Only Fools and Horses favourites Boycie & Marlene come to The Beck (From Harrow Times)

Only Fools and Horses favourites Boycie & Marlene come to The Beck

3:53pm Monday 15th February 2010 in

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Playing Marlene, the other half of affable Cockney geezer Boycie for 25 years, Sue Holderness certainly has some stories to tell. Now Beck Theatre audiences have a chance to quiz Sue and her on-screen spouse John Challis, as the stars of Only Fools and Horses and The Green, Green Grass, bring their An Audience With... show to town.

Part in character and as themselves, John and Sue will be on hand to regale audiences with snippets from the award-winning TV programmes and their lives on stage and screen.

Born in Hampstead, Sue grew up in Ruislip and has lived in Windsor with theatre director Mark Piper for the past 25 years. She attended Bishop Winnington-Ingram School, had classes at the Maria Anderson School of Dance and Drama and went on to study at Northwood College and The Central School of Speech and Drama.

“I was very keen on being on the stage,” says Sue. “I was a big show off; the all-singing and all-dancing tot.”

I was a big show off; the all-singing and all-dancing tot

Sue Holderness

After graduation, Sue joined Manchester’s 69 Theatre Company and went on to star in many West End productions, such as The Female Odd Couple and the highly-acclaimed one-woman show Our Kid, based on Myra Hindley. Her big break came in 1985 when she landed the role of Marlene, the brash and buxom wife of Del Boy’s know-it-all drinking buddy Boycie.

I ask Sue if Marlene’s over-the-top style and personality has ever been in danger of taking over?

“There was a very dangerous time when I thought I was becoming Marlene,” recalls Sue. “I was veering towards the leopard skin clothes in the shops.

“Originally, I went in for one episode and I was pregnant at the time with the first of my four children. Marlene has been their mother the whole of their lives.”

Latterly, Sue tells me, Marlene has mellowed as the BBC’s rural sitcom The Green, Green Grass saw the couple and their son Tyler relocate to the country.

“It was the greatest thrill to explore these characters in greater depth and we filmed it at John Challis’s house in Shropshire. It came about because John was welcoming his guests on his 60th birthday party and the writer, John Sullivan thought it would be a wonderful idea for Boycie to go down and lord it as landed gentry.”

The show has since run to four series and has attracted more than six million viewers. The last episode For Richer For Poorer aired in March last year and saw Boycie and Marlene celebrate 40 years of married life.

“The series has proved fortuitous for Sue but it seems Marlene was less keen on the idea at first.

“She loathed the whole thought of it as she needs to be close to a Debenhams at all times and fought with great fervour to stay in Peckham, but the fact that she agreed to go says something about their marriage. Boycie and Marlene need each other.”

Sue and John need each other too. They have appeared together in several Alan Ayckbourn plays and Boycie are Marlene are successful both on screen and on tour.

Sue is likely to be on the road for much of the year as she will join the cast of Calendar Girls in May playing Annie.

“I’m trying to get in shape to strip off. We are all stark naked, there’s no question of that but it’s beautifully done. We’re tastefully camouflaged with WI things like tea pots and cream cakes.”

Boycie & Marlene comes to The Beck Theatre, Grange Road, Hayes, Middlesex on Thursday, February 18 at 7.30pm. Details: 020 8561 8371