Sally Lindsay (SM)
‘Oh God, I’m f**king gorgeous,’ Sally Lindsay laughs while examining a polaroid from our fashion shoot. The Celebs On Sunday team comment she bears more than a passing resemblance to model Sophie Dahl in the picture.
‘Well, I’ve been saying that for years,’ she cackles.
In the world of celebrity, Sally Lindsay is not only a breath of fresh air, she’s a ruddy great gust of wind. She’s incredibly lovely, brilliant fun and loves a good girlie goss, regaling us with tales of everything from ‘accidentally’ going on holiday to Magaluf with Vanessa Feltz, to the Carribean trip where she had to wear a wetsuit to swim with dolphins.
‘I thought, if my boyfriend Steve still fancies me after he’s seen me in this, we’ll be together forever,’ she laughs. But the major reason why the ex-Corrie star is so refreshing is that, unlike most famous folk, she couldn’t give a stuff about being thin.
‘If you want to look like that and it’s important to you, then that’s great – it’s not important to me,’ says Sally, who is a curvy size 16.
‘My heroes are women like Victoria Wood, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Catherine Tate. You don’t look at a picture of any of them and go, “Oh, they’ve lost weight” or whatever because they’re so f**king talented it doesn’t matter. It’s about them, not what size dress they’re wearing. And that’s where I want to be.’
So can Sally say, hand on heart, that being in the public eye has never made her wish she was thinner? ‘Honest to God, no. I’m very happy in my own skin, I’m lucky like that. Course, I look at myself sometimes and think, “Oh my God, wouldn’t it be great if I had thin ankles or my arse wasn’t like that?”, but my best friend Clare is the same size as me and she’s like, “Look mate, if we were really arsed, we’ve had f**king years to sort it out. We’re clearly not, so let’s just get on with it”. I’m 34 now, it’s not going to change,’ she says. ‘I’ve always been the same and I’ve always had a nice life and I’m very much in love – Steve likes what I look like and that’s what matters to me.’
And as a result of her healthy body image and attitude, Sally isn’t about to be leaving on a jet plane for La-La Land any time soon.
‘I like working in England and the sensibilities of it. On American TV, everyone looks the same, it’s so sterile. Don’t get me wrong, if someone said, “Do you want to come and star in this smart film?” I wouldn’t sit here stroking my cravat and say, “No I’m going to stay in England and be English”, but I wouldn’t go over there and look for work just to have someone say, “Can you lose half your body weight please?”. No. Just get someone thinner. I’ll be off then. Waste of an airfare…’
Sally did, however, lose a stone once when her most famous role as loveable barmaid Shelley in Coronation Street demanded it.
‘I completely believed in the storyline when Charlie had control over her – he was chipping away at her to lose weight so I committed to it. It wasn’t difficult – you just eat less and move more. Bev Callard [her co-star who plays Liz McDonald] was brilliant – she was like, “Here’s my fitness video, don’t eat this, don’t eat that” and it just fell off.’
It’s now 18 months since Sally stopped pulling pints of Newton & Ridley’s finest and went out in to the big, bad world. And she has no regrets. ‘It was brilliant and I loved everyone, but it was time to move on. Shelley was a smart character, I was proud of her. But, that was then and this is now. When people see my stuff on screen again they’ll see why I’m not going back.’
Sally has kept a deliberately low profile since leaving Corrie so as to distance herself from Shelley and avoid typecasting. ‘If I’d done more TV, people would want me to play Shelley in a different outfit and there’s no point leaving an amazing show then playing her somewhere else,’ she says.
In the past year, she’s starred as Marilyn Monroe at the Edinburgh Festival, done a play above a pub in north London and got back to her roots in comedy, filming a new sitcom for ITV1.
‘It’s called Til We Die and it’s about Man City fans on a train. The first half is them going down to the match and the second is them coming back. It’s very Royle Family-esque. We cried laughing every day during filming,’ she says.
And then there’s the ‘Fast Show-esque’ sketch show she’s been busy making a BBC3 pilot for.
‘I’m doing five different characters. One’s a medium from Bolton who rips people off, another is a chavvy bird in a velour tracksuit, knockers everywhere. I’ve still got the wig glue stuck to my head,’ she laughs.
There’s also been rumours of a sitcom with her good mate Peter Kay (‘We’ve talked about it and we might do one day, but it’d have to be bloody good’) and her return to stand-up comedy (something she did before Corrie came calling) at a recent festival in Manchester. ‘I was like, “I don’t do stand-up any more”, but, next thing I know, I’m up there. I was scared and I felt inferior to all these brilliant comics I was on with. It was easier than when you’re a complete unknown though because the audience were all like, “Oh, I liked Shelley”.’
So it’s been a busy old year for Sally. One thing she won’t be getting involved with though is reality TV. ‘I don’t like Big Brother, and I hate the jungle, I think it’s pointless. Eating kangaroo’s b*ll*cks? What for?,’ she says. ‘I was even asked to do something about celebrity maternity nursing. My agent was like, “I think we’ve reached a new low, love”. I’d follow some complete stranger around and then deliver their child – probably the most fundamental thing that’s going to happen in their lives and I’m there on the telly. Why would you want to do that? I don’t need to be on TV that much. I love Strictly Come Dancing, though, it’s genius family telly, and I get asked to do it every year but I’d just be so crap. It’s dead hard. I’m a bit selfish too – my time is my time, I like doing my work and then going home.’
Home is still split between Manchester and London, where Sally and Steve, the drummer in Paul Weller’s band, have homes. ‘We have domestic bliss when we get a chance. We’ll never be the couple who come home at 5 o’clock and tea’s on the table. I think we’ll be like we are until we retire and even then we’ll be buggering off everywhere.’
Leaving The Street has helped increase her quota of quality time with her man, though. ‘When you’re in Coronation Street, there’s never an end to the 12-hour days. I don’t miss the gruelling schedule – it becomes your life, a year’s gone by and you don’t even know. It was quite a trap because I couldn’t ever plan to say, “I’ll have a week off after this” because they’d put another scene in and you’d have to work.’
Now that Sally has more time with her man, can we expecting wedding bells and offspring any time soon? ‘Not that I know of…’ she says. ‘In the future, I assume so – it’s been three and a half years and that’s what happens isn’t it? Next year is about me launching myself back on telly though. But he’s a fantastic bloke and we’re having a nice time. Honest to God, we’re dead happy.’
And with that, Sally rushes home to see her fantastic bloke, and we say our goodbyes. ‘See you next year, then, when I’m size zero and taking part in Strictly Come Dancing,’ she laughs. Don’t you go changing, Miss Lindsay, or we’ll be having some serious words…
Sally on..
..life after Corrie…
‘I don’t miss being that famous. It’s strange being in Corrie – you’re as famous as someone from Hollywood, but you’re as approachable as somebody’s mum. Literally, I’ll be on the loo, and people will put toilet paper under the door and say, “Can you sign this?”. Somebody came up to me and said, “It’s lovely to see you’re off the heroin”. I think she mistook me for someone else. I explained I’ve never been into drugs and she’s looking at me as if to say, “Yeah yeah”. One of the maddest times was when this guy dodged traffic on a road to talk to Suranne Jones and I, and then was like, “I don’t watch Corrie, it’s sh*t, but my wife does” – he nearly killed himself to tell us our show was crap.’
..a Lorra Laughs
‘I was approached a year ago in a bar at the Edinburgh Festival about doing a DVD and I was like, “Oh no thank you, I don’t think that’d be my sort of thing”, presuming it was a fitness video. But it was a pub quiz – and I love pub quizzes, so it went from there. I got my mates off the telly involved. God love them, they all agreed to do it – Suranne Jones, Denise Welch, Jenny James, Alan Carr and Peter Kay are all on it. The only one who isn’t is Antony Cotton. He was like, “I can’t doll, I’m doing one myself”. I’m like, “Oh bloody hell”. Are we going to fall out over it? Oh God no, I hope not, not over a DVD. We’re totally good mates, so it’s fine.’
Sally Lindsay’s Party Pub Quiz DVD is out now priced £19.99 (Universal)
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