We spoke to Claire on the publication of her autobiography.
We all know you as Kim Tate, or Karen Betts, but what many people won't know is that you used to be a punk rocker, didn't you?!
That's right, I was, for my sins! I think it was coming out of public school basically, the usual teenage rebellion. And you tell stories in your autobiography of being in a band and touring Amsterdam, DJing at the Warehouse club in Leeds, it all sounds like great fun. It was great fun. It wasn't anything I set out to do, it just happened really. I had a friend who worked at the Warehouse, so I got the job there as a DJ. Everyone at that time was in a band – if you weren't in a band you were a nobody! That's however good or bad the bands were, usually bad in our case. We toured Amsterdam a couple of times, mainly lurking round Amsterdam and Rotterdam. It was a good experience! And it led to your earliest screen appearance, didn't it, which was in a pop video. Can you tell us how that came about? I moved to London and started dating a guy from a band called Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, named after the Bruce Springsteen song “Dancing in the Dark” - there's a little bit of trivia for you! They were making a video and Ade Edmondson was directing it and they decided to use all the girlfriends in the video because it was cheaper than using people from an agency. Then Ade said he was doing another video the next week and he needed someone who could ride a motorbike, which I could. The video was for Elvis Costello and I had to ride through the “gates of hell”, which was a big arch that was on fire, in a motorbike with Elvis Costello in a side car. It was only when I arrived at the place that I realised the guy who owned the motorbike only had one arm – so all the controls were on one side! It was a bit hairy but I closed my eyes and prayed I didn't hit anything or burn him to death! I'm sure with health and safety regulations you wouldn't get away with that these days, would you?! Oh God, that wouldn't be allowed at all! We literally had some guy who poured petrol over it [the arch], lit it, and off we went! Manic! You lived to tell the tale, anyway! Yes, I did, thank God! Well, you decided to take acting classes then, didn't you – but you weren't too impressed with them? No, I wasn't. I didn't last too long – only about six months. We did the usual, 'let's go down to Regents Zoo, study the animals, come back and then pretend to be an animal' then it just got worse and worse until one day they asked me to 'be a chocolate'. I said 'I'm a stale one' and just walked out – I'd had enough. I thought 'I'm not learning from this!' You then worked on the stage before you went for your first TV audition. Yes, I did a play in Hampstead and at the same time we were going out during the day and doing theatre in education – going round schools and doing Shakespeare and things. They were long days for no money but it was to build up my CV and it enabled me to get some casting directors and agents down to see me and luckily I was taken on. It was a hard slog, but it was worth it. So probably more useful experience than being a stale chocolate? Absolutely, I agree! So, you say that when you went for the audition of Kim in Emmerdale Farm, as it was still known then, you were uncharacteristically nervous. I was nervous because I suddenly realised that I really wanted it. I'd been living in London for a few years and it was a good opportunity to come back home. My family were all living up here, my friends were all up here, and I'd kind of done the party scene and the club scene and all that. I thought it would be a good opportunity and such a big break if I could get the part. So I got to the audition and one of the main things you had to be able to do was ride a horse – I knew that was one of my strengths because I'd ridden horses all my life. I think the acting experience side was my weakness, so I kept deflecting off that and saying 'yes, I can ride a horse!' Anyway I had to read with Norman Bowler [Frank Tate] and they asked me stay behind and straight away offered me the part, which was great. I started within three or four days I think. As you say, you'd had less experience of TV at that stage and you suggest in your book that some cast members were more patient than others about that. Yes, that's right. Frazer Hines [Joe Sugden] was very good – my parents knew him anyway, and I vaguely knew him, but he was great. I got feedback from some people that the guy who played my husband, Norman Bowler, had said 'What's she doing here, she knows nothing.' It came to light after a year or two, which was a bit annoying because I'd really studied my craft and I wanted to learn. But you've got to start somewhere and I learned more in two months on Emmerdale than six months at drama school. So that miffed me a bit. I suppose you have to learn to develop a thick skin? Oh God, I've got rhino skin!! I mean the whole industry is about rejection to a certain extent and you cannot take it personally. Things changed for Kim Tate once the character of Lynn Whiteley left the show, didn't they? Yes. Fionnuala's [Lynn] a good mate. She played a sort of bitchy character at the time and she left within about a year of me coming into the show. I spoke to her and said I was going to make Kim a bit bitchier and she said that was a great idea. So I made her stronger, and the more I did that the more the writers increased the strength of the writing. It went on like that until she became this sort of 'superbitch'!! When Phil Redmond came on board [as executive producer] you describe in the book the feelings of uncertainty on the show, because it was obvious big changes were going to happen. Did you feel secure at that time? I don't think anyone felt secure, because we knew that people were going to be bumped off in the big plane crash. I thought there was still some way to go with the character at that time, so it would be a shame if he did bump me off. Obviously we knew about Peter's [Amory] character of Chris Tate [being confined to a wheelchair] because we had to plot it and plan it beforehand. And they had to get it right, which is why they chose him to do it, and he did an incredible job. Well, it was a big change of direction for the show from that point, wasn't it? Yes, Phil did a really good job and it was a complete turnaround for the show. It really raised its profile and that's why it is still on air today – otherwise they were thinking of taking it off. I want to ask you about Bad Girls, because Karen Betts was a different type of character, wasn't she? Yes. And when you started you discovered that you'd been brought into it because the ITV network wanted changes on the second series. Yes, which I wasn't aware of until I was there and up and running. It was very flattering for me, but also not very good because of the characters they were trying to swap round. They thought Simone Lahbib's character [Helen] wasn't really working, but then it did work because she and Nicki became two of the biggest characters in the show there's ever been. But it was the network that wanted changes and I felt really guilty and bad about that – not that it was my fault at all, but you just have to deal with it. I think Helen's character did work better when she was more on the side of the prisoners, didn't she? Yes, exactly. I think Karen was firm but fair. She was also a victim as well – of Fenner, they had an ongoing battle for years. But after the first two or three series I felt she wasn't really going anywhere, and became a bit of an information service, so that's when I decided to leave. After you left you came back again, really to tie up the loose ends with the character. Yes, it hadn't been tied up enough – she'd just kind of vanished. So Brian [Parks, the executive producer] and I thought it could work with getting rid of Fenner, which we did – but then he still came back! Yes, I think that was a surprise, because his storyline really did seem to be over and then the next series started and there he was again. Exactly, and then when they did get rid of him he still came back as a ghost! I've read your autobiography, which covers your life from being a young girl to all the acting roles you've done – what was it that made you decide to put it all down on paper? I think because I'd had a really bad three or four years and I had so much negativity going on. So I thought, 'right, I'm single, I want to make a fresh start and the only way to do that is to pull yourself out of this'. And that's what I did, and I thought that the cathartic way to do this was to put it down on paper. I'd been asked a few times to do it, even when I was on Emmerdale, but I'd thought I was too young then. Then, I thought I would do it and someone said that Blake Publishing were interested, so I decided I'd do it properly, and that's how it all came about. So once you've made that decision do you have to sit down and think 'shall I be really honest about this?' Do you have to call people and warn them they may be in the book? Well, I didn't want to do a sort of glamour girl autobiography, naming and shaming and all that. But at the same time I didn't want to leave out people who had been important in my life. I am still in contact with a few of them, so I did mention what I was doing.
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