We've had a street, a close, a motel, a square, a farm - and now we have a soap set in... a women's prison!

Prisoner: Cell Block H is an Australian soap that has become cult viewing here, especially in the Midlands where it has an enthralled audience three nights a week (one night a week in the South).  And it even has a Derby-based fan club powerful enough to lure its star, Val Lehman who plays Bea, over from Sydney on a three-month personal appearance tour.

The irony is that Val actually quit the series six years ago.  But as Big Bea, the rough, tough 'top dog' who rules the roost in the fictitious Wentworth Detention Centre, she is still seen on British TV - exerting her evil influence on inmates and audiences, as well as an army of devoted fans.
 
So what is it about this Aussie series that is so addictive?  Women say they like it because it gives them a 'warts and all' look at prison life - a welcome break from the glitzy, stereotyped 'fantasy' soaps Dallas and Dynasty.
 
And, as if further proof of its enormous success were needed, the makers, Grundy TV in Australia, recently presented a stage version of Prisoner, written by Reg Watson, creator of Neighbours - and Crossroads.

The atmosphere in theatres around Britain has been electric.  As the familiar theme tune starts up the theatre darkens and a large pink rose is flashed onto the stage to resounding cheers... and it isn't for Michael Jackson or Madonna...

It is cynical warden Meg Jackson (Elspeth Ballantyne), whose main claim to fame is that she's been kidnapped, robbed, shot, blown out of a building, beaten up, raped, survived a marriage and endured a lover's death.  And that's only the tip of the iceberg.  She is the sympathetic face in uniform compared to warden Joan Ferguson (known as the 'freak')... but even the baddies are applauded in this strangest of soaps.

As for the television series - though it ceased production in Australia three years ago, the behind-bars in-fighting continues on our screens in Britain.  And, like it or loathe it, its huge success here - devotees don't mind viewing at midnight - could lead to its resurrection Down Under...
 

PRISONER FEVER HITS THE UK

The Prisoner: Cell Block H Fan Club was started up almost two years ago in Derby by Ros Vecsey and Tracey Elliott (pictured right with Val Lehman).  Its current membership of 2,500 is growing every week.

"It was late one Saturday night," recalls Ros.  "We switched on the TV and watched Prisoner as it happened to be on.  We just couldn't believe how bad it was!"
 
Tracey and Ros became firm Prisoner fans and wanted pictures and paraphernalia from the show which they could distribute to fellow fans.  They wrote to the programme's makers, Grundy TV in Australia, but received no acknowledgement.  Despite Grundy's lack of support, the fan club has gone from strength to strength. 

 "The local paper and Central TV featured us and we received 300 letters from people wanting to join," says Ros.  By June, 1988, the club had 'gone public'.  Ros and Tracey, who were unemployed, started the club with a 50 pound legacy Tracey's grandmother had left her.  They produced a newsletter, The Phantom Of The Soap Opera, which was sent to members for 50p.  "We asked the members to send us four pounds if they wanted us to continue.  Out of 700 people, 650 people sent four pounds each," says Ros.

The fan club was well and truly launched and Tracey and Ros wrote to the agents of the actresses in Prisoner.  "Sheila Florance, who plays Lizzie, sent us a parcel of material and said she was overwhelmed by the interest," says Ros.  They also contacted Valerie Lehman, who is better known to viewers as Bea Smith.  By now, the fan club had become a profitable concern and Tracey and Ros were ready to set up their own promotions company. 

They were able to invite Valerie Lehman to the UK last year.  At a later date, they plan to bring over Australian actress Betty Bobbitt, who plays inmate Judy Bryant.

"Fan club members are predominantly middle-aged and middle class, with a sprinkling of senior citizens," says Ros.

With 1,500 letters from people wanting to join the club arriving every week, Prisoner fever has definitely hit the UK - and is fast becoming an epidemic!
 

MEET TOUGH INMATE BEA

Australian actress Val Lehman exudes great energy.  A youthful 47-year-old, she's smaller and slimmer in the flesh than big butch Bea, the hardened con.

When we met in London - where she is now living with her second husband, Australian TV director, Charles Collins - she was smartly dressed in black, with a pearl necklace.  Bubbly and softly spoken, unlike loud-mouthed Bea, she was talking about what she wants to play now that she is here - "I'd definitely like to do Shakespeare, Chekhov and Ibsen," she told me.

Why does she think Prisoner is so popular?  Val thinks carefully.  "It's different to the usual soaps," she says.  "In  Prisoner, there are no cliched, couturier-dressed women, cooking a perfect meal without slopping anything down their front!  In Prisoner you have women in an extraordinary situation discussing pertinent points - rape, incest and, of course, murder.

"Prisoner moves rapidly - it doesn't take three years to post a letter or two years to have a baby.  I think it brings out the voyeur in the audience - it lets them have a peek behind prison walls."

During her British tour, organized last year by the UK-based Prisoner: Cell Block H Fan Club, Valerie met over 100,000 fans, most of them middle-aged women.  She did not expect to meet children who were fans.  "I am horrified that young children are allowed to watch it here, especially as it's on late. I don't approve.  I don't like a six-year-old telling me about a scene where I brand someone with an iron."

Val feels Prisoner is a realistic portrayal of an Australian women's prison.  She started in the TV series when it began in 1979 and, at that time, visited a real women's prison.  "I wasn't allowed to speak to the prisoners - only the deputy governor's pet who served us afternoon tea,"  she recalls.

"Later on, a social worker put me in touch with a prisoner who had been a 'top dog' and I was able to base my character on her."

Valerie feels that tough though Bea is, she is also vulnerable.  "People say they remember the tough scenes but they also say 'You make me cry so often'," she adds.

Bea is sent to Wentworth Detention Centre for life after committing a crime of passion against her hairdressing business partner, whom she strangles when she discovers she's been having an affair with her husband.  Bea's troubles deepen when her neglected daughter dies of a drug overdose.  Bea blames her husband and kills him, too, while out on parole.
 
Bea's sexual inclinations have always been questionable, but Val maintains that Bea is straight. "She is very much the Earth Mother.  She does have two affairs - with men," she explains.

After four-and-a-half years Val left the series - and keeps in contact with fellow Prisoner actress Sheila Florance who plays Lizzie, but decided against appearing on stage as Bea in the Australian TV production company's stage version which recently came to Britain.  "I want to do serious work in the UK - doing the play would have damaged my credibility."

Val, who originally set out to become an opera singer, won a scholarship to art school, became involved in drama and met her first husband, an Army Officer, whom she married at 19.

"When I said I wanted to be an actress, my husband and I didn't see eye to eye and so, after ten years of marriage, we parted," she says.

Despite the struggle of bringing up three small children, Val pursued her career and in 1978 she left the Theatre of Education Company, where she was tour manager/performer, to go into Prisoner.
 
Food is one of Valerie's passions.  She's an excellent cook and says she misses her "spectacular" kitchen back home, and the herb garden.

Her daughter Joanne is following her mother's footsteps into show business - she is assistant stage manager of London's Piccadilly Theatre's production of A Little Night Music.  Eldest daughter Cassandra, 27, is a professional photographer.  Son Jason, 22, instructs water-skiing and scuba diving, and is also a part-time actor.

Val met her second husband Charles when a friend asked her to direct a play he'd written.  For the time being, the couple plan to settle here, and a London agent is looking for suitable work for her.  Meantime, Val knows it will be some time before she can put Bea Smith behind her forever.
 

MEET WARDEN MEG JACKSON AND GOVERNOR ERICA DAVIDSON

Actress Elspeth Ballantyne has played warden Meg Jackson ever since the first TV episode of Prisoner in 1979.  When the series started, the cast visited Sairlie Women's Prison in Victoria, Australia.

"This was to see what a prison was like," says Elspeth.  "The atmosphere of the prison was most important.  I felt it very deeply.  I talked to the wardens and the visit did help me prepare for the role.

"We're delighted by the success of the series in Britain.  I think it's because it has a cast of Australian women who really want to play everyday women.  It's not a glamour soap.  We're a team of actresses who show the nitty-gritty."

Elspeth, who comes from a show business family in Adelaide, has not always been an actress.  She was a laboratory technician before winning a scholarship to drama school in Sydney.

Patsy King who plays the stern governor Erica Davidson is, she admits, very different to the character she plays.  "People often say they get a shock when they meet me!" says Patsy.

Patsy has received her share of fan mail - especially from male admirers.  "I used to have a regular correspondent from Canada, who was going into prison," she says.  "I've had mail from Scotland and Jersey, including two or three proposals of marriage!"

Patsy was brought up in the UK and spent part of her youth here in the 50s.  Divorced, but with a close family, she left her mum, sister and a chinchilla cat called Nijinska at home in Melbourne while here for the stage show of Prisoner.

[Taken from My Weekly magazine - 1990]
 

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