Patricia Gallimore

Description

Pat was born in Bath at the time when her father, a Captain in the Royal Navy, was working for the Admiralty. After Bath the family moved to Scotland, where Pat’s father became the Admiralty Engineer Overseer in Glasgow. They moved to the Midlands when he retired from the Navy, and went to work for ICI in Birmingham.

While studying at the Birmingham School of Speech and Drama, Pat won the Carleton Hobbs Award, and with it a six month contract on the BBC Radio Drama Company - the "radio rep". But before she took up that contract her first radio appearance was in 1965 in a play called Sweeping Reductions, alongside a fresh-faced young actor called Alan Devereux - later to become Sid Perks in The Archers. That play was recorded at the old BBC studios in Broad Street, not far from The Archers' current home at The Mailbox.

Pat still remembers the excitement with which she scanned the Radio Times for her first credit on the "rep" - and the disappointment to read against her character's name "Patrick Gallimore"! "I probably cried", she said. But such setbacks were soon behind her as she went on to play numerous roles, including Cathy in Wuthering Heights, Fleur in The Forsyte Saga and Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm - a vintage BBC Radio 4 production still probably available on tape for which she continues to receive the occasional royalty cheque!

Pat's a bit of a radio soap veteran. She had a small part in The Dales (formerly Mrs Dale's Diary) and while on another contract with the radio rep in 1968/9 she appeared in a play called The Rope Walk. Unknown to her, it was a pilot for a series, which became the BBC Radio 2 soap Waggoner's Walk. As Pat was still on the "rep", she was unable to take the part of Barbara Watling in the series. But eighteen months later, when the actress who had been cast as Barbara left for personal reasons, Pat stepped into the role. In the programme, Barbara shared a flat with a young woman called Tracy - played by Rosalind Adams (now Clarrie Grundy).

As if this wasn't enough, in 1974 Pat was cast as the Welsh incomer Pat Lewis in The Archers, and for a few months appeared in both soaps. Pat was quite pleased, as she had by now married and moved back to the Midlands, and could see the prospect of a nice six month local job. But very quickly her Waggoner's Walk character was moved out of the programme, shortly before the series ended - and Pat Lewis married Tony Archer, played by Colin Skipp.

Although the technology around her has changed significantly, Pat feels she is still doing the same job as when she started 40 years ago. Pat says: "You have to learn to adapt to the medium, and be guided by the technicians and directors, as in any medium, but basically acting is acting, and I firmly believe if you’re any good, as long as you follow guidelines and direction, you can be good whether it be behind the microphone or on stage or in front of a camera. Actors go where the work is. My work has mainly been in Audio, but I never rule anything out, now or in the future!”

Pat has recorded nearly 150 audiobooks, and values her radio drama training highly. "With an audiobook, you have to play all the parts, so being on the rep was a wonderful grounding, because you'd be playing an Italian today, an African tomorrow - and then you'd be on Listen with Mother playing a parrot!"

Ten years after Pat joined The Archers, she discovered that Pat and Tony would be converting Bridge Farm to organic production. Like most of Britain, Pat knew very little about what that meant - and she was certainly unaware of the way in which it would change her life. "That was even before Prince Charles got the organic bug", she remembers. As millions of listeners were introduced to the organic concept through Pat and Tony's struggles, the two actors became celebrities in the organic movement. "We appeared at Soil Association events, opened farm shops, met producers and organic evangelists...and the more I learned about organic principles, the more I thought 'these people have got it right.' " Pat even went organic in her own Warwickshire garden, with advice from HDRA at Ryton.

In 1999 Pat's career took another new turn. She spent 12 months travelling the country, interviewing some of the organic pioneers and entrepreneurs whom she had met over the previous 15 years, and subsequently telling their stories in the BBC book Patricia Gallimore's Organic Year. Amongst others she visited the establishments of HRH the Prince of Wales at Highgrove and Duchy Home Farm in Gloucestershire.

Since the book was published in 2000, Pat has seen a lot of change in the organic world. "Foot and Mouth Disease was a big problem for many farm shops. But also I've seen several of the small entrepreneurs that I featured become big businesses. I suppose that's what Tom (Pat son in The Archers) hopes for with his sausages. It’s great in one way, but it certainly changes many of the original values.”

Pat is still very committed to organic principles, and keen that governments should accept the importance of environmentally sustainable agriculture. But most of all, she feels lucky to have been involved in the movement: "Pat Archer has led me up so many interesting paths."

In 2002, Pat and her solicitor husband Charles moved from the family home in a Warwickshire village where their two children had been brought up, to a Victorian terrace in Leamington Spa. There’s still plenty of room when the children and their partners come home, but they love living back in a town; Pat loved her 9 years in London before she married. They have happily swapped their large garden for a small walled patio garden. Pat says: “The good thing is – it’s still organic!”