The Girl Behind Emma Peel: Part 2.

Before dawn in a delightfully feminine bedroom the phone jangles.  The young woman sleepily answers.  Then struggles out of bed, just like a scene from THE AVENGERS.

But the call was from the telephone service Diana Rigg instructed to wake her.  It is still only 6.30 a.m.  She gropes through the house, takes her luke-warm bath, drinks a glass of lemon juice.  Into the street by 6.50 a.m. - without a touch of make-up.  "I've got no vanity at that time of the morning."

North London's suburb of St. John's Wood is still fast asleep and there's no one to catch sight of Diana Rigg below her perfectly-groomed best.  Except John Taylor, her chauffeur.  He arrives a few minutes earlier, but his instructions are to wait .... about two lines are incoherent here...

"I'm never late," she shudders, "comatose that I still am, and I hate that sound of the bell - at this ghastly hour."

Off to the studios in Borehamwood, Herts.   She reads the morning paper on the way.

"It isn't my paper," she says, "It's John'.  I don't like it but it's the only paper there, so I read it.   Every morning."  Apparently it had never occurred to her to ask John to bring her a paper.  And so... another day in the life of Emma Peel.

This has been her routine since she became a television star.  Diana moved to this house, a lot more compatible with her status, from an old mews cottage she has lived in for five years.  Not that she was so concerned with status symbols.  Diana Rigg couldn't care less about such things.

She simply fell in love with the old house in St. John's Wood.  And her accountant approved of the move.

At her new address previously lived the artist Augustus John; and once Dame Laura Knight.

There, Diana Rigg now lives in the style and comfort of her private world revolving around a specially designed kitchen and window boxes sprouting home-grown herbs.

The house is out of bounds.  Except close friends.  Not that she is a recluse.  She feels that her life is her "own ruddy business".  But when in the mood, she will readily explain that she is every jealous of preserving her own privacy.

She insists on leading a life she considers right for her; not concerned with what she defines as "other people's social consciousness.   I like to do because I wish to, not because I ought to."

Diana was born in Doncaster, in Yorkshire, on July 20th, 1938.  She had spent the early part of her life at Jodhpur in Rajputna.   Her family was in the Indian Government Service.  Later, she was sent home to school at Great Missenden in Bucks.  Eventually, her parents returned to Yorkshire to settle in Leeds, where they now live.

There, Diana finished her education at Fulneck Girls' School, enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (The RADA) and two years later graduated to an acting career.  Was she withdrawn as a child?  "No, I don't think so.  I had the ability to withdraw and I still have it.  But above all I always has a strong sense of personal identity.

"One thing that I never did was dream.   I was always very practical.  I grew interested in the theatre when I was small but not because it offered me an entrance to a world of fantasy, but because it gave me a chance to assert myself.  And I loved its freedom.  I thought of it as a challenge."

Diana reflects: "I can still remember the first time I met an audience on these terms.  I was an understudy at Stratford-on-Avon, when I was called on to replace the principal in 'Alls Well That Ends Well'.  Her name was Priscilla Morgan.

"They gave me maybe an hour's rehearsal.   By a coincidence my parents were out front that night.  I didn't tell them that I was going on, so that when I came out and started shaking, they thought I was just walking on.  Then they realised, and sort of clutched each other in absolute fear.

"My fear was of a different kind.  I was simply not sufficiently prepared and so I was annoyed with myself.  Still, the audience was very kind as it always is when an understudy takes over and doesn't want to make a complete mess of the play, and I was led forward and allowed to take a solo bow.

"I played it for about a week, I guess.   And it was about the end of the week only that I began to enjoy it."

Then Diana was 20 years old and earning £7 10 shillings a week.  "To make ends meet, I was living on faggots, scraps of meat put inside intestines you still get at the butchers in the provinces.  Poor people's food.  They cost fourpence each.

"Four times a week, my dinner would consist of two faggots and maybe some potatoes and another vegetable, and fruit.  And you know what?  I was very healthy.  And very happy."

Diana had an old second-hand bicycle for transport around Stratford.  "And not only did I make the £7 10s stretch, but I could never do without perfume.  I guess I was so very young and this particular perfume was very heavy and musky and made me feel extremely sensual ... I never changed my perfume in all these years!"

Her faggot-eating period came to an end when she moved to London to appear in the London productions of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The bicycle went.  Now she drives a green Mini.  She lived in the mews cottage, all this still modestly.  No more faggots, but all the perfume that she felt was required, by a young actress, not too bad-looking.

She took a small bottle when she travelled to the United States, appearing in 'King Lear' and 'The Comedy of Errors' on alternate nights.

The company also toured the Continent, as far as Moscow.  From her experience on this tour comes Diana's boundless admiration for actor Paul Scofield.

"He's been my ideal since I first saw him on the stage.  I was working with him in 'King Lear' when I became aware of his sense of identity, a strong totally compromising identity."

She says: "The beauty of it is that here is a man who has just won an Oscar in an Oscar-winning film and Hollywood is after him.   What does he do?  He's gone back to Stratford.  Obviously, he doesn't care for the money.  And he's right.  Of course, it's your beliefs that matter.

"In a way I followed his example when I agreed to film "A Midsummer Night's Dream".  Peter Brook was doing it and I believe in him and I grew up with him, so I had to answer his call.  Professionally speaking, I am part of his troupe.

"Even though I think I'm too bad for the part.  The pay?  Obviously a pittance by comparison with what I'm making, but then, money is so transitory ...  I will not forget that I could, when forced to, live on £7 and 10 Shillings.

on to part three

back to 1967