Actor Maureen Lipman: ‘I fear flying and driving at night and cancer’

What is your earliest memory?
Running up the stairs of our house, screaming hysterically because my dad was about to give my brother “a good hiding”. I don’t know why I was so crazed, as my brother and I never stopped fighting, but I literally “screamed and screamed until I was sick”.

Who was or still is your mentor?
The director Michael Blakemore: I respect his opinions and enjoy his company more than anyone else in the business. Martin Sherman, who wrote Rose, has sort of grown with me like a brother. Self-deprecating humour twinned with mild paranoia is our natural state.

How fit are you?
How fit or how fat? I could do to be a dress-size less. I need to walk more and dance more and take up tai chi. I have hypermobility, so I am very flexible, which gives the impression that I’m fitter than I really am. If I sleep well, I’m well — end of story.

Tell me about an animal you have loved.
Diva was a Basenji, the barkless dog of the Congo — useless for burglars, to all intents and purposes she was a cat. She was so cool and intelligent that she ran my life. She was thrown out of doggy day care for yodelling at the top of the voice she had and eating a Gucci belt.

Risk or caution, which has defined your life more?
Oh, caution. I fear flying and driving at night and cancer. I’m archaically superstitious about Scottish plays and umbrellas and people sewing on my clothes if I’m wearing them. I have no desire to climb or surf or bungee or do anything sporting or competitive. Yet I go on stage in front of hundreds of people and clown around, which would be most people’s idea of bravery, I suppose.

What trait do you find most irritating in others?
All the things I despise in myself. Showing off, vanity, a tendency to be flashy, finishing other people’s sentences, mutton dressed as lamb, schadenfreude, opinionated ignorance, impatience . . . 

What trait do you find most irritating in yourself?
See above.

What drives you on?
I don’t know what to do when I’m not working. I do love my job.

Do you believe in an afterlife?
Quantum physics is revealing that there are dimensions we know not of. I am not sceptical about another storyline in another place.

Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?
Life is horribly random and you need luck to survive it. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is a question no religion can answer.

Name your favourite river.
I always feel nostalgic when I see the brown ribbon of the Humber.

What would you have done differently?
Not pressed “send” so often, both literally and metaphorically. I would have been kinder and less exasperated with my parents and, in retrospect, my children. I would have known my worth during the 1960s and therefore been less available. I would have used my fortunate position to be more hands-on with people less fortunate than me. I would not confuse self-esteem with self-respect. I would have a donkey and an alpaca and watch sloths in their natural habitat. I would be braver, and write plays, and go to university to study comparative religions, and learn Hebrew and Yiddish and Italian, and be a better cook and . . . look, how long have you got?

Maureen Lipman stars in “Rose” at the Ambassadors Theatre, May 23-June 18, roseonstage.co.uk

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