In 2013, it became legal for a woman to marry another woman in the UK. And the following year I married my long-time partner, novelist Hilary Bonner.
Old fears die slowly. After so many years of hiding my real self, even as the ceremony proceeded a little part of me did wonder if we might be arrested on the way out.
After all, for fifteen years I had shared my life with a woman who would not publicly acknowledge our relationship. To her family and the majority of those close to her, I was just a friend. I was accustomed to living in the shadows.
I still half expect people to disapprove of me having a wife rather than a husband. And I doubt I will ever stop being surprised that, nowadays, at last, nobody seems to care!
Even as an actress, within an industry known for its liberal attitudes, tolerance, and acceptance of people who are different, I have found in the past that it was not always possible to be open.
For example, I firmly believed during my time in Coronation Street in the 1980s that I would be sacked if my sexuality became public knowledge. Actors and their characters often become as one in soap operas. And it would almost certainly have been felt that our viewers would not accept a gay Alma. But I did feel like saying: “It’s not catching, you know!’
Now Coronation Street abounds with gay characters, to the extent that I have wondered if it should be renamed Canal Street, after Manchester’s famous gay area. So it has occurred to me that maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is catching…
As a small child, I vividly remember being read fairy stories by my mother to send me to sleep. The happy endings more often than not involved a prince marrying his princess. Afterwards, I would lie awake thinking to myself: “I don’t like this, I think the story should be set in a time when women can marry women.”
So perhaps the seed of something I had absolutely no understanding was already within me. If so, I was soon to learn it must not be admitted. Homosexuality wasn’t a word you even heard mentioned. I, like so many, lived a life of denial. That was what you did back then.
There is little doubt that my schoolgirl crushes were rather more intense than those of most others. But at school, I even invented boyfriends so that I would fit in. Even though I was actually deeply in love with the head girl!
Later, I had a number of real boyfriends, and in 1967 actually married a man, the actor Robin Hunter. It was not a smokescreen. I loved him. In my life I have loved both men and women. And I have always hated labels.
I’d had my first glimpse of how life could be, when I accidentally ended up on holiday in the South of France in the early 60s, and entered this world where all kinds of people, queer and trans, appeared to be totally accepted. I met a woman there who captivated me. But I walked away from her. I was, quite simply, still afraid of my own feelings.
I was into my mid-thirties before I had a real relationship with a woman. I continued to keep that side of me hidden. And anyone living inside my head through that time would probably be in trouble. As I was myself. I had a nervous breakdown, and ended up having treatment at the Middlesex hospital.
I thought it was due to the pressures of being a West End leading lady. The doctors had other ideas. This was the 1970s, and they thought my struggles with my sexuality were largely responsible, and they regarded me as something of a curiosity, to the extent that they wrote about me in the medical magazine, The Lancet. I’d filmed Carry on Cleo not long before, and it seemed, that the medical profession found my appearance confusing. Apparently, I did not look like a lesbian – or, more accurately, how back then the world thought a lesbian looked.
At the time, there was immense prejudice against gay women. I still remember overhearing whispers, mouthed behind cupped hands, that the choreographer of a show I was in was “a lesbian”.
Young girls were warned off, as if a lesbian, shock horror, was a predator to be feared who might jump on you with neither encouragement nor warning. In my future experience nothing could have been further from the truth.
Perhaps it was not surprising that I developed a terrible tendency to blush. I felt as if I had this guilty secret.
I had a particular problem with taxi drivers, whom I always talk to and assume would not be accepting of my sexuality. I felt as if the Cleo in me had let them down. And I must confess that I was, until quite recently, ridiculously vague should the subject of my personal life be raised.
Then came the day when five or six years ago I inadvertently mentioned “my wife”.
“I didn’t know you were married, Amanda”, remarked the cabbie with casual conviviality. “Is your wife anybody I know?”
Well, I’d been casually accepted by a London cabby for being myself. And he even asked me for a selfie. As he drove off, I stood there and thought: Wow! Times have certainly changed.
This week I have been…
Working… Met up again with my “Costa Con” pal Stephanie Beacham at a Bad Girls convention in Birmingham. Claire King, who played the prison governor, was also there.
And the following day I breezed off to meet up with another old pal Sherrie Hewson, at a Film Fair event. The queues of fans stretched right down the street.
And if I say so myself, I seemed to be on rather good form. Indeed, I could have been accused of being a tad hyper, largely down to getting a lot of a laughs. However, such behaviour is inclined to have consequences at my age. Once the burst of adrenaline which had overtaken me departed – just as swiftly as it had arrived – I collapsed in a bit of a heap.
Antique-ing… Spent a morning at Covent Garden market checking up on all my antique dealer chums, whose stalls I have visited over many years. I bought a small metal box containing an original match with a phosphorous tip made in around 1880 by the factory workers known as the match girls. Those poor women and girls suffered from a terrible disease, known as Phossy, which caused facial disfigurement and death. They made history with a ground-breaking strike against their awful working conditions, leading to the eventual banning of white phosphorous in the UK.
Eating… I’ve never taken food that seriously. However, if married to Hilary Bonner you learn that eating is like a science where each flavour is discussed in detail. She also cooks. Which means I now eat proper meals.
This week began with pasta bolognaise – her bolognaise sauce is the best – with enough left over for stuffed peppers the following day. Last night it was seared salmon fillets and fresh English asparagus. I don’t know what we will eat tonight, but doubtless she does.
I’m known to be not too fond of chefs, having taken a swipe at Gordon Ramsay on national TV, but I am quite pleased to now have my own.
The only thing she can’t cook is any sort of ready meal, as she is convinced she knows better than the several hundred experts who have probably been involved in compiling the instructions that come with the packet.
Amanda Barrie’s autobiography I’m Still Here is out now in hardback, and in paperback on June 18th.