Recently I visited the restaurant co-owned
by Jennie McAlpine (Fiz in Corrie). After a top-notch breakfast (see my review
of Annies
here),
I chatted to Jennie about her day job and the many other things – in addition
to the
restaurant – that take up
her time.
Fiz has been through a lot in the 13
years she has lived in Weatherfield but Jennie finds it difficult to choose a
favourite storyline. She did, however, particularly enjoy being part of the
live episode in 2010 to celebrate Corrie’s 50th anniversary.
She is also immensely proud to have been involved
with the recent Roy and Hayley storyline. “I was really chuffed, says Jennie,
“that (the writers) acknowledged that Fiz was special to them and they were
special to Fiz”. Fiz Brown arrived in Weatherfield a troubled teenager who was,
of course, briefly fostered by the Croppers.
Fiz then became, as Jennie puts it, “one of Mike Baldwin’s knicker-stitchers”. Her early scenes with Baldwin – “one of the icons” – must have been intimidating for a young actress new to The Street.
However, she loved working with Johnny Briggs
and reminisces fondly about the storyline in which Fiz threw whisky in
Baldwin’s face before staging a topless rooftop protest after the erstwhile cockney
wide boy had nicked her designs. Fiz removed her self-sewn basque and threw it
from the roof. Whatever happened to the undergarment in question? “It’s in
Gail’s back garden”, jokes Jennie.
Jennie has been with her partner, Chris
Farr, for nine years now and they owe it all to Coronation Street. It was their
mutual friend – Antony Cotton – who introduced them. Jennie is friends with
many cast members but is particularly close to those she works with most –
“Chesney, Tyrone, all my factory girls and honorary factory girl, Sean”. “You
meet such great mates”, she says.
I imagine it’s hard, then, when a close
friend leaves. Julie Hesmondhalgh is an obvious example. But Julie is “very
much alive”, says Jennie, having recently appeared at Manchester’s Royal
Exchange Theatre in “Black Roses”, the play about the murder of Sophie
Lancaster. Being directly next to Annies, Jennie was able to see it and catch
up with Julie. She also met up recently with Suranne Jones (‘Karen McDonald’)
and remains “great mates” with Georgia Taylor (‘Toyah Battersby’).
You would think the filming schedule for Corrie
combined with the demands of co-owning a successful business would leave little
room for anything else. However, Jennie is involved with lots of different
projects. She DJ’d recently at Manchester club night Bop Local and I’m curious to
know what to expect when DJ Fiz is on the decks. “Cheese!” exclaims Chris,
which Jennie concedes to be largely the case before qualifying this as
“anything that makes you want to dance”. This includes Kylie mixed in with great
Manchester bands such as The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.
And when she’s not spinning records at
banging club nights, she can sometimes be heard on the radio – when she can
“fit it in around Corrie”. The other week she had a guest slot presenting on local
station Key 103 and she has previously appeared on BBC Manchester with her
friend, the comedian Justin Moorhouse, who will soon be turning up in
Weatherfield as the Landlord of the Flying Horse. Jennie is looking forward to
his appearance. She thinks he could be “a great corrie character” and would
“love it” if he became a regular fixture.
Having recently watched a repeat of Jennie
and Justin’s appearance on Pointless Celebrities, I ask Jennie about her
penchant for quiz shows. Before she was a contestant, her joint favourites were
Pointless and The Chase. However, she now prefers the latter “because we did
well on The Chase whereas, on Pointless, we didn’t do so well”. The Chase is presented
by Bradley Walsh, who played Corrie’s Danny Baldwin; and currently stars in
“Law and Order” with Jennie’s mate Georgia Taylor. Small world!
Besides the fact that she is a fan of TV
game shows, there is a very good reason for Jennie’s appearances on them. It is
not that she is “obsessed with going on quiz shows and being on telly” but
because they provide her with an opportunity to raise money for charity,
particularly Mood Swings, the mental
health charity chaired by her Dad, Tom McAlpine OBE.
The charity, Jennie explains, has “always
been a big part of my life” and she has been helping her Dad with it since
before she joined Corrie. Mood Swings “is a charity that supports people who
are going through life’s ups and downs”. Based in Manchester but
with a national, sometimes international, reach; Mood Swings aims to provide
people who are undergoing a period of emotional distress with the support they
need to recover and “lead a life that is extremely fulfilling”.
Thankfully, Mood Swings is largely
self-funded and so has been relatively unaffected by swingeing cuts to mental
health services. It relies heavily on volunteers and in addition to Jennie’s
fundraising endeavours, they organise events and have individuals raising money
for them constantly. Jennie is particularly touched by the efforts of one
14-year-old girl, Erin, who she met at Annies. Erin nominated Mood Swings as
the charity to benefit from her school’s annual sponsored walk. The school went
on to raise a whopping £30,000 for the charity. Jennie attended the awards
ceremony at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and describes Erin’s gesture as “really
special”.
Mood Swings has not been totally unscathed by
Government cuts though. As Jennie points out, “people losing their jobs… their
houses… their family” means that “the need for mood swings just goes up and up
and up”. Consequently, the necessity of raising money is endless because “the
more we get the more people we can help”.
One quiz show that Jennie has not yet
appeared on, but would certainly consider, is Ejector Seat. Presented by Andi
Peters, contestants are moved backwards if they get a question wrong and then
have to answer questions while moving. If they continue to answer incorrectly, they
eventually get ejected. As Jennie explains, “there’s a big puff of smoke and
then they go backwards and they’re out of the game”. It sounds brutal but Chris
is waiting for them to do a celebrity version. And if Jennie does appear, then you
heard it here first!
There are other causes that Jennie feels
passionately about. For example, she recently used Twitter to highlight a
report by Barnardo’s that calls for an extension to the help received by young
people who are leaving care. “Imagine if you’ve been in care since you were a
baby and you’ve been really looked after and then one day, all that help just
gets totally cut off”, says Jennie – “you can understand why people go and end
up in trouble”.
There are clear parallels to Fiz’s story
and Jennie initially drew inspiration for playing Fiz from her Dad’s career in
social work. “I’ve always been around tricky kids”, she says. “I absolutely
love naughty children… I can’t help it”.
Currently expecting their first child, Jennie
and Chris will soon have a little tinker of their own to think about. I am hopeful
of an exclusive for the Coronation Street Blog when I ask if they know the
gender. But alas, they are waiting till the day to find out.
If it is a girl, she will not be named
Annie, despite the playful point made by Chris that “it would be good
advertising”. I can also report that Chesney, Schmeichel, Kirk and Tyrone are
not on the list either. Nor is Fiona. Jennie wants to “try and steer clear” of
Corrie-themed baby names but accepts that “whatever we come up with, they’ll
have been in Corrie at some point”.
Jennie has the ‘accolade’ of being the
first actress to act out giving birth live on TV. “I might be the first actress
to give birth live in real life”, she says – “that would be a laugh, wouldn’t
it?” Well, it’d be a very different kind of celebrity ejection, that’s for
sure, and would deserve a considerable appearance fee for charity!
If things are busy for Jennie McAlpine now,
they’re about to get a lot busier. Some would be daunted by the demands of
balancing an acting career with motherhood while running a restaurant,
supporting various charities and pursuing other interests. But not Jennie. She is
thankful for the “brilliant support” around her and feels she is “in a really
lucky position”. She is taking it all in her stride and I’m sure that Jennie
and Chris will be brilliant parents.
Jennie will be going on maternity leave
from Coronation Street in October and Fiz will be kept busy until then. Jennie
is excited about working with Wendi Peters again when Cilla returns. “I don’t
quite know what they’ve got planned”, she says, “but I know it’s sort of to do
with me going off”. One thing she is fairly confident of is that Cilla will
“cause a bit of chaos” - “I don’t think she’s going to come back a reformed
character!”
We also know that Tyrone is going to have
an accident and a feud will erupt between the Dobbs-Brown clan and the
Grimshaws. Filming has already started and Jennie promises “it is going to be
dramatic”. According to Jennie, “Alan Halsall is back in make up again having
bruises and various things put on him”. There will be a lot of characters involved
and “a few of them know things that the other few don’t”. She can’t give
anything away but it’s “going to explode”.
Jennie loved working with Graeme Hawley
(John Stape) but also loves working with Alan Halsall (Tyrone). Apparently, she’s
not allowed to mention Graeme’s name in front of Alan because he jokingly tells
her she “should move on now”. With Fiz and Tyrone reunited, things have come
full circle for Fiz. Jennie jokes that Fiz “had to go and try some other
people” but when she found out John Stape was a murderer thought, “maybe I’d be
best with the one I started with”.
In terms of future ambitions outside of
Corrie, Jennie talks of one day returning to her stand-up roots (she performed comedy
shows at the age of thirteen) by developing a show for the Edinburgh Festival;
perhaps “with a baby on my back!” Although she would “like to do a bit of
theatre at some point” she is totally committed to, and focused on, Coronation
Street.
As Jennie says, “you can fulfil your
ambitions because every week we get brilliant scripts and it’s all different. I
play a character that is lucky enough, or unlucky enough sometimes, to have so
many different stories… so I love it”. “I don’t want to go anywhere yet”, says
Jennie. And nor do we want her to.
Jennie McAlpine clearly loves working at
Corrie. While being enjoyable and rewarding in itself, it also provides her
with a platform to do the other things that she is passionate about. Jennie is
great company and an inspirational and talented figure who will hopefully be
treading the cobbles for many years to come.
Whatever the writing team have in store for
Fiz, I hope that she’ll always have Tyrone by her side and that the two of them
will continue to rub along together like the twenty-first century Jack and Vera
they are destined to become.
By Martin Leay
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