ELAINE C Smith wept when she opened the letter telling her she was to be given the Freedom of the City of Glasgow. Those tears tell a complicated but inspirational story.
Tears of joy certainly, but also of frustration and perhaps even of anger that there are only a handful of women among the 155 people to have received the honour since 1800.
The last woman to receive it did so in 1969. They were also tears of sorrow for all those women who deserved recognition but were denied it.
“It was a visceral reaction,” she says when we meet.
“Politically, the road to any other honours – not that I particularly want honours … is closed. I wouldn’t take them. I also have a wee thing that I have no business getting one. You get enough reward.
“No offence to anybody who has accepted an honour ... I love it when a lollipop man or woman gets it or people in the community who are really deserving. I wish we had a Scottish honours system ... proper Scottish honours that are not political.”
She sums up her own feelings about the award with the words ‘‘overwhelmed and unworthy” but that last is certainly not shared by the people of Glasgow.
“The number of people that have stopped me and said, well done, that’s great, or whatever ... it means something to the people in the city.”
Smith’s relationship with Glasgow runs deeper than it simply being the place where she has made her home and raised her family. The characters she has brought to life over decades speak volumes about the people, and particularly the women, of that city.
The award ceremony itself, held less than a week before we talk, tells a story too.
It’s a story of activism and feminism – the event takes place on the eve of International Women’s Day and each table is named after a woman who had inspired the guest of honour.
It’s a story of love – all those tables are packed with guests from the different aspects of Elaine C Smith’s life, guests whose souls she has touched and whose souls have in turn touched her, to paraphrase one of her inspirations, Joni Mitchell.
At one table are those she describes as “feminist sisters” that date back to her days teaching drama in Edinburgh. She studied teaching at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire) in Glasgow as she could barely imagine becoming an actress herself.
She says of growing up in a comfortable working-class family in North Lanarkshire: “When I was younger, I suppose I was a bit of a show-off. I suppose if I went into therapy, it would say I had a need to be seen, to get my parents’ attention.
“When I was studying for my O grades, I was daft about T. Rex and Marc Bolan and that sort of a showy type of performer.
“You could make good money singing in clubs. And when I was at drama school, I auditioned for a really good club band, and the money from that helped finance me through drama school.
“You weren’t supposed to do that at drama school. You might get into bad habits. But my parents couldn’t fund me through drama school like some people’s parents could.
“In clubs, I realised that I could sing and in between I could introduce songs and be relatively amusing.”
The band’s drummer spotted her talent playing a Joni Mitchell song before the other musicians arrived.
“He told me the only way he could avoid playing clubs for the rest of his life was if Elton John drove by, his bus broke down, his drummer had a heart attack and he needed a replacement. But he told me: ‘You’ve got a chance. Get out’.”
After graduating from drama school she moved on to postgraduate studies at Moray House in Edinburgh and then teaching. It was in Edinburgh she met her husband, Bob, also a teacher, who was at the time involved in left-wing politics through the Socialist Workers Party.
She recalls: “Bob was much more radical than me, and I’d never really met anybody like him.” To say he’s been her biggest supporter ever since is to condense a book into a single sentence.
“I got really involved in politics, through the EIS and rank-and-file teachers and got involved in feminist politics,” she says.
“I do not regret in any way those three-and-a-half years in Edinburgh being properly politicised.”
Other tables in Glasgow City Chambers feature well-known faces from the arts and entertainment worlds. She herself has made the most impact through mainstream television comedy series which have made her beloved but woefully underappreciated as an actress.
She remembers an early review as saying: “Elaine C Smith would not be out of place in any Glasgow fish market.”
It would be true to say her regular appearances in panto also worked against critical respect.
She says: “I think there is a now grudging respect for panto from the critics, and from the general public and even parts of the artistic establishment. Pantomime was viewed as low art because it was variety, and because working-class people went to it.
“With panto, there’s a certain skill set, and I learned to take pride in it. I do believe it is another national theatre because it’s the time that most Scots go to theatre.”
Hers has been a multi-faceted career. She’s played bawdy panto dames but also pioneered drama with political clout with her work with the late John McGrath and theatre like Wildcat and Borderline.
Once exposed to his work there was no going back … propelled by Bob’s insistence that he didn’t want to hear her in 10 years complaining that she had not followed her heart.
She went on to work with McGrath and other legends of Scottish political drama such as his brother-in-law David MacLennan in what became a crash course in telling stories that spoke to people’s lives, ordinary people who were actually anything but.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would become an actress. When I was at drama school, I don’t think I ever did anything in my own accent. I didn’t like it. Hopefully, things are very different now.”
If that’s true, it’s partly because of the major part she played in tearing down the barriers which separated the theatre from those “ordinary” people, particularly through her involvement with three groundbreaking projects.
She was already appearing on television and radio when actor and playwright Tony Roper showed her the script he wrote for The Steamie in 1987. It was a game-changer. Set in a Glasgow public laundry in the 1950s it told the stories of a group of Glasgow women talking about their lives, their hopes, their dreams.
“I read it in my bedroom. I thought adding some songs would let it be less kailyard and more reflective, you know, to have the young woman Doreen singing about her dreams coming true when she gets a house in Drumchapel. The irony was not lost on audiences in Glasgow, when you dreamed of something and were actually left at times in a wasteland.”
The play was commissioned by Borderline and first staged by Wildcat at community venues in Glasgow with a cast which included Smith, Dorothy Paul and Katy Murphy. “We took it to community centres and people went mental.
“We had to put a bigger tour on. I don’t think I have ever heard laughter like it. The effect on audiences … People look at it now but they have no idea [of the effect]. Playing in Castlemilk Community Centre with kids sitting with bags of chips in the front, having never seen live theatre; people weeping then coming up and saying that when they were growing up that was their mother’s life.
“That was … a validation of working-class life. It was political with a small p. It wasn’t out there with the clenched fist, but it was put on school syllabuses and all of that.
“It was a huge high point to play Dolly when I was only 20. It was a big regret that because I was pregnant, I couldn’t do the telly [version]. I looked too young anyway, but it was a real regret, having been part of creating the role.”
Television fame was to come later with another depiction of Glasgow working life, Rab C Nesbitt, written by Ian Pattison and starring Gregor Fisher as the eponymous Rab and Smith as his wife Mary Doll.
The characters were originally plucked from a TV sketch show Naked Video but it was their own series which made them iconic. It’s undoubtedly one of the most successful BBC Scotland comedy series ever and at its peak attracted audiences of around five million.
But her portrayal of Mary Doll was underappreciated.
She says: “When you play parts in Scotland, there’s an aspect of people thinking that’s who you are, that you’re not really acting,” she says. “Nobody says to Robert De Niro, oh no, not the American accent again.”
Its politics were more combative than most TV comedy, driven by Rab’s alcohol-fuelled, furious rants at right-wing ideology and figureheads.
That depiction of Scotland has been updated on TV by Two Doors Down, for which Smith won a Bafta. It’s set in a more suburban Scotland than Rab C Nesbitt’s home but no less authentic.
The Steamie’s Dolly, Mary Doll and Two Doors Down’s Christine are not like every woman in Scotland. How could they be? But you recognise them; you know them. You have met them at some time.
To bring them so truthfully to life is a rare talent.
“I think Scotland’s a very different place post-Scottish Parliament,” says the woman of that night.
“And I think Two Doors Down reflects more of the way people live now. It’s also political in different way.
“I love the fact that you have gay characters, men and women, who are not cartoons. They are not parodies. Christine [the character she plays in the show] is the odd one out. She’s the only one that makes inappropriate comments.”
The political side of the work and life of Smith was emphasised at the Council Chambers award presentation.
Those present included former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, former health minister Jeane Freeman and former SNP MP John Nicholson were in the audience, as well as veteran independence campaigner Lesley Riddoch.
Smith is herself a long-standing independence supporter, regularly speaking at events and serving as co-convener of the Scottish Independence Convention. She remains a passionate Yes supporter.
She served on the broadcast commission set up by the Scottish Government in 2007 and chaired by Blair Jenkins who went on to head Yes Scotland.
“It was a real eye-opener,” she says now. “We were doing the reverse of what normally happens in that we were bringing people like Michael Grade [former chief executive of Channel 4 and former chair of the BBC’s board of governors] to Scotland to talk to us.
“He told us: ‘You want to make movies, you go to Hollywood. You want to make television, you go to London. That’s it’.”
Critics of Rab C Nesbitt complained it painted Scotland as a grim place, a criticism she understood but argued was because so few television programmes were actually made in Scotland that those few which were expected to depict every aspect of the country.
She says: “When you go to New York, no one thinks it’s Mean Streets or Goodfellas because you’ve also got Woody Allen, you’ve also got musicals, you’ve also got a plethora of plays and television programs set in New York, about New York. We don’t have that. We get one or two series a year ...
“Nobody in Scotland can greenlight a [television] show. You’ve got to go down to London and pitch your idea set in Linwood, or whatever. They don’t know where that is. They live in Holland Park. Their kids go to a really good private school. They’ve been privately educated. They have no notion. But what they love is a gritty Trainspotting show.
“Now, I love Trainspotting but it’s not the only way to depict Scotland.”
Writers were also well-represented at the awards ceremony. Val McDermid, Jackie Kay and Sara Sheridan were in the room, Andrew O’Hagan sent a video message.
On the whole, it was a diverse and egalitarian bunch. One of the main speeches was given by Baroness Helena Kennedy but there was also a place for Jill “who gives my hair a blowdry” and other friends.
“There is a point in your life when you are supposed to be that one thing,” says the woman of the night.
“I don’t think that’s the way most women operate. The people at that event just represented who I am. Regardless of the amount of money you’ve got, or the job or the status you’ve got, there’s a feeling in this part of the world, that we are all the same. And those people that don’t think they’re the same, I feel quite sorry for them.”
And at the end of the night, no matter which part of Smith’s life they reflected, they were all on their feet when the guest of honour sang Candi Staton’s classic Young Heart Run Free.
But it was a song by another singer who holds a special place in her heart which stuck in her mind when she looked back on the night, and I suppose by extension the way it represented her life.
In particular it was that quote from A Case of You by Joni Mitchell that resonated:
I remember that time you told me
You said, “Love is touching souls”
Surely you touched mine.
