Jane Asher

Jane Asher
Born 5 April 1946 (1946-04-05) (age 64)
Willesden, London, England
Occupation Actress
Years active 1952–present
Spouse Gerald Scarfe (m. 1981–present) «start: (1981)»"Marriage: Gerald Scarfe to Jane Asher" Location: (linkback:http://localhost../../../../articles/j/a/n/Jane_Asher_e3b6.html)

Jane Asher (born 5 April 1946) is an English actress. She has also developed a second career as a cake decorator and cake shop proprietor.[1]

Contents

Early life

Asher was the middle of three children born to Dr. Richard Alan John and Margaret Asher, née Eliot, in Willesden, North West London.[2] Her father was a consultant in blood and mental diseases at the Central Middlesex Hospital in Acton, west London as well as being a broadcaster and author of many notable medical articles; her mother was a professor of oboe at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and taught George Martin to play the instrument. She also taught Paul McCartney to play the recorder. She was educated at Queen's College in Harley Street, London.[3] Her younger sister is the radio actress Clare Asher; her elder brother is record producer Peter Asher, formerly one half of the duo Peter & Gordon, and whose daughter is Victoria Asher, keytarist of the band Cobra Starship.

Asher's first appearance as a child actress was as Nina in the 1952 film Mandy. Other film appearances were the 1955 science fiction film The Quatermass Xperiment, and, co-starring with Kenneth More and Susannah York and in the 1961 UK film The Greengage Summer, which was released in the United States as Loss of Innocence. She also appeared as her distant relative Lady Jane Grey in the 1962 film and Disney TV programme, The Prince and the Pauper. British TV appearances included three episodes (1956–1958) of the British TV series, The Adventures of Robin Hood (working alongside her brother Peter), and as a panellist on the BBC's Juke Box Jury.

Relationship with Paul McCartney

In 1963, Asher interviewed The Beatles. A photographer for the BBC's Radio Times asked them to pose with Asher.[4] Asher subsequently commenced a five-year relationship with Paul McCartney, becoming engaged in 1967.[5] She inspired many of McCartney's songs, such as "All My Loving", "And I Love Her", "I'm Looking Through You", "You Won't See Me", "We Can Work It Out", "Here, There and Everywhere", and "For No One" (all credited as Lennon/McCartney). Lennon/McCartney penned the number one hit "A World Without Love" for her brother Peter, who was part of the Peter & Gordon duo.

During the mid-60s while she was performing at the Bristol Old Vic, Paul would wait outside for her. One day, while he was waiting, he looked up and saw a sign for a company called Rigby and Evens. This became the "Rigby" for Eleanor Rigby.

McCartney stayed in the Asher family home at 57 Wimpole Street from 1964–66 and wrote several Beatles songs there.[6] He wrote in a room usually used for music lessons. The Asher house was also a place of intellectual stimulation for McCartney. He enjoyed the rarefied atmosphere of upper-middle class conversation and company that the house afforded, and to which he aspired.[7] According to Cynthia Lennon, McCartney was "as proud as a peacock" to have Jane as a girlfriend,[8] and saw her as "a great prize."[9] Marianne Faithfull remembered McCartney and Asher "never getting on very well," and described one evening at Cavendish Avenue when McCartney wanted a window to be open and Asher wanted it shut. McCartney would repeatedly get up and open the window and then Asher would get up and close it, although neither of them made any comment about it during the whole evening.[10]

On 25 December 1967[11] McCartney and Asher announced their engagement, and she accompanied McCartney to India in February and March 1968. Asher ended the engagement in early 1968, after returning from Bristol to discover Paul in bed with another woman, Francie Schwartz.[3][12] However, Schwartz stated that McCartney and Asher had already broken up before the incident.[13] They attempted to mend the relationship, but finally ended it on 20 July 1968[11] when Asher told the BBC they were no longer engaged. Asher has consistently refused publicly to discuss McCartney or her time with him,[1] and has maintained her position on the matter to this day.[14] On this basis, she is described by the Beatles' 1968 biographer Hunter Davies as the only major Beatles associate not to have published her recollections.

Acting

Asher appeared in Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Alfie, opposite Michael Caine in 1966, and in Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End. Thereafter, she was more commonly seen on television: she guest-starred in an episode of the British television comedy series The Goodies in the episode "Punky Business", as a trend setting newspaper writer, patterned on the punk journalist Caroline Coon alias Caroline Kook; The Stone Tape; Rumpole of the Bailey; Brideshead Revisited; as Faith Ashley, A Voyage Round My Father opposite Laurence Olivier; Wish Me Luck (three series in 1987–89); The Mistress (1985–87); Crossroads Mark III (2003) as hotel owner Angel Samson who, as the series ended,woke up behind a supermarket checkout to realise she had dreamt the whole thing and the characters in the hotel were made up of colleagues and customers.

In 1994, she portrayed the Doctor Who companion Susan Foreman in a BBC Radio 4 comedy drama Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? Another notable radio appearance was in The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 2002, in the episode "The Peculiar Persecution of Mr John Vincent Harden". She starred in The World's Biggest Diamond, by Gregory Motton, at the Royal Court Theatre in 2005. In 2006 Asher starred in the Richard Fell adaptation of the 1960s science fiction series A for Andromeda, which aired on the British digital television station BBC Four. More recently in 2007, she portrayed the widow Sandra in the 2007 Frank Oz film Death at a Funeral. Asher appeared in the BBC medical Drama, Holby City as Lady Byrne, a role she still occasionally reprises. In October 2007, she played Andrea Yates in a story in The Sarah Jane Adventures, in the episode "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?" Asher co-starred in the 2008 ITV drama series The Palace, filmed in Lithuania; she played Queen Charlotte, mother of King Richard IV. The Palace broadcast on ITV1 at 9pm every Monday for eight weeks, beginning on the 14 January 2008.

In August 2008, Asher appeared in the reality tv talent show-themed television series, Maestro on BBC Two. In summer 2008, Asher participated in the BBC's Maestro series where eight well-known show business personalities competed for the "prize" of conducting during Proms in the Park.[15][16] In 2009 she played Sally in the BBC One comedy series The Old Guys.

In October 2009, she appeared as Delia in Peter Hall's revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce at the Rose Theatre, Kingston and in her first pantomime, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Richmond Theatre in December 2009, for both of which she received some of the most enthusiastic reviews of her stage career.[17][18]

Businesses and philanthropy

Now well known as an author, Asher has written three best-selling novels: The Longing, The Question and Losing It. She has also had more than a dozen lifestyle, costuming, and cake decorating books published. Asher runs a company making party cakes and sugar crafts for special occasions, and still acts on television and in the theatre. Her general books are similar to those of Julia Hamilton, Elizabeth Jane Howard and Shena Mackay.

She is a shareholder in Private Eye, President of Arthritis Care and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. She is also President of the National Autistic Society, in which she takes an active role. She was also a speaker at the launch of the National Autistic Society's "Make School Make Sense" campaign alongside Joshua Muggleton (ASD speaker/writer). She is also President of Parkinson's UK.

In March 2010 Asher agreed to become Vice President to Autistica, the UK charity raising funds for autism research. She said: “I am so very pleased and honoured to have been invited to be a Vice President of Autistica. Autism has been an important part of my life for nearly thirty years now, and I have always believed in the essential role of research: it's wonderful to have an 'official' position in an organisation I have long admired and whose aims I have always strongly supported”.

Family

Asher met the illustrator Gerald Scarfe in 1971, and they married ten years later[19] when Asher was expecting their second child. They have three children:

  1. Katie (b.1974)
  2. Alex (b.1981)
  3. Rory (b.1984).

Selected filmography

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Mitchison, Amanda 3 October 2005). Butter wouldn't melt. The Daily Telegraph telegraph.co.uk - Retrieved 7 May 2007.
  2. ↑ GRO REgister of Births: JUN 1946 3a 765 WILLESDEN, mmn = Eliot
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Harry, Bill (2000). The Beatles Encyclopaedia (2000 paperback edition; first published 1992). London: Virgin Publishing, London W6 9HA. pp. 403. ISBN 0-7535-0481-2. 
  4. ↑ Miles. p102.
  5. ↑ "McCartney's lament: I can't buy your love," Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 2004 (link)
  6. ↑ Vickers, Graham (2001). Rock Music Landmarks of London. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0711986754  (can be seen at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZYU3euLYMAgC)
  7. ↑ Bob Spitz, "The Beatles"
  8. ↑ Lennon (1978)
  9. ↑ Miles. p103.
  10. ↑ Miles. p453.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "1967 and 1968 years in the Beatles history". http://www.geocities.com/dsmurashev.geo/history/1967.htm. Retrieved 18 November 2008. 
  12. ↑ Miles 1998. p452
  13. ↑ Newman, Raymond (20 August 2006). "Francie Schwartz". http://www.abbeyrd.net/francie.htm. 
  14. ↑ "Butter wouldn't melt", The Daily Telegraph, 3 October 2005 (link)
  15. ↑ BBC Maestro
  16. ↑ BBC (23 May 2008). "Eight passionate amateurs bid to become BBC Two's Maestro". Press release. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/05_may/23/maestro.shtml. Retrieved 24 May 2008. 
  17. ↑ http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/review-23757560-bedroom-farce-and-miss-julie-see-rose-in-bloom.do
  18. ↑ http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/snowwhiterichmond-rev.htm
  19. ↑ GRO Register of Marriages: SEP 1981 13 1708 KENSINGTON & CHELSEA - Scarfe = Asher

References

External links