There was a lot that we kept from my mother. My dad would say to me as a teenager " Don't tell your mother". We couldn't face the disapproval. Sue Johnston always seemed to be disappointing her mother. As a girl she never stayed clean & tidy like her cousins. As she grew older, she spent all her piano lesson money on drinks for her mates down the pub, & when she discovered the Cavern she was never at home. The final straw was when Sue left her steady job at a St Helens factory to try her hand at that unsteadiest of jobs: acting. Yet when Sue was bringing up her own child alone, her mother was always there to help. & playing her much-loved characters Sheila Grant & Barbara Royle
- although her mum wouldn't say she was proud as such, she certainly seemed to approve. & in her mother's final months, it was Sue she needed by her side. The relationship with your mother is perhaps the most precious & fraught of any woman's life. When she began writing, Sue set out to record all the big things, & all the small things. Everything I wanted to tell my mother but felt I never could. The result is a warm, poignant & often very funny memoir by one of our favourite actresses.