A History Of Liverpool Thespians - Marji Campi

 

Margery 'Marji' Campi was born on the 19th of October 1938 in Liverpool and knew she wanted to be in acting from an early age. She just knew that she wanted to do it the first time she read for a part in a little school play. She recalls,"I think I was eight or nine years old and I’ll never forget that the character was called Ruby. Apart from an uncle who played in a dance band in Liverpool (amateur), nobody else in my family has shown any interest in performing." She eventually did a part time drama course at ‘The Actors Workshop’, then read in The Stage about East 15 Acting School, which had only been open a year and was auditioning students for the next year. As a great admirer of Joan Littlewood’s work at Theatre Workshop, which the school was an offshoot of, she auditioned and was thrilled to be accepted. After graduation she went into repertory theatre, as most actors did in those days playing a huge variety of parts and also started playing small parts on television.

She married Oriol Guardiola Campi in 1960 with whom she had  two sons, Daniel (born in 1968) and Matthew (born in1970), but they later divorced.. Her first TV appearance was in the TV series 'Thorndyke' (1964) as a Policeman's wife and then in a comedic role in two episodes of the 'Coronation Street' spin-off series 'Pardon the Expression' (1965) as shop assistant Gladys Cheeseborough (again credited as 'Margery Campi'). A lengthy run would follow in 'Z-Cars (1965-67), when she played the Radio girl Ruth for 7 episodes. Then she appeared in 'Coronation Street' (1984-87) in the recurring role of Dulcie Froggatt, a 'bit on the side' for Jack Duckworth who, to his horror, found out inadvertently that he shared his mistress with his son Terry. Marji remembers, "What a name! How could anyone resist playing a character called Dulcie Froggatt? She was an out and out tart, who not only had an affair with Jack Duckworth when he came to clean her windows, but also seduced his son Terry a while later when he was selling dusters door to door. Another really fun part to play. Again, a bit of a baddie rather than a goodie. Dulcie had some really good and 'naughty' scenes with Jack and a good fight with Vera at the end and I enjoyed every minute of it. It can sometimes be a bit intimidating going into a long-running series as a guest artist, but Bill Tarmey (Jack Duckworth) and Liz Dawn (Vera) made me feel very welcome and were great to work with."

 As Dulcie Froggatt in Coronation Street with Jack Duckworth

Marji remains probably best known for two roles: The first is that of Joyce Watson in the ITV comedy 'Surgical Spirit' (1989-95). Her memory of this is, "A wonderful job! One of the best. Fifty episodes of fun. I used to come home from rehearsals with my face aching from laughing (Rehearsals! What luxury. We don’t get many of those these days for television work). We rehearsed in London and shot in Manchester, where some of us, myself included, could be very badly behaved, staying up until all hours drinking and gossiping in the bar, often with actors from other shows who were filming in Manchester at the same time. We were always on time and ready for work the next day, of course. I used to love doing scenes with Duncan Preston, who is so tall I’d have to look up a long way, good for smoothing out the wrinkles! It could be very difficult working with Duncan though as it was hard to keep a straight face sometimes. I remember we did several takes of one scene together and, when we finally managed it, we collapsed on the floor in a heap, giggling like a couple of teenagers. The scripts were written mostly by Peter Learmouth who had worked as an operating department assistant and knew all the medical terms and we had a medical advisor, so the operations looked authentic. Very well-written and very funny. Another job where I made lifelong friends and we meet when we can, or did before the nightmare of lockdown."

As Joyce Watson in Surgical Spirit

The second was the regular role of Jessie Shadwick in 'Brookside' (1984-2002). Again she tells about that time. "I played Jessie for about four-and-a-half years and seemed to spend half my life on the train to and from Liverpool. Soaps are hard work, with twelve-hour days and lots of lines to learn at the same time although, of course, some weeks I was only working for two or three days, or sometimes none at all. It’s very satisfying playing the same character long term in some ways, as it becomes second nature to know how the character will react in any situation. One of my abiding memories is of how cold it was filming in Liverpool at 7am in the middle of winter and, sometimes late at night. Apart from that, I had a good time, as usual. I used to love coming home and finding bulky scripts at the door. Nowadays it’s all done by email and we have to print our own scripts if we want a hard copy. I always do as I like to make notes on the script and one of my favourite things is reading the script and highlighting my lines. Train journeys are great for learning lines and I certainly had plenty of those when I was at Brookside. I made some very good friends like Suzanne Collins and Dean Sullivan and I try to see them if I’m working up in Liverpool or Manchester." With her partner, Anton, a writer, going to research a book in Italy and France she informed Phil Redmond that she would be going with him. It was disappointing therefore when she read that after four happy years she was being axed from 'Brookside'. "Phil said to me 'well, I won't kill you off and I'll get in touch when you get back from your break'." Marji did return to the soap later as Jessie Hilton.
She made appearances in various other television series, including 'Heartbeat' (1996-97), 'The Bill' (1997-2008), 'Where The Heart Is' (1997), 'Eastenders' (2006), 'Casualty' (2005-2022), and 'Way To Go' (2013). She also appeared in several episodes of the BBC soap opera 'Doctors' (2005-2023) as Alice Evans, Grace Turnbull, Suzy Tunnacliff, April Langbury' and finally as Constance 'Connie' Wheatley. After originally joining Cold Feet, initially for one episode, Marji appeared in the show as Barbara Blyth across three series from 2016 to 2020, playing the mother of Fay Ripley’s character Jenny Gifford. Marji also worked on the Elsie short film series which consisted of Jermaine and Elsie, Val and Elsie, and Elsie, written by her co-star Ashley Campbell.

Having also worked in theatre, Marji’s stage credits include Cecily in 'The Importance of Being Earnest' when she was just starting out; 'Shirley Valentine' (1994) playing the tile role in Willy Russell's play at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, Essex; 'Arsenic and Old Lace' (2009), playing Martha Brewster at Salisbury Playhouse and Kay Mellor's 'A Passionate Woman' (2103) at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, in which she spent the second act sitting on a roof and got to fly off in a hot air balloon. One other big highlight for her was working with Theatre at Sea (JW Productions) in the eighties, performing on the QE2 and the Canberra, sailing all over the world doing plays for the passengers. The QE2 had a full 550 seater theatre, which was also the cinema. She says, "I don’t think I ever went to bed before 3am after dancing every night until the nightclub closed. They weren’t the most memorable plays but it was certainly one of the best jobs of my life and I got to travel and see places I could never have afforded to go to normally."

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/09/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-andree.html