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The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags - they're gonna cough.
Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.
My mother was a nurse, and in her era, most diseases weren't understood; people put mustard plasters on knees and rubbed camphor on your chest if you had a cough and did funny things to you if you had tuberculosis - all these things that really made very little difference once proper treatments were brought in.
I tell people, if you really want me to look that good, why don't you cough up about $2 million more and hire Alec or Billy? If you want me to do it, this is what you get.
When I was a child, there were not that many vaccines. I was vaccinated for polio. I actually got measles as a child. I got pertussis, whooping cough. I remember that very well.
Whooping cough is not a mild disease. Whooping cough, before the vaccination, could make you very, very sick. First of all, there was a chance you could die from it - small chance, not a big chance. You would be coughing and coughing. It wouldn't last for a few days, like a cold.
When my husband turned 40, I was obsessed. 'Has he had his medical checkup?' He needed to go to the doctor; he needed to go to the dentist. Any little cough, I was really on him. Then he turned 40, and I thought, 'Maybe that's why I've been so obsessed with his health!'
Mama had her little cough. Once or twice, some quiet sobbing, out of sight... Or the slamming of kitchen cupboard doors. That was her language.
Sometimes I tic or twitch or cough, and it's a very public thing.
I could have been a better mother. My children assure me it was fine. But when you are running to catch the train to go to a rehearsal, and you know your kid has a hacking cough... We said we can have it all and do it all: I can have four children, write three plays a year and a book, go from Leicester to London, and come back at midnight.