This Is Your Life: Rula Lenska

Rula LENSKA (1947-)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Rula Lenska, actress, was surprised by Michael Aspel during the curtain call of the pantomime Snow White at the Harlequin Theatre in Redhill.

Rula, who was born in Huntingdon to Polish aristocrats and refugees from the Nazis, grew up in Willesden. Having trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, she worked in repertory theatre in Westcliff and Worcester.

Her first major television role was in the ITV drama series Rock Follies in 1976. Other roles include Special Branch, Minder and Casualty on TV and Alfie Darling on film. As a keen conversationalist, Rula has completed several expeditions including India and Nepal.

programme details...

Edition No: 939
Subject No: 915
Broadcast date: Wed 10 Jan 1996
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Sun 17 Dec 1995
Repeated: Thu 11 Jan 1996 2.35pm
Venue: Teddington Studios
Series: 36
Edition: 19
Code name: Metric

on the guest list...

Anna - sister
Elżbieta - mother
Ludwik - father
Andrew - brother
Lara - daughter
Dennis Waterman - husband
John Gray
Christopher Timothy
John Blashford-Snell
Arthur - uncle
Jas - uncle
Gaba - sister
Sister Mary Murphy
Veronica Hammond
Susan Penhaligon
Howard Schuman
Charlotte Cornwell
Warren Clarke
Michele Clarke
Chris Dunkley
Will Travers
Donald MacIver
Anita Dobson

production team...

Researcher: Ian Brown
Writer: Ian Brown
Director: Brian Klein
Associate Producer: John Graham
Executive Producer: Peter Estall
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

An Actor's Life For Me

spotlight on the stars

Screenshots of Rula Lenska This Is Your Life

Rula Lenska recalls her experience of This Is Your Life in her autobiography, My Colourful Life...

'Go and get some sleep, my darlings, it will not be tonight.' These were the last words I heard my mama speak. It’s a hard picture to go back to but nevertheless a beautiful and privileged one. It was close to Christmas 1995, just a day after I had been surprised, as most 'victims' are, by This Is Your Life.

I was playing the Wicked Queen to Trevor Bannister's dame in Snow White at the Harlequin Theatre at Redhill in Surrey. We were taking the curtain call for the second show of the day when I noticed rather a lot of commotion in the auditorium. People were standing and clapping and what looked like television cameras were moving towards us. A bit perplexed and rather longing to get out of my heavy costume and drive home, I smiled and moved backwards away from the cameras that were now coming up on to the stage.

Then I realised what was going on – they had come to get Trevor, a brilliant comic actor and famous pantomime dame, for This is Your Life. He would be wafted from the stage to a studio to have his whole life laid out before an audience of millions with the help of his friends, relatives and possibly famous adversaries from down the years, there to praise him as well as doubtless provide a few embarrassing moments, with the whole story set down in the big red book held at that time by Michael Aspel. Trevor was to be the latest in a line of ‘victims’ that stretched back decades.

I looked at him and winked and, stepping back, trod on someone’s toe. I turned round to say sorry and saw it was Mr Aspel’s foot. Suddenly the rest of the cast were no longer so closely grouped around me and Michael was handing me the famous red book. The first notes of the intro music filled the theatre. I was totally shocked and unprepared and quite honestly not too happy about it because my life was not in a good way at the time, to put it mildly. But I tried to be gracious and, I suppose, grateful.

Having been a guest on other people’s Life and knowing how it worked, I wondered how on earth it could have been kept a secret from me while they were getting it together, especially by my daughter, who was about fifteen at the time and had driven in to the theatre with me every day during the school holidays to look after the pantomime babes. She must have known about this for at least a month. As both my parents were already very unwell I could imagine how difficult the secrecy and preparation must have been for my family. My immediate thoughts were for their welfare in particular.

As soon as Michael Aspel had finished on stage I was hustled off to my dressing room with a minder, who from then on never left my side. Maybe they thought I was going to run away. Apparently it has happened before. Several times.

Because I had no idea this was going to happen I had come to the theatre in ordinary work clothes – jeans, a warm sweater, boots and so on. It certainly wasn’t a sort of outfit I would want to appear on TV in. It was already well past 10.30 in the evening so there was no time to go home to get an outfit. I was told not to worry, Dennis had picked something out for me to wear and it was waiting in the Teddington recording studios.

The most important thing was to get cracking as soon as possible because my family and all the invited guests from near and far had been waiting and rehearsing all afternoon and of course everyone was tired. I was really worried about my parents though I was sure they would be in the best of hands, surrounded by my mother’s siblings and her children.

The other huge worry, of course, was Dennis. Things had been going from bad to worse in their usual manner but we would have to put on a great united front of solidarity and togetherness. What’s more, he had been at the studio all day with some of his mates. How much drinking had gone on?

We sped off to Teddington in a chauffeur-driven limo. I was not even allowed to share a car with my daughter; she had another one all to herself! Once we arrived I was whisked in great secrecy through to a dressing room, where I was given about an hour for hair and make-up. There were wonderful nibbles, and flowers and drink in abundance. Then I checked the outfit Dennis had picked for me to wear on national TV for this most special occasion.

It was a bottle-green lounging-around-the-house comfortable kaftan with baggy harem pants and flat scandals! Hardly the sexy, confident image I would have liked to portray. I am sure he didn’t do it on purpose but I couldn’t understand why he had chosen such an outfit from a wardrobe full of sophisticated, smart, elegant clothes much more fitting for such an occasion.

Anyway, no time to dwell on that, I was being hurried up. It was late, everyone was tired and we had a show to record. There would of course be at least a couple of people who had been flown in from the other side of the world. I knew these were the high points and I had a pretty good idea who those long-distance specials would be. And I was right – Veronica Hammond, one of my first and dearest friends from boarding school had come all the way from Kenya and, all the way from Colombia, Don MacIver from drama school. They were amongst the handful of people who had been close to me for decades.

As it turned out it was wonderful. My headmistress from boarding school, my hot-air-balloon pilot teacher and nearly all the family from near and far had come. My mother’s two beloved brothers, Jas from Munich and Arthur from Dublin; my lovely sister Gaba from America; my wonderful youngest sister Anna and my gorgeous talented brother Andrew. Then there was Charlotte Cornwell, one of the three Little Ladies from Rock Follies days, Howard Schuman, the Rock Follies author, and Susie Penhaligon who had been at drama school with me; Anita Dobson, another drama school friend, and Christopher Timothy, with whom I did my first pantomime, which also starred Les Dawson and Bernard Bresslaw; and there were also good mutual friends of Dennis’s and mine, including Warren and Michele Clark, who remain close to me still, even though there was a bit of a hiccup when Dennis and I broke up.

There were representatives from some of the charities I had worked for – John Gray from the Red Cross, and Virginia McKenna’s son Will Travers, who is now director of the Born Free Foundation; Colonel John Blashford-Snell, with whom I had done two extraordinary life-changing working expeditions in India and Nepal; my first agent; all the cast of the pantomime and of course my beloved parents and the children: my step-daughters Hannah and Julia from Dennis’s previous marriage, and my own precious beautiful daughter, Lara.

It was a moving and evocative hour. There was one glaring omission – Krysia Podleska, my oldest friend from pre-school Brownie days. I have known her virtually all my life and we got into all sorts of scrapes and adventures as naughty young girls. We started working together in the Polish theatre when we were in our early teens. Sadly I don’t see her so often because she lives in Poland, but we are in regular contact.

Later I found out there had been something of a battle between my family and Dennis about the sort of people that were to be picked out of my address book and invited onto the programme, and I discovered how hard all this planning and secrecy had been for my mother, who was already ill and weak.

Mama knew very little about This Is Your Life. Quite rightly she saw the family and the dearest friends who had meant a great deal to me as the most important people to invite. But of course, since this was a TV programme Thames wanted a smattering of ‘lardies’ (celebs) and there was limited room for so many to make an appearance or to have a seat in the audience. This had resulted in several skirmishes between my youngest sister Anna, in charge of arranging the family side of things, and my husband.

Mama had got it into her head that This Is Your Life meant this is the end of your career, and because she knew how rocky Dennis and I were she thought Dennis has somehow engineered it.

Tellingly, when Michael Aspel asked her to address a few words to me she said: ‘You have many challenges and loves in your life. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you for the first part of your life and wish you strength for the second part of your life in your personal life and on the stage.’

The programme went very well and then there was a marvellous hoolie laid on with loads of food and drink and an opportunity to chat to all the family and friends. By the end of the recording it was already well after midnight and Mama was feeling very weak. She was driven back almost immediately to her little flat. She was already on oxygen 24/7 and having great difficulty with her breathing, and you could see the programme had really drained her. I should have gone back with her but I couldn’t.

This was a great honour for me and I had to stay and spend time with my guests. But she shouldn’t have been allowed to go home on her own. That will always be on my conscience. My father at least had his girlfriend Tania to look after him but Mama was all alone in her flat.

It was a very long day and I had two shows the next day. Obviously all the pantomime cast had been invited to the recording and the party, so at the matinee the next day we were in a great mood but a bit weary. Straight after the second show I staggered home and to bed to be woken by a phone call from Hammersmith hospital at three in the morning. Mama had been taken in. They did not think she was going to last the night. I raced out of bed into my car and drove to London hoping and praying that I would still find her alive. I met my sisters and brother and a very pregnant sister-in-law around Mama’s bed in a small, softly lit ward. She looked peaceful, though her breathing was laboured. We were all quiet and controlled and praying in our own way and supporting each other as best we could.

The corridors were full of her brothers and sisters, and everyone was together as if somehow Mama had ordained this departure to coincide with This Is Your Life, knowing she would have all her family around her. As Gaba, Anna, Andrew, Jacqui and my stepbrother’s wife Winsome and I sat or knelt around Mama she suddenly softly uttered those words in her adorable Polish accent: ‘Go and get some sleep, my darlings, it will not be tonight.’ And we did, and it wasn’t.

It was the next night, in an almost total repetition of the circumstances. Again, after two shows, a telephone call from the hospital and a mad rush in the early hours of the morning to be by Mama’s bedside. She had already had the last sacraments from a priest and was lying very peacefully in her little cubicle. My brother and I were on either side of her head and my sisters were at her feet, all of us praying and watching Mama and relieved that she did not have pain. It was a very special time for us, coming together and sharing something we knew was a huge moment as well as a tragic one. I must have nodded off, as the next thing I remember was Gaba saying, ‘She has gone.’

It was totally surreal, very peaceful, Mama’s beautiful face looked twenty years younger, the stress lines from her breathing difficulties had disappeared. She looked serene and tranquil and at peace. We were dumbstruck. Time stood still. This was truly the end of an era, not just for her children together round her bed, but for the whole family. My mother was an incredible force, a true matriarch loved by everybody. She had had so much influence on everyone’s life. She had not a single jot of bitterness in her body. Life had treated her pretty cruelly at times. Her experiences during the Second World War were torturous and her arrival here as a refugee extremely difficult. Then for years she was virtually a single mother while my father was forced to leave England for work in Germany. In her later life she suffered emotionally from being left by her beloved second husband. And yet she had found an inner peace with her God about everything.

She was an inspirational, caring and loving mother, sister, grandmother, wife, friend and daughter and a wonderful woman to everyone who knew her. She truly touched people’s lives and still does.

Because my sister Gaba was a trained nurse, we were given the very special privilege of laying Mama out. We gently washed, creamed and powdered her poor, tired, ravaged body, combed her hair and put a rosary and a rose in her hands, and half crying, half smiling, with a great love and coming together for us her children, we felt the circle closing. How wonderful to have been given this opportunity to be at the end of our mama’s life as she had been at the beginning of ours.

The producers of This Is Your Life sweetly put at the beginning of the programme that it was dedicated to her memory. To this day I have not been able to watch it. It was the last footage of both my beloved parents – three weeks later my father also left us.

Series 36 subjects