My novel's about sex, drugs and scandal on soaps – and it's all true, reveals agent for TV's biggest stars
IN more than two decades as a TV agent Melanie Blake masterminded the glittering careers of some of Britain’s best-loved soap stars, including Beverley Callard, Claire King and Gillian Taylforth.
But after years behind the scenes, she has now stepped into the spotlight as the author of a new bonkbuster novel, Ruthless Women, set at the studios of a fictional TV drama — which soon starts to look very familiar.
It is packed with X-rated sex, scandal, booze, drugs and abuse — but what will really titillate soap fans is that 44-year-old Melanie insists: “It’s all absolutely true.”
She says: “The things in the book are absolutely real. I’ve done so many things to protect stars that would shock viewers.
“I’ve had clients on Coronation Street, Emmerdale, all over British soaps, and the stuff that I’ve covered up for them . . . I write about the things which I know about. Those characters are all alive.
“I’ve been at the end of the phone when clients were sobbing over things they have done that are about to come out.
“I’ve buried porn videos that stars have done earlier in their careers, I’ve bought CCTV after one actress got too amorous with a guy she shouldn’t have been with in a hotel corridor.
SORDID AFFAIRS
“The stuff on soaps is nothing compared to what happens behind the scenes.
“Drink, drugs, sex, it’s all there, and some unbelievable nastiness, which comes with the industry.
“I’ve known very famous actresses visiting a guy we called Dr Feelgood for hormone therapy that made them absolutely sex-crazed.
“I watched Barbara Windsor and Jessie Wallace (Kat Slater) having a physical fight.
“I represented Sherrie Hewson (Maureen Webster) when she was fired by the boss of Coronation Street at the time, Brian Park, and he laughed and enjoyed it.
“A lot of people in soaps will be relieved I haven’t named them for what they have done. They know this is just the tip of the iceberg.
“But the biggest thing, when people say, ‘Oh God, tell me it’s not really like this’, I say, ‘Look at the actresses who have endorsed this, Beverley Callard, Claire King, Gillian Taylforth, Stephanie Beacham.
“I think they want people to know the truth. Actresses have queued up to support it. They are massive stars saying, ‘It’s just like this’.”
And Beverley says of the book: “At times I felt sick reading it. It was like someone had shadowed my life on set.”
Ruthless Women tells the story of a soap star in her seventies, loved by the public, but facing a dramatic decline in her fortunes as a new TV executive seeks revenge for an earlier dispute.
Along the way, characters become entwined in sordid affairs and vicious feuds and in some cases will stop at nothing to see another ruined.
It is an intriguing insight into the apparent glitz and glamour of showbiz.
Melanie adds: “This is the antidote to 50 Shades Of Grey. Because if any man brought out handcuffs and a blindfold in this book, they would trick him into wearing them himself, put them on him, then they would f*** his mate.
“They say write about what you know, and the women in showbiz I have known over the years are very adventurous ladies.
A famous actress got drugs from a guy called Dr Feelgood and became sex crazed
“I learned early doors, celebrities who are in the menopause have access to special doctors. I know a number of celebrities who have been to see Dr Feelgood, who gives them blends of hormone replacement therapy that includes testosterone and oestrogen, and the celebrities who I know who have done too much in two weeks . . . oh God.
“These women are very sexually adventurous but they also learned the lesson that the magic potions are not to be over-used. It’s not like real life. These are superhuman women.”
Melanie tells how she found her way into the cut-throat showbusiness industry after a miserable childhood at the hands of a devoutly religious father who forbade all television-watching as a “sin”.
At times she slept rough, and struggled with low-paid factory jobs before finally getting a junior role as a studio “runner”, or dogsbody, at Top Of The Pops when it was filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire.
She says: “My background was horrendous. My dad was a religious fanatic who had a porn mag stash but banned the rest of us from everything.
“Then I met Gillian Taylforth at Elstree, when my job was carrying cables at Top Of The Pops, and she advised me to join an extras agency to gain more TV experience.
REAL POWER
“She gave me her number, I phoned up an agency, and a week later I was in the Queen Vic and I saw Jessie Wallace and Barbara Windsor blow up at each other off camera in a scene like I have never seen broadcast.
“They went at it like cats. A lot of people would have run for cover, but I was like, ‘Hello showbiz’.
“Then I went to Coronation Street and I was put in a scene with Beverley Callard, and I just broke rank and spoke to her. We got on very well.
“I did extras work for three years, built a rapport with people like Gaynor Faye (Judy Mallett) and Sherrie Hewson, and I’d tell them what I thought their career should be.
“It was Claire King (Kim Tate in Emmerdale) who gave me my first break. She won an award and I said she should be on the cover of magazines that week.
“She said, ‘I won’t, because I’m older — they don’t care when we’re older’. She was right, they didn’t put her on the cover.
“She said to me, ‘If you think you can do better, I’ll give you a trial’.
“So I called all the magazines and made up a thing about doing a ‘Claire King lose a stone in ten days diet exclusive’ to get them talking, and by the end of the day she had three magazine deals and a fashion endorsement.
“I was hired, and some of the others followed within weeks. I was doing Beverley, Michelle Collins, Gaynor, Sherrie, Amanda Barrie and Gillian Taylforth, and almost overnight I became someone with real power in that world.
“I went from being an extra that nobody would talk to, to holding the keys to Beverley Callard’s contract and suddenly ITV had to take me seriously.”
But she says of soap actresses: “Some of them were awful. They made me cry with their cruelty.
“One very famous actress I represented couldn’t behave herself. She was unreliable, notoriously selfish, and I begged her to behave for a few days because it was my mum’s funeral.
I’ve buried porn videos from early in careers and bought up the CCTV footage of hotel romps
“Next thing I was at the crematorium and the soap press office were on the phone begging me to fix a problem and they didn’t care that I was at a funeral or upset, they just wanted it dealt with.
“But I got my own back. I put that same actress into a reality show which I knew would go very badly for her. Then I ran off and watched it all fall apart on screen.”
Melanie adds: “The sad thing is women can be the worst and the most ruthlessly unpleasant, but they can also be the best.
“In soaps and TV I’ve met some of the most amazing women who will be in my life for ever and ever, like Beverley — and others I would never speak to again.
“I would happily go to their funerals in a bright red dress and dance on their graves. There are some that I pray for that obituary.
“I keep my eye on it and it’s always the nation’s sweethearts that are the worst. The ones preaching about ‘be kind’.
“The real salt-of-the-earth girls are always adorable, always lovely.”
But many of the production executives can be even more unpleasant, with stories of abuse, ageism, sexism and even demands that women have a face lift before signing a new contract.
FEMME FATALE
Melanie says: “The problem is for the older women in soaps, unless you are a character actress, if you are a femme fatale you’re in trouble because someone is sticking a best-before sign on your back.
“It didn’t used to be like that but now it is. You are judged by your age and the way you look. I have had that phone call from a soap producer saying, ‘We’ll take it if she has a facelift’. And I’ve made that call to clients, and some actresses have done it and some have retired gracefully.
“I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it’s true. You don’t get that big soap talent any more, those days are over.”
Beverley, one of her best-known clients, recently stepped down as Corrie’s Liz McDonald — a role she had played in four lengthy stints since 1989. But after a glittering career, Melanie says Beverley will never return to the cobbles.
She adds: “They will talk to you, as an agent, about your talent in the most disgusting manner and say terrible things. They assume you will never tell them.
“So what my actresses found out when they read this book is, ‘God, I knew it. I felt it’.
“Beverley has been very vocal about why she left Coronation Street.
“She didn’t believe in the character any more. But nobody should have let Liz McDonald be battered around Coronation Street, being told what to do by barmaids half her age, being run over and having affairs with men she wouldn’t have had affairs with.
“The crime is she was the sexy character, and then what do you do with her?
I’ve had clients on Corrie and Emmerdale and the stuff I’ve covered up for them…
“You’ve only got to turn on Emmerdale to see the state of Kim Tate. Nicola Wheeler (Nicola King) is going, ‘Old Kim Tate’ and they’re referencing her as Granny.
“Claire King is f***ing sexy. It’s wrong. It creeps in. Look at EastEnders, Jessie Wallace, they’ve got her one step up from a street walker now.
“Her character will sleep with anybody. She’s a fantastic actress — is it because she’s a bit older now?”
A deal with devil
MELANIE has a warning to anyone with dreams of TV stardom.
After finding huge success as an author, with two studios now vying for the rights to turn Ruthless Women into a drama, this week she is closing her agency and says: “I feel like it’s my turn to focus on me.
“I’ll always be close to many of those girls and would help with anything major. I wrote in that book that showbiz is a monstrously mesmerising place, and I stand by that.
“But when you sign a deal to be in a soap, you are signing a deal with the devil, because your likeness is gone for ever.
“Everyone in this country, and around the world if it’s syndicated, thinks they own you, can comment on you, ridicule you, pull you apart for ever.
“And God forgive you should you be out of work. That is your life ruined.
“So this is my warning – it never goes away. When it’s good it’s brilliant, and when it’s bad it’s horrendous.
METOO MOMENT
“But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’ve gone from the studio floor, stood in the background, to the top of ITV Towers.
“I used to walk in there and think, ‘I’ve got no quali-fications, no education, I’m dyslexic and I’m running a massive empire. I’ve got all these women’s trust in me and I’m walking into these meetings going, ‘I know they don’t like me, but they have to listen to me’. That was the ultimate power kick.
“That’s why in the book you see so many fights between the women and the men, because if a man can put you down, he will.
“If a man can pull you apart because of your class or because you put on weight, like that line with Coleen (Nolan) and the gastric band, I was there for that, I saw that executive do that. He stuck his finger in her stomach. She was a size 12.
“It’s time to tackle ageism, classism and sexism in TV. And I hope this does become a bit of a MeToo moment, because otherwise things will never change.”
- Ruthless Women by Melanie Blake (Head Of Zeus, £12.99) is out now.
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