'I have 90 years to share: 90 years of joy and sorrow, triumph and disaster, love and loss, laughter and tears; 90 years of watching the world change around me beyond my wildest imagination. Ninety years and still counting...'
Amanda Barrie, the iconic Cleo in Carry on Cleo and much-loved Alma in Coronation Street, was born in 1935, above her grandfather’s tailor’s shop in Ashton Under Lyne, during a ferocious thunderstorm. And ever since her journey through life has been a stormy one.
This book will tell the whole story for the first time, from her expulsion from two schools and running away from home aged 13 to be a Soho showgirl, to rising from the chorus to star in the West End, to Carry On Cabby and Carry On Cleo, to Corrie, Bad Girls and more. Amanda has become something of a national treasure, entertaining us all, whilst not hesitating to speak up for herself and others on national television, including on celebrity editions of Hell's Kitchen and Big Brother.
Having performed in her teenage years alongside fellow national icon Barbara Windsor, Amanda’s life has in many ways followed a similar trajectory to become a huge household name.
Amanda will pay particular attention to the whole new life she has led since she left Coronation Street in 2001. Packed with anecdotes and memories of her nine decades on stage and screen, she will share the moments that came to define her life.
She will fully explore her struggle to come to terms with who she was, relating in painful detail the traumas faced by a young gay woman in the 1950s and early 60s. She will explain why she kept that side of her a secret for most of her adult life, and how she feared that she would lose her job and her home if the truth became known.
For the first time, she will tell the full story of how she met her wife, novelist Hillary Bonner, fell in love, overcame all manner of difficulties, and built a new life together.