Barbara Windsor who was honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the British Soap Awards this weekend, has really had two separate careers.
First as a young women in the 1960s and 1970s she was the eye candy who provided two valuable assets to many Carry On films, then since the early 1990s she has been a bold and brassy soap opera matriarch.
Barbara’s own life reads like a soap character biography: married three times (currently to a man 25 years her junior); affairs with famous actors, singers, footballers and gangsters; and winner of the inaugural Rear of the Year competition in 1976.
One time I was invited to appear on BBC World News to talk about books, and the Beeb sent a car, which was obviously the most celebtastic thing that had ever happened to me. As we whipped towards White City, in an effort to make conversation (we had already discussed why a pretty girl like me was not married) I asked the driver whether he had ever driven any really famous people.
‘Usually I drive Barbara Windsor,’ he said, ‘But she’s in the Costa del Sol this week. She’s lovely.’
I swooned. And, for several weeks after that, tried not to make any decisions without pondering first: ‘What would Barbara Windsor do?’ There are two answers to this question: a) run through a group of men in uniform whilst topless and b) kick everyone out of the pub.
