There have been headlines of late that make me out to be an ash-guzzling savage nightly devouring her mother’s charred remains. I’ve written a book about our relationship, All About My Mother, in which I do confess to nibbling a grain or two, but I didn’t expect to be portrayed as a matricidal cannibal by the press. My mother was Diana Rigg, an iconic actor with a 60-year career.
Young ’uns will know her as the Queen of Thorns from Game of Thrones, be-wimpled spouter of the best verbal roasts on television: “I’ve known a great number of clever men. I ignored them.” Old ’uns, meanwhile, go dewy-eyed at the memory of her leather-catsuited telly triumph as Emma Peel in The Avengers from the 60s, the first woman to perform kung fu on western television. She was also the only woman ever to marry James Bond.
She appeared in The Great Muppet Caper because I was profoundly in love with Miss Piggy, and her child-murdering Medea was the toast of Broadway. She won an Emmy and a Tony, and had countless honours bestowed upon her for her many stage performances. She was a complete original and very witty to boot.
I missed her so intensely, I wrote the book to bring her back to life. Mum never wanted a biography in her lifetime, having been put off by a couple of limp jobs that managed to make her seem a bit dull or, worst of all crimes, earnest. My mother was not earnest.
She was honest, sometimes eye-bleedingly so. I was her only child, and followed her into the acting profession. She strongly disapproved of my career choice, and this caused some rumpuses, I can tell you.
We ran the gamut of emotions from A to Z and eventually we made our way back to the love we’d had in the early years. In the end, the love bits between us did conquer all the awful bits, though there are some joyful and some jaw-dropping stories to share. Which brings us neatly back to the subject of ashes and my ingesting of them.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
