Interview - Kay Mellor: Kay returns to the stage with mum's secrets

Back in 1992, A Passionate Woman received its debut at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.

Writer Kay Mellor, who was soon to hit the big time with her TV series Band of Gold, at the time had had a little success writing for television, but was not in the position to turn offers down – you might imagine. The play, a major hit for the Playhouse, transferred to the West End where it ran for a year.

"There was a flurry of activity, people wanting to buy the film rights, but I wasn't going to sell them – this was my mother's story and you don't foul up your mother's story," says Mellor. "So I said no to everyone in the end."

All the companies wanted to buy the script and story from Mellor but none of the companies wanted to give the writer final say on the final draft.

"It could have been Cher on a roof in Chicago – some of these companies were talking about a lot of money, but it was more important than that. I turned down the money and kept the rights

for myself."

It turned out to be the best decision she could have made, allowing Mellor to honour her mother's story, pay tribute to her and eventually to find herself on stage, playing the role of Betty, the heroine of A Passionate Woman and the character based on her mother's true story.

Earlier this year, the BBC screened the two-part version of the stage play, which is also being turned into a film to be screened around the world. Mellor is currently preparing to go on stage at Hull Truck Theatre, playing the role of Betty Derbyshire. It's a dozen years since she was last on stage, in a one-woman play at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Having seen a number of actresses take on the role, Mellor felt it was time for her to step inside it.

"I love the part of Betty, it's my mum and it brings her close to me," says Mellor.

"When I was casting for the TV show, my casting director suggested I play the part of Betty but I was directing and it would have been too much for me to do. She planted the seed, which had never been there before. I have seen some wonderful Bettys – Anne Reid, Gwen Taylor, Stephanie Cole – and I've always been lost in their character and their world.

"All of them told me that it was such a pleasure to play Betty and that it's such a wonderful part – and I'm in my fifties now, so it's time for me to do it."

Although she trained as an actor at Bretton Hall, over a decade away from the stage is a long time.

Mellor agrees: "I actually felt my brain opening – I swear to God I could feel it being prised open when I was trying to learn lines.

It's a long time since I graduated, but fortunately I had that training to fall back on.

"Learning the lines really isn't any easier because I wrote them. It's hard to explain, but she is a character and she speaks very differently to me."

A Passionate Woman tells the story of Betty, who, on the day of her son's wedding, goes into the attic and begins to reminisce about an affair she had in her younger days.

Mellor still remembers vividly the day she first heard the story. "I was in my early 30s and Anthony, my husband, and I had fallen out, mum was washing up, I was drying. She was saying 'it's not easy, there has to be give and take, blah blah' and then I saw that she was crying into the washing-up bowl, floods of tears.

"She was telling me about a man she had an affair with, just before I was born. I was mesmerised. You don't think of your mother in that way.

"It's quite shocking to think of her as a sexual being. She was the least likely. She never told me about sex education, she never mentioned men in terms of love and affection."

Mellor's mum revealed the details of her affair – how the man had been murdered at Woodhouse Fair, how he was the love of her life.

"It all seemed so incredible and she'd never told anybody. The love of her life had been dead for 30 years. I could feel it. I had never seen my mum cry in her life and to see tears dropping into the washing-up bowl. It was the most upsetting, moving experience that ever happened to me in a way.

"Ten years later when my writing career was taking off, my brother was getting married, I was approaching 40, mum was bereft at losing Philip, her youngest son. It was like a bulb went on – my brother's wedding, this story of my mother's affair – and the play started to happen in my head. It just went click, click, click – a play."

A few days before the play was revealed to the world, Mellor took her mother to see a dress rehearsal. For the second time in her life, Mellor saw her mother cry.

"She turned to me and she said, 'This is my story, isn't it?'

"I told her that we could change things around and nobody would ever know."

And they wouldn't – were it not for the power of seeing the story on stage.

"After the press night, there was a tradition where the writer, director and cast would sit on stage and answer questions. This one journalist was on to me and kept needling. She came back again and again, asking if the play was based on someone. I said there is somebody who inspired it, but I really can't say – then from the middle of the auditorium mum was waving and saying, 'It was me'.

"She was like Lady Muck, holding interviews, with the press gathered around her. Giving all these details – it was like 30 years of shame dropped away."

And now, almost two decades on – and three years after her mother passed away, Mellor will go on stage and again pay tribute to this passionate woman.

A Passionate Woman, Hull Truck Theatre, Sep 10 to Oct 2. 01482 323638, www.hulltruck.co.uk