Maureen Lipman

Maureen Lipman CBE (born 10 May, 1946), is a British film, theatre and television actress, columnist, and comedienne.

Born into a Jewish family in Hull. Lipman trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She married dramatist Jack Rosenthal in 1974 (he died in 2004), and has had a number of roles in his works. She has two grown-up children, Amy and Adam. She has recently (2006) adopted a basenji puppy, called Broiges.

She is also known to be a strong Labour supporter.

Work

Maureen initially did understudy in theatre before she gained increased prominence on television in the 1979 sitcom Agony, in which she played an agony aunt with a predictably troubled private life. She is particularly known for her roles as Joyce Grenfell in her biographical play and as "Beattie" (a "Jewish mother" character she named herself from the initials BT) in a long-running series of television commercials for British Telecom (BT). After that she went back to the theatre, for a few years doing Oklahoma! and wrote a column for the Good Housekeeping magazine for over 10 years. In 2002, she played a snooty landlady, Lillian in Coronation Street. In recent years, she has done two television series on design, one for UKTV about Art Deco and one about design in the 20th century for ITV/Sky Travel. She currently writes a weekly column for The Guardian in the newspaper's G2 section on Mondays (previously Fridays). She has recently done a piece in Doctor Who, as a television announcer at the time of the last coronation, and until April 29 2006 played Florence Foster Jenkins in the Olivier Award nominated show Glorious! at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End.

Awards and nominations

She was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Comedy Performance in 1985 (1984 season) for See How They Run.
Her show, Live and Kidding, performed at the Duchess Theatre, was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Entertainment of the 1997 season.
She was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the British Empire) in 1999.
In 2003 she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for The Pianist (2002), at The Polish Film Awards.

Controversy

On the "This Week" BBC television program, Maureen Lipman made some comments which have been taken to be controversial by some although they provoked very little comment on the show itself.

Maureen was first saying how Israel was being attacked on two fronts and that the reports of the rockets hitting Israel were buried away on page 23 of newspapers but the rockets fired by Israel was always page one. Diane Abbott claimed that all of the Israeli response just just due to the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers and appeared to be disproportionate

"What's proportion got to do with it, though Diane, well it's not about proportion is it? I mean that human life is not cheap to the Israelis and human life on the other side is quite cheap actually, because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up."

Diane Abbot then asked if a Palestinian mother mourned her lost child any less than an Israeli mother and Maureen said "That's not what I meant".

Originally broadcast at 11pm on BBC 1 on July 13th 2006; BBC archive via "Watch Now" tab ^* (this will only be available online until July 20th 2006) Quote taken from 30min 15sec into the broadcast

Other appearances

She has appeared a few times on Just a Minute, The News Quiz, That Reminds Me, This Week and Have I Got News For You.

Select filmography

Doctor Who (The Idiot's Lantern) (2006) - The Wire
Coronation Street (2002) - Lilian
The Pianist (2002) - Mother
Eskimo Day (1996) - Shani Whittle
Carry On Columbus (1992) - Countess Esmeralda
A Little Princess (1986) - Miss Minchin
Educating Rita (1983) - Trish
Agony (1979) - Jane Lucas