Of course I knew of Coral from the 20 years I lived and worked in London and had seen her perform on film and TV but I'd never met her. As Barbara Jefford said to me of Coral: "We didn’t move in the same circles." Also, I wasn't a biographer - my writing specialties were comedy sketches and television comedy-drama. I had a quick look through a box of Coral's papers, read some very intriguing letters and decided to have a go at it.  Meanwhile someone else heard that I was researching Coral Browne, and they suggested that I should write another biography. I got a government grant for that one and, because getting a grant tends to hold my attention, I wrote that book first and came back to Coral Browne after the first was published (A Woman's War, ISBN 1741100127, New Holland, 2003, is now in its second edition and still selling). It was a good outcome because by then I knew what I was doing with biography.

What aspects, if any, of her personality and her life resonate with your own?
There’s nothing similar in our personalities apart than the fact that we are both a bit "grand". Gordon Chater used to send me up: " ... but Barbara is such a lady!" As people, we are chalk and cheese. Coral was promiscuous, sophisticated, elegant, while I am something of a hermit and like nothing better than to slop around bare-footed in comfortable clothes. Coral would never be seen without her designer clothes and a full make-up - even when she was on her death bed. Me, I have always loathed costume fittings and I can't stand make-up. I'm with Elaine Stritch when she says: "Make-up? I hate it - I need it!"

There is resonance, though, in our common ambitions to succeed in show business in our different ways. I wanted nothing else and am still at it after 53 years and still a workaholic. Coral was a workaholic too but her business choices were better than mine in that she died a multi-millionaire, and I won't. I can identify with some of the lousy career choices Coral made. I mean, who’d turn down the BBC television production of Hamlet in favour of doing a voice-over in the movie Xanadu? Go figure! What she needed was a bloody good manager, but I doubt that anyone could have managed Coral Browne.

My lousiest career choice was exporting myself to the UK right through the 70s and 80s just when everything in theatre, film and TV was happening here in Australia. There I’d attend casting calls vying with three hundred similar actresses for the same role, here you’re usually up against no more than three or four. Mind you, I worked regularly on TV, playing amongst others David Jason's wife (The Top Secret Life of Edgar Briggs) and Robert Hardy's mistress (All Creatures Great and Small) and got tattooed all over for Trevor Eve (Shoestring).

I was one of the millions of all-singing, all-dancing women of "mature years" who tried out for Belle Watling in the stage musical of Gone With The Wind - a role that was eventually given to one of the production team's girlfriends when they decided that there was nobody in London to play it. So Joyce Blair, Jacqueline Jones and I went together to the opening, the three of us having auditioned for Belle Watling, and gnashed our teeth in the Stalls while the part (and the musical) got slaughtered. Then I decided to return to Australia at the end of the 80s, when nobody here was interested in anyone's overseas experience. How's that for timing! Yes things such as some lousy choices Coral and I had in common.

In your press release when talking about the time you were a sex symbol on the Mavis Bramston Show, you say that you were “living a double life” – what do you mean by this?
Being from Melbourne, it took me a while to break into the Sydney TV scene although I knew Sydney well from touring with the Tivoli and JC Williamson. Channel 7 brought me up from Melbourne for three separate guest appearances on Mavis, then they had me living from week to week in a motel in Epping, not knowing if I was in next week's show or not (they paid my accommodation), before they finally put me under contract. I remained with Mavis for a couple of years then, ending up as its star opposite Ron Frazer. Those who can recall us (everyone is dropping off the twig) best remember the "little boy and little girl" characters who used to sit on an oversized park bench and discuss world issues. Ron and I wrote these pieces as a regular spot for the show.  If we were doing it now, it would be about climate change and the war against barbarity.

The "sex symbol" was the media's choice of words, not mine. I'd studied acting since I was 14 and considered myself to be a proper actress. The "sex symbol" thing made good copy in TV Week and the other zines and the studio liked it so I went along with it - but homophobia was so rife that I'd have been out on my tuchis in two seconds if they'd known I was gay. My work colleagues, family and closest friends knew, and were discreet, but I never brought that side of life to work and in fact I became celibate during my whole contracted time with Bramston - except for a couple of short flings with blokes (been there, done that, moved on). My gayness was therefore not too much of an issue, but it was a strain pretending. Ron Frazer took me under his wing and I truly loved Ron, so we spent a lot of time together and the media kind-of accepted us as a couple. That made them happy and eased the strain.

What are your fondest memories of those days ie being a sex symbol?
The best of writers used to write me hot torch songs and sexy send-ups to sing. When they did something newsworthy I was Jayne Mansfield and Brigitte Bardot (in which the media publicized that I appeared naked, but I was actually wearing a body stocking). I became the longest-running female on the show and David Sale wrote me a great song called You name it, I've done it, but nobody knows it's me. But Rupert Henderson, who was head of Channel 7, sensed with his infallible journalist's nose that there was something suss in my closet so “naturally” he didn't like me. He insisted on cutting the song out of the show in Sydney, but the guys kept it in for all the other States and there is still a surviving copy in the National Film and Sound Archive. There is some, but not much, left of the Ron Frazer/Barbara Angell era of Mavis - during which time we raised sagging ratings - because Channel 7 in its vast wisdom used most of our tapes as infill under the tennis courts.

And the worst?
Given my celibacy, fighting off the guys and sometimes the girls.

When I emailed to ask if Pat, your partner, was a man or woman and if you are a lesbian, you didn’t seem to want to be labelled as such – can you say something about why, and what your thoughts are on labels like this and all the newer ones coming into use (queer, pansexual, omnisexual etc)?
There is nothing new about "queer", which existed when I was a child. I prefer the word "gay" because it's positive and optimistic. You've got to put me into my historical context: I was a child in the 1940s and a teen in the 50s and the only time you heard the word "lesbian" it was spat out with venom, hatred and disgust - once or twice at me, before I knew what it meant and certainly before it could be applied to me. It's a pity that "lesbian" has lost its poetic ancient Greek connotations. Since the Feminist Revolution it has taken on aggressive political baggage that I don't care to carry. Other words are just made-up labels. Labels will exist as long as people feel that they must stick one on something that has always been, will always be, is part of nature and, as such, has a reason to be.

Is it fair to say you’ve shifted from performing to working behind the scenes on teaching scriptwriting? If so, why?
No, I'm still performing. My last TV gig was in Love My Way and this old girl is still available for booking through Bennett Artist Management. I am an award winner at screenwriting, topping a nationwide competition in Britain for my script Some Day Man which was subsequently produced by Granada-TSW and got named as one of the TV highlights if its year. Writing, and teaching writing, has given me an ongoing and enjoyable fallback position as the years progress and the acting work lessens, as it always does when a female gets to a certain age. Can somebody please tell me why the same doesn't happen to the men? I'm in my final year of a doctorate in Visual and Performing Arts and I intend to go on writing until I eventually cark it. I'll also keep performing for as long as someone will hire me.

Are there any female actors of today who remind you Coral?
No way. These days there's not the glamour, the poise, the savoir faire or the sheer bugger-everyone attitude. Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman have some of the style and poise but times have changed. In Coral's day the glamour-mask was never removed: staying glamorous was a full-time occupation and part of being an "actress". With her wharfie language combined with the glamour, Coral Browne was a one-off. Female actors of today are free to be earthier and they can take off the mask. They also spend a lot more time studying characterization, researching and working at realism. In Coral's time, the mask often got in the way of a true portrayal.

What do you think she would have thought of The L Word?
Coral is on record as hating the word "lesbian" and, despite her occasional gay relationships, she was hypocritical and cruel enough to apply it and the phrase "fucking dike" to her own step-daughter. There are negative sides to Coral Browne and that is one of them. They're in the book.

The Coral Browne Story can be bought at The Bookhop, 207 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, Sydney or direct through www.angellpro.com.au/coralbrowne.htm price: $35.00

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