Su Pollard talks about her return to Annie at the Liverpool Empire

Sep 10 2009 by Laura Davis, Flintshire Chronicle

It may be more than two decades since Hi de Hi was put to sleep, but the character of ditsy but lovable Peggy is still going strong. Every so often, she makes an exclusive solo appearance on Su Pollard’s doorstep.

“Young children knock on my front door and say ‘Is Peggy there please?’,” explains the 59-year-old actress, who played the holiday camp chalet maid for eight years.

“I say ‘come back tomorrow’ and I put my outfit on for them, just for a bit of fun.”

Currently, though, she has a less likeable role, touring UK theatres as the dastardly Miss Hannigan in the musical Annie.

Pollard first played the part back in 2001.

She has returned to the Liverpool Empire this week after a gap of five years, having skipped the venue last year when touring with swinging ’60s musical Shout!.

“I was supposed to come but I was taking dad’s ashes to Hawaii,” she explains.

Despite the orphanage matron being traditionally played as a villainous rogue, Pollard has a lot of sympathy for the character.

“I try and bring a bit of sympathy to the role for her. I’m trying to get the public to understand that she’s not just horrible, it’s circumstances.

“She’s so upset about these terrible children that give her the runaround – dangling dead mice in front of her and things like that.

“She’s terribly frustrated, poor woman, and she thinks ‘I’m going to take solace in the Jack Daniels’.”

Pollard’s aim is to bring out the character’s funny side.

“It’s a good part,” she says.

“She’s not a very nice woman really, but I try and get some humour into it with her drinking habits.

“Basically, she’s got no life and all she does is listen to the radio, and then she sees a chance to con Daddy Warbucks, who looks after Annie for two weeks in the holidays.”

In each town on the tour, the orphans are played by local children – in this case from North West touring company Bitesize Theatre.

They learn their parts with a member of the show’s production company, Chris Moreno Ltd, in advance before a full rehearsal on the day of the first performance.

Also starring is Danny, the mixed breed, who plays Sandy, Annie’s pet dog.

Pollard has no problem breaking the first rule of acting – never work with children or animals.

“He’s been doing it for 10 years now,” she says. “He loves sausages. You see him backstage and you say to him ‘sausages, sausages’ and he pricks his ears up.”

Watching the “local orphans”, as she calls them, reminds the former Hi de Hi star of her first stage appearance – in a school Nativity play that nearly ended in disaster.

“I was supposed to be the Angel Gabriel’s assistant and I had to say ‘Fear not Mary, the Angel Gabriel will bring to you some wonderful news’, and the teacher was supposed to have sealed this cardboard box with Cellotape but I fell through,” she remembers.

“Everybody laughed and I thought ‘I quite like this’, especially when everyone applauded at the end.

At 14, she started singing in working men’s clubs. “I had to go with my dad because I was under-age,” she explains. It was almost like karaoke but with proper live piano.”

Although Pollard says she prefers the intimacy of the theatre over TV, it was the small screen that provided her big break.

In 1989, Dad’s Army writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft pitched a new comedy show to the BBC, set in the imaginary British holiday camp Maplins.

The nation quickly took hapless Peggy to their hearts and Pollard found herself thrust into the limelight.

“We couldn’t wait to get the scripts and when we did the read through we laughed and laughed,” she says.

“During the 10 years we did on Hi de Hi, we never stopped laughing.”

When the show came to an end in 1988, the same writing team and cast moved on to You Rang M’Lord?, with Pollard in the equally naive but well-meaning role of Ivy Teasdale.

In November, they will be meeting for a reunion to mark 30 years since Hi de Hi was first broadcast.

Annie can be seen at the Liverpool Empire Theatre until Saturday.