Maureen Lipman is a veteran of the stage, but recently she found it particularly hard to speak in public.
She was giving a eulogy at the funeral of one of her best friends, Lynda Bellingham.
She managed to hold back the tears but broke down towards the end of her eloquent speech.
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Naturally the tragic occasion brought her own grief for her husband nearer the surface.
Her husband of 30 years and father of her two children, writer Jack Rosenthal, died a decade ago from cancer.
Maureen, who is coming to Birmingham Rep to star in the comedy Harvey, says wistfully: “It’s very hard when you are one thing, and suddenly you have to be another.
“One minute you’re someone’s wife, the next you’re not.
“We live in a world where you are supposed to pull yourself together and forget the person who has been your best friend for 30 years.
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“You can feel very alone.
“I went back to work after eight months even though I didn’t know what I was doing. It helped, because there were new people who didn’t know me as Jack’s wife.
“It does get easier to bear, but I still go to see Jack’s grave every two weeks and talk to him. If I’m going away, I tell him where I’m going.
“Jack is very much around and part of our life, the kids and me. He lives in my head and he’s the opposite of forgotten.
“I had 30 years with Jack. Lynda didn’t have nearly as long with her husband Michael, but he brought her a lot of happiness.
“Lynda was an amazing woman, and look how she’s still looking after her children now, with a number one book in the bestseller list.”
Maureen, 68, insists she has plenty to look forward to, including the arrival of her second grandchild, appropriately due on her wedding anniversary in February – and right in the middle of her time in Birmingham.
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“I’ll be rushing back on the train as soon as I can to see him. We know he’s going to be a boy.
“My first grandchild, Ava, is two in April and a very powerful woman already! She won’t take any prisoners.
“I have put my back out lifting her up too many times. It’s a facet joint injury, apparently. I’ve been to a physiotherapist who should see me right.”
Maureen has another partner in her life, retired Italian-born businessman Guido Castro. They were introduced by a mutual friend in 2008.
“I am very lucky to have had two very good men in my life. I feel blessed to have been loved by two good people.
“We have a lovely relationship but I don’t think marriage is necessary. It is if you’re going to have children and you want them to have one name, but it’s not necessary for me. I don’t need a piece of paper to make me feel honourable.
“Guido is very cultured and loves the theatre but he has no idea what I do for my job.
“He says things like ‘The audience really seemed to love your monologues, but I didn’t understand them’.
“That’s quite refreshing. When he met Christopher Biggins, he said ‘And what do you do for a living?’”
Maureen is currently in rehearsals for the play Harvey, first produced on Broadway in 1944. Written by Mary Chase, it won a Pulitzer Prize before being made into the 1950 classic film with James Stewart.
James Dreyfus of Notting Hill and Gimme Gimme Gimme fame plays Elwood P. Dowd, who has an unwavering friendship with a 6ft tall invisible rabbit called Harvey.
Maureen says: “It’s a charming, beautifully written play and I think very relevant to these ghastly, frightening times.
“You wonder whether it’s a world you really want to hand on to your grandchildren.
“Elwood is a man who’s someone different in society who gradually wins everybody round.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we saw life through his eyes? There’s not a lot of charm and optimism about these days.
“He’s always pleasant and kind, he’s non-judgemental and he listens – that’s in short supply these days.
“My character is his sister Veta who’s very materialistic and ‘want want want’.
“She tries to get him committed in a mental hospital because she has no money – that’s all gone to Elwood – and to survive she must marry her daughter off well. She is trying to launch her into society but Elwood keeps ruining it by introducing everyone to his rabbit.
“But in trying to get him committed, she ends up with more than she bargained for. And Elwood wins the day through sheer pleasantness.”
Maureen has been very involved in politics in the past but recently declared she could no longer support the Labour Party.
She said: “I can’t in all seriousness go into a booth and put my mark on any one of them.”
She was particularly annoyed with Ed Miliband, who comes from a family of Jews but was pictured eating a bacon sandwich and wants the state of Palestine to be recognised.
Maureen is still a socialist, though, and finds the far right parties to be even more dangerous.
Recently 海角视频IP leader Nigel Farage said Maureen was to blame to too many young people going to university to study poor quality degrees.
Maureen made adverts for BT throughout the 1980s, the most famous of which saw her telling her grandson that having an “ology” made him a scientist.
Now she says of Farage: “He has a capacity for sounding humorous with his off the cuff remarks, which is fine as long as no-one takes him seriously.
“In times of austerity, that’s when racists and xenophobes come out of the woodwork and say ‘everything will be a lot better if we didn’t let the people with brown skin and big noses in’.
“If we fall for it, then we deserve what we effing well get.”
Harvey plays Birmingham Rep from February 6-21. For tickets ring 0121 236 4455 or go to .