Gleaming with a steady, bright, golden glow among the late night gravestones of television is a priceless nugget.

Insomniacs, drunken telly browsers and ashen faced chain-smoking hermits all over the land - ten million they say, but I have yet to meet anyone who will own up - are transfixed by Prisoner: Cell Block H.

This Aussie import about the female prisoners in Wentworth Detention Centre was first screened in the Midlands, became an addiction and has spread its tentacles to cover Britain.

Now they're bringing the show, live, to our shores on a theatre tour.

G'Day, Neighbours Behind Bars.

I crept into their rehearsal basement at a synagogue in Soho.

Immediately, I heard the sweet-toned, Down Under, no-nonsense female voices raised in artistic endeavour.

"You rotten little turd!"..."You scumbag!"..."You dog's breath!"..."Haven't they flushed you down the sewer yet?"

I held my hands to my crimson ears as this robust Oz language ricocheted off the rafters.

Ladies!  Ladies!  I whispered, gritting my teeth.

During a break, I talk to the stars, Patsy King, who plays the Governor of Wentworth, Elspeth Ballantyne, the warder and Glenda Linscott a spectacular six-foot-two blonde, one of the inmates.  [N.B.  Although Glenda Linscott played Rita Connors in the TV series, on stage she played a different character, Angela Mason.]

In Oz they're mobbed.  "But nobody recognizes us over here," says Elspeth, who has the buttoned-down look of a female warder.

"Just you wait till you play the Midlands.  They're panting for you up there," I say.

When the TV bosses threatened to move the show to another time, Birmingham fans rose up in arms.

Patsy, a lovely lady with a dinky bob of blonde hair, looked bewildered by it all.

"I couldn't believe they wanted to stage Cell Block H over here in England.  Fancy, bringing the show half way round the world!"

Was it true that there are nine hundred more hours of Cell Block in the can ready to be hosed into our homes? I asked.  [N.B. As only 692 episodes of Prisoner were made, this estimation is way off.]

"Yes," says Elspeth.  "I think it's a completely different show, being all female and played by women who are prepared to go on without make-up, with straggly hair and no glamour at all.

"But its real appeal is that the ordinary public knows nothing about the inside of a women's prison."

Having stayed up late to watch Cell Block, I can say it does have an odd Antipodean artless style and charm.

All the inmates, for instance, are done up in sack-shaped blue boiler-suits and chunder-coloured shirts.

A hint of lesbianism gives it an added kinky lustre.

Suddenly, big Glenda lumbered to her feet and began to mop down the table.

"Can't have you wetting your elbows, can we, mate?" she says, friendly as a billabong.

"Good on yer.  Too right, Glenda," I say.  Not many stars would do that for a cobber.

Patsy, an absolute dish, agreed that Cell Block might just have a sneaky appeal for the odd kinky viewer.

"I've had lots of letters but no kinky ones," she says.

At which point Elspeth cuts in eagerly, her clipped tresses shaking.

"I've had some kinky letters over the years.  But let's define what is kinky.

"I mean, I had one letter from a man who described his house down to the last stick of furniture.  He said to make it perfect he wanted me to be right there in it."

"A prisoner, Elspeth," I say.  "His own, his very own lovely prisoner from Cell Block H."

"No, no," she answers.  "He was a proper gentleman.  From England."

"One chap named his motor car after me," says Patsy helpfully.  "It wasn't a Rolls Royce though."

"Of course, ladies," I say, "the reason why Cell Block is so big Down Under is you all have a convict hanging about somewhere in the murky branches of the family tree."

"Bound to have" says Elspeth.  "But no, Cell Block's appeal is over what goes on in a women's prison."

Have the boiler-suits and yellow shirts started a fashion trend in Oz?

Big Glenda, who'd finished scrubbing the place out, no doubt thinking she was still banged up behind bars, snorted with girlish laughter.

"Unfortunately, no.  We haven't featured in any fashion magazines.  Maybe Australia missed out.  Could be big over here though."

At which the ladies of Cell Block H scampered daintily for the door, heading for their tucker break like galvanized wallabies.

[Article written by William Marshall and taken from the Daily Mirror - 22nd September 1989]
 

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