My character Evil Evelyn, and hers, Glamour Puss Claudia, rarely seem to work on the same scripts at the same time, which means we leave lots of notes for each other and constantly clean out old food from the fridge, often from ready meals that a single person couldn’t finish.

The contrasts in our living styles couldn’t be starker. I arrived with a small case on wheels and a backpack bearing flowers and vodka, for all the world like a well-meaning suitor in a rom-com. It took just 22 minutes to move me from my previous one-bedroom flat to this one, 17 floors up.

Why, in the first quarter of my eighth decade, do I find myself sharing a high-rise flat in Salford with fellow actress Rula Lenska, Maureen Lipman (left on Coronation Street) writes

Why, in the first quarter of my eighth decade, do I find myself sharing a high-rise flat in Salford with fellow actress Rula Lenska, Maureen Lipman (left on Coronation Street) writes

Rula turned up with two trunks, rugs, four lamps, throws, plants, tablecloths, swathes of velvet, exfoliating gloves, scented candles and a small red washing-up bowl. For a moment I thought I’d walked into a brothel.

The first night I cooked for us both and we had two ready-made courses. But when it was Rula’s turn to cook we had steamed sea bass and broccoli, white wine and fresh peaches to follow. Mmmm.

When we retired to our rooms to learn lines, I could hear her washing up and putting pots away in cupboards rather than using the Lipman methodology of leaving them piled up on the draining board, rusting for a couple of weeks. In the morning, sweeping and hoovering occurred! Things were looking up.

Rula likes to know how things like washing machines and heavy doors to balconies work and I like to sit down and eat yogurt-covered rice cakes in front of Countryfile. We never fight over the remote because literally all we watch is animal documentaries. No point watching drama because we’ll only whinge about how much better we would have been than the actors we’re watching.

So what is my contribution to the wellbeing of the household, you may ask. ‘Er…’ I may reply.

Well, I make her laugh. A lot. I prescribe for her ailments in my role of doctor manqué, I book us a massage – I have myself been known to lay healing hands on painful backs. I force her to accompany me to yoga classes and I make snide comments if she vapes through my attempts at coq au vin.

It works out well on the whole. If I write something new, I read it to her and she is the best audience in the world. We talk a lot about the men who’ve filled and left our lives and we vie over whose grandchild has more genius. My four-year-old’s just ruminated that ‘a million is a square number as well as a cubed’.

Top that, Countess!

I'm not exactly a student, Lipman said, and Rula (left on Coronation Street) was more an acquaintance than a friend until a few months ago, when we both washed up on the cobbled shores of Coronation Street

I’m not exactly a student, Lipman said, and Rula (left on Coronation Street) was more an acquaintance than a friend until a few months ago, when we both washed up on the cobbled shores of Coronation Street

When she needed a poem for her daughter’s birthday, I spent many hours of the night rhyming ‘I’ve been warned by my daughter’ with ‘so tonight I’m sticking to water’.

We work in the same studio building across the canal and share the same pitiful, windowless dressing room, but only meet at lunch in the canteen where we continue the conversation we were having over breakfast.

We moan incessantly about life on ‘Confrontation Street’ as I call it – like the twin revolving iron entrance gates which trap you if you weigh more than Nancy Reagan. The entrance pass you forget to take off when the floor manager shouts ‘Action’. How we always have too many scripts to learn – or not enough – and how the characters outdo Midsomer Murders for short life expectancy.

But then 70 or so more actors on set are doing just the same moaning – while realising that the juggernaut rolls on with or without us. And that, secretly, we all rather love it.

At home we overlap with the shopping so that we often have 15 apples and no teabags. We have one supermarket here whose prices reflect the fact that there is only one supermarket here, and things like crisps and milk come in packages the size of wardrobes, so we tend to schlepp stuff from London, where I live at the weekends, then forget it’s still in a suitcase until the smell of smoked salmon on the turn fills the air and poor ol’ Rula has to get back in the lift.

Never having been in the rough house of boarding school, I am rather circumspect about my modesty. So when I came into the kitchen one night of a thousand wake-ups and saw Rula, stark naked making herself a chamomile tea, I shrieked like a teenager at a prom and ran back into my bedroom.

At first my flatmate habitually started the day with coffee and a vape, but now she shares my morning brew of lemon juice, cider vinegar, ginger, cayenne pepper and turmeric mixed with olive oil. How tempting is that? Between you and me, I could sell snake oil to my housemate.

Mind you, when I was suffering from interrupted sleep she bought me detox patches to stick under my feet which turned black over night… the patches not my feet. But they actually got me through eight hours, all in one go.

We have scarcely ventured into Manchester itself, yet. For me it has such romantic connections as I met Jack Rosenthal, the Mancunian playwright and my late husband of 35 years, here in 1970. I say 35 years, but when a writer works from home you practically double that in terms of time spent together. There is a street named after him off Deansgate, which would have discombobulated his modest soul. It makes me faint with joy to walk past it.

It has been easy for me cohabiting with a mate because my family home was always filled with au pairs and school friends of the kids. We never knew how many there’d be for breakfast of a morning. We once had a Qantas pilot courtesy of a new au pair. ‘G’day,’ I heard him say to Jack on the stairs.

So far we have had no guests. We talk about having an all-day party but our schedules have not yet accommodated the purchase of canapes and prosecco.

But although there are times I find myself slipping into Wagamama when the fridge is bare, lonely is not a word in my vocabulary

My flattie and I are looking forward to actually having some scenes together. We have been known to harmonise old Everly Brothers hits around the living room and frankly if any enterprising agent is looking for an ‘elderly crumpet’ girl band we are ridiculously available

We adore the piazza below with it’s giant TV screen and all the dotted cafes and not quite bedded-in foliage. We coo over the Lowry-esque view from the windy balcony of our top-floor eyrie and we can bore for Europe and the Cinque Ports over flocks of Canada geese flying past, swans turning upside down, the broody charcoal-and-tomato sunsets and apricot-and-mauve dawns.

I recently picked up a Best Newcomer In A Soap Award which, as I said at the time, is like giving ‘My First Padded Bra’ to Dolly Parton.

If ever we walk together over the elegant white pillars of the bridge across the canal to ITV, we cut a fine pair.

Her – wild and gorgeous in floating layers of green and gold, strappy sandals and tawny hair – and me, in navy anorak, tracksuit bottoms and old fedora.

It’s not a bad way for a couple of seasoned women of a certain age to spend their working lives, in unexpected, warm, caring and delightfully entente cordiale.

As our friends in global Soap-land tell us, good neighbours can become good friends.

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