SUNDAY night’s BBC 1 screening of Babs, the bio-pic of Barbara Windsor, will offer up a rewind on career that was bottle fed by the austere Fifties, moved onto solids with the advent of the Swinging Sixties, and fed foie gras at the Ritz in the glittering Seventies.
The screening of Windsor’s life and times however isn’t simply an opportunity for the BBC props department to race around enthusiastically hiring classic cars. Or for costumes and make-up to source Mary Quant frocks and re-create behives.
This new film is a chance for the viewer to wallow in, appreciate and learn from real-life episodic misery.
Yes, Line of Duty was entertaining, but it was hokum. Babs is the story of a real woman who made lots of mistakes. It’s a chance to empathise, a chance to appreciate that the story of Barbara Ann-Deeks is a tale of a very determined career woman.
Babs is also an argument for feminism; it reminds how women with brio once had to downplay their intelligence (Windsor was an 11-plus wonderkid) in order to play the bra-bustin’ roles demanded of them by men.
And her life story of highs and lows is an allegory for those determined to pursue a life in the shark pool that is showbiz, the blonde discovered by an agent when she was twelve, going on to star in a West End theatre production by the age of 15.
And of course Windsor become a Carry On star, where she was paid relatively little, despite revealing so much.
Yet, while Windsor went along with the exploitation, her pragmatism and cleverness never got in the way of her neediness. She had father issues and perhaps as a result, had only a forward gear as far the men in her life were concerned. Her love life was all too often as precarious as the heels she teetered around in.
Her story reveals a litany of bad choices which many women of the period will relate to. (Coincidentally, Shirley Valentine is playing at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow this week.)
Windsor married a gangster. The four feet ten inch pocket dynamo had sex with two Krays and had five abortions. She loved danger.
She loved the excitement of the fling with Sid James, which the BBC film will reveal, and being entertained by the likes Elton John’s Paisley-born manager, John Reid.
Hopefully, the biopic reminds fans this lady had a talent that’s seen her perform Brecht and Shakespeare in her time.
But there’s another reason for backing Babs. We need to see bio-pics because they strip away the illusion, reveal how hard the journey to find fame can be, and prove that remaining successful to be even harder.
Yes, there have been turkeys in the Brit bio-pic canon, such as Ken Stott’s very unfunny Hancock. And capturing a largely uninteresting Hattie Jacques was too much of a challenge.
But films featuring Kenneth Williams, Morecambe and Wise, Hughie Green and Tommy Cooper have all been illuminating.
Let’s have more reality television. Real reality, like Babs.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here