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Interviews
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Ageless, amazingly versatile and with a tremendous zest for life Sheila Connor talks to Anita Harris Although I had never previously met Anita Harris, I was immediately captivated when she breezed in from a glorious sunny day (first one this year) and greeted me with a kiss, and my first comment of “I remember you when you were in…….” brought forth a laugh and a burst of song - “I remember you …oo!”
In her early sixties, she still looks absolutely fantastic which she attributes to keeping active, but I think her obvious love of life and her buoyant happy nature have a lot to do with it.
My first memory of her is as a skater and she began at the age of seven when her family moved to Bournemouth where there was a handy ice rink, and she and her two older brothers “Just loved it! I took it up quite seriously and thought that this is probably what I would do. There was a skater there called Courtney Jones, older that me, but I was his sparring partner, so he introduced me to Queens Ice Rink in London.
“There was a wonderful teacher there, and the day before my sixteenth birthday a talent scout from the Bluebells arrived and asked the manager (an extremely nice man who knew all about kids) ‘Does this young lady dance?’ and he presumed so. To cut a long story short, I auditioned – got the job – but then they put me in touch with a Monsieur Charlee who desperately needed a girl very quickly to go to Italy, Brussels and then to Las Vegas – So I joined that one. My parents had to go to Bow Street Magistrates Court and sign for a chaperone, and it was an absolute whirlwind. My parents didn’t go, but it was a very elegant, very lovely group and they knew I was going to be looked after. From there I came back and joined the Cliff Adams Singers”
Anita has also written two cookery books, and is just as enthusiastic about those. “I should have brought you one of my recipes! The first was just normal recipes – not thinking of health – the second one was called Fizzical – which went with my Fizzical video, and that was because my darling husband, Mike, had a heart problem and had an operation and the doctors said to keep the weight down, keep the cholesterol down, and keep on a balanced diet – everything our Mum’s taught us regarding fruit and vegetables and cooking with olive oil. A friend and I got together and we started experimenting and realised that really you can eat out of your liquidiser if you need to – it’s such a healthy way to put everything in including raw foods, porridge oats, yogurt – mix it up with fruit and vegetables and you have a wonderful healthy drink.”
Anita appeared in the Morecombe and Wise Show many times and she regarded them as two very dear people with lovely natures, and dedicated to getting it right, “to giving the best they could to their audiences and being loved and having a lovely time”.
So – skater, singer, actress, dancer, presenter, writer – which genre does she prefer? “I think the joy is just going from one thing to the other. At the moment I’m also recording a new album, so the singing is coasting along as well as this new play – very challenging!”
The new play is Strangers on a Train, a psychological thriller just about to embark on an eighteen week tour, directed by Robin Herford who also directed the atmospherically scary Woman in Black. “We have a lovely company with this particular play, and it’s good to be back with Colin Baker – even though he killed me off nightly in Deathtrap! We made a pact – not this time! It’s not an easy play – a good challenge – it’s what we love”….. and off she went – after another kiss – to prepare for the matinee performance.
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