It is odd to think that fatness — now known as obesity and apparently a serious problem — was not so long ago a subject for ribald hilarity. The disgraced clown Fatty Arbuckle was once considered funny simply because of his size. The fictional schoolboy Billy Bunter and his sister Bessie were icons of greedy grotesquerie, and real-life overweight girls and boys — rarer than nowadays — had to endure much unkind teasing at school.
Hattie Jacques’s schooldays were no exception, and in her career as an actress her avoirdupois, while good for business, limited her choice of roles. She was by no means an unattractive woman; looking at the cover picture of Andy Merriman’s new biography one agrees with the Australian actor Bill Kerr’s observation: ‘Look closely at her face. Never mind the figure. The face looks like Ava Gardner.’ Her voluptuous odalisque looks appealed to men. She also had charm, grace, vivacity and intelligence; wittily writing and directing pantomimes and revues for the Players Theatre club in London in the Forties and Fifties at its fashionable zenith.
Young Hattie appeared there on Victorian music-hall bills singing Marie Lloyd songs with dazzling verve and playing a delightfully vague and arch Fairy Queen in several pantomimes.
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