PAUL: Hello and welcome to Regrets,
I've had a few.

I'm Paul Hunter, artistic director of Told

by an Idiot and this is a podcast where I
talk to friends and colleagues,

delving into what made them
the person they are today.

Hello.

My guest this month is a fellow Brummie

and like Told by an Idiot is an associate
at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

She's also managed to do that thing,

which I always admire,
which is to be successful across different

mediums, because I think that's
a very very hard thing to do because

obviously in this country, people like
to pigeonhole you as much as possible.

But she's an extraordinarily accomplished
actor across film and stage

and a wonderful writer and adaptor. Her
adaptation of the book Life of Pi is

currently enchanting audiences
in London's glittering West End.

Welcome, Lolita Chakrabarti.
LOLITA: Hi, Paul.

Hello hello.
What a lovely introduction.

Thank you.
PAUL: Well, you're very welcome.

It's very nice to see you.

Now, I have to make it clear

to the listeners that
we do have, we do go quite far back in our

acting careers, which I will
touch on a little bit later.

I'll just entice them with that!

But am I right that you weren't born

in Birmingham, but you spent
your childhood in Birmingham?

Is that correct?
LOLITA: Yes.

I was born in Hull, but I spent six months

of my life in Hull, so I don't
have any memories of it at all.

My dad would often say,
do you remember that time?

I was like, no, no, I was really
not present.

But I grew up in Birmingham.
Yes.

From six months to - I left when
I was 18 to come to London.

PAUL: Ah, so, yes, we do share that almost

the same trajectory of childhood and then
leaving for a slightly bigger city.

I often do this with my guests.

I take them right back

at the beginning just to kind
of investigate what your first connections

or first experience of show business might
have been, what you might have seen very

early on because your father
was in medicine, is that right?

LOLITA: Yes. Yes that is right.

PAUL: That is a very different
world to the one that you're in.

But what were your early
memories of theatre or film.

LOLITA: I - We were not a theatre going family.

So theatre was through school.

And when I discovered theatre
through school I - er,

oh, my God, it was, I couldn't stop.
So Birmingham rep,

I don't know if you remember they had
that card, that I think it was a pound

a show and once you bought the card,
you could see things for nothing, really.

And I did.

And it was the first young
company that was there.

PAUL: I remember that.

LOLITA: You remember that...!

PAUL: Wasn't Iain Glen in that company?
LOLITA: Yes.

Iain Glen, Alex Kingston, Mark Lockyer,
Steven Persaud.

I remember because I did my A Level.

And one of my,
they let me come in and watch rehearsals

and do a some A Level project
and interview them, the actors.

And I was like, oh,
my God, this is amazing.

So that was definitely
very present in my teenage years.

But television, I mean,
television was extraordinary.

It wasn't on all the time, was it?

So you had to catch drama or films
at very particular times of the day.

There are only three channels.

It sounds like we were
Victorians, weren't we?

PAUL: It does feel like that when you tell your
children that they can't believe it.

They can just watch anything whenever they

want and you say, no no,
it was on at that night at that time.

And that was it.
LOLITA: Exactly.

You missed it.
You missed it.

You couldn't tape it.
Nothing.

So I watched a lot of drama on TV

and fantastic things you know
Alan Bennett...

I used to love Victoria Wood and...
just plays.

There were plays on TV!
PAUL: They were amazing.

And I think because we're obviously
from a similar place in a similar time.

You're absolutely right.
I remember watching things,

not always understanding them,
but watching things like Dennis Potter

and Blue Remembered Hills
and thinking, what is this?

This is extraordinary.

LOLITA: Yes.

I saw a drama with
Cherie Lunghi and Omar Sharif.

PAUL: Oh, my word!

LOLITA: And there was another actor in it,
and they were in a white room on TV.

And I caught it halfway through
and I was absolutely transported.

I had no idea what it was.

I was like, this is extraordinary.

And then I had the good fortune to work

with Cherie Lunghi a few years later,
a lot of years later,

and I said, "what was that?" It
was a Jean-Paul Sartre play.

PAUL: On the BBC.

I mean, it's kind of bizarre when
you think about it, isn't it?

I thought you were going to say I had
the great fortune of working

with Omar Sharif, which would have
led to my next series of question.

I sometimes find myself asking this
question to guests who maybe have done

something very different to what their
background was. A bit like me - my dad was

an electrician and my mum
was a dinner lady.

There was no context for it.

But I just wonder,

when you had to kind of come clean
and say, you wanted to be an actor,

was that a difficult conversation
with your parents or how was that?

LOLITA: I didn't really understand
the context of what I wanted.

I just knew I wanted it.

And so once I found the name actor,
I didn't really know what that meant.

So I thought, that's what I want to do,

when I was 14, I kind of knew early on, I
knew when I was young that I loved drama.

I just loved it.

But when I was 14 and you start having all
those career chats about what you're going

to do and all of that,
and I said, I went to a convent.

You probably remember that.
PAUL: Yes.

LOLITA: Convent of the Holy Child Jesus
in Birmingham.

And we had a careers talk
with the head Sister Wayne.

And I remember saying to her,
I'd like to be an actor.

And that was the first my dad heard of it,
because we had separate meetings.

They talked to the students first and then

to the parents, and I think
she broke it to my dad gently.

PAUL: It's interesting, isn't it?

I remember a friend of mine telling me

a story that I don't think it would have
been funny for him at the time,

but it was very funny when he told it
to me where he had a younger brother,

an Irish actor who was
a quite a successful actor.

And this friend of mine had studied
architecture for like six years.

And just at graduating to be an architect,

he decided that he also wanted to become
an actor and give up all the architecture.

LOLITA: Oh my God.

PAUL: And on the same Sunday lunch,
him and his brother were racing home to be

the first because his brother wanted
to tell his parents that he was gay.

And my friend wanted to tell them
that he was giving up architecture.

And I thought it would make a great scene

in a film, these two brothers racing
home to get their news in first.

LOLITA: What's intriguing is which response
got the worst reaction?

PAUL: Well, I should say.

My friend said that they were absolutely,
totally understanding of his brother,

but furious at him for giving
up the architecture.

So, I don't know.

It's an interesting...

Have you ever had to play anybody medical,
of course, in your career?

LOLITA: All the time.

PAUL: Do you? Oh wow!

LOLITA: All my TV jobs tend to be,
I'm an authority figure, always.

When I was younger,
I was like, what is going on?

And now I'm older, I get it.

But I played doctors,
I've been surgeons, anaesthetist.

That's really difficult.
I had to come in and say,

I'm the anaesthetist and you just
get under the pressure of all of it.

I have to walk in and say anaesthetist.

I've played midwives.

PAUL: Wow.

LOLITA: I've done loads of medical and so much so
that when I'm, like, with people,

when I'm with my dad,
who sadly has been in hospital a little

bit in recent years, people say,
oh, are you medical? And I say,

"I played medical!"

PAUL: I don't know if your father's like this,

but my brother-in-law is a retired
judge and I've done a few legal things.

And whenever I do something,
I have a small part in this movie where I

had to be the judges
clerk or something, be with the judge.

And he went to see it at the Cinema.

The only thing he said, he rang me up.

He said, the judge is
wearing the wrong robes.

Does your father comment on any
of the medical practice being incorrect?

LOLITA: It used to be, oh, I can't watch
Casualty because it's just drama.

Obviously it's drama.

That's why we're watching it.

They deal with operations
in a very practical way.

PAUL: Yes.

Well, maybe now we've touched
on the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus.

I should reveal that we performed
in a play there, which my memory,

as I try to trawl back,
was that the drama teacher that I had,

who was teaching me drama O level,
maybe had taught at your school or not?

LOLITA: I don't know.
PAUL: Maybe I'm making that up.

Maybe it was just the fact that she was
contacted by your drama teacher and they

wanted to do a play and they
needed a boy actor.

LOLITA: We did.
We needed men.

We were a girl school and it was the 100th
anniversary of the founding Nun.

PAUL: That's correct. That's right. Yes!

LOLITA: Sounds like a joke,
doesn't it? Cornelia Connelly.

PAUL: That's it. Thats's it.

LOLITA: I think it would have made a great carry
on film that we were on search for men.

PAUL: It does have a slight St Trinian's

feel to it, doesn't it
like that sort of caper thing?

But I also kind of vaguely remember
it being a slightly strange play.

I remember it being quite full
of melodrama and incident.

LOLITA: It was very
long. I remember it was about three and half hours long. Wasn't it?

PAUL: It was.
LOLITA: You were the only young person and you

were the only outsider,
because everyone else's brothers

and fathers and people who came in,
but you were the young...

PAUL: Yes.
LOLITA: Young outsider.

PAUL: Outsider. Yeah.

And I think I was at that stage a bit like
you, where I was so desperate to act.

I got into one of the youth theatres,
I think, at the Triangle Youth Theatre

at Aston University,
and I just wanted to do, you know,

at that point you just wanted
to act in anything, didn't you?

Really?
Someone asked you,

so if we move forward a little bit,
obviously you then went to RADA,

well not obviously, you managed to get
into RADA, which is a huge achievement.

What was it like turning up there?

PAUL: Oh, it was extraordinary.

I was going to go to University
and the drama teacher at Holy Child,

she said, look, just try for RADA
and why not give it a go?

And I was convinced I wouldn't get
in because it's so competitive right?

And I also had my head into Uni.

I thought, I'm going to go do drama at Uni

and I went to RADA and God, like you said,
you could just do drama all day.

This is extraordinary.

They're going to teach you how to do all
the different elements of it all day.

So by the time I did,
it's quite a rigorous audition process,

and by the time I'd done the first one,
I just wanted to go there, no question.

And turning up there, it's extraordinary.

When you're doing drama at school,

you become quite a big fish
in a small pond, don't you?

Because you kind of show that you're

the drama person, you're the person
who does all that stuff.

And then you go to drama school
and realise that you're a really small

fish in a very big pool because there's
so much talent from everywhere.

And this is just a handful of people.
I loved it.

I absolutely loved it.
We did everything.

We did acting classes, voice, dialect,
stage fighting, movement, improvisation.

You know, there was absolutely...

plays on tap.

It was three years of just
rigorous training.

PAUL: I don't know about you,

but whenever I'm in on a job, which maybe's

not going as well as I hoped it would.

I often try to think back to those times

being at College where you were so excited
just to get up in a room and do anything.

And I think it's sometimes good to reflect
on that passion and that excitement.

LOLITA: Yes, I agree with you completely,

because it's very singular,
isn't it? That motivation for why you got

into the industry in the first
place was love and excitement.

PAUL: Yeah, exactly.
And it's easy for that to get lost along

the way or get slightly
detour or whatever.

And what kind of parts were you playing?

Were you in the authority
position straight away Lolita?

LOLITA: You mean at RADA or when I came out of
RADA? At RADA no, RADA was more diverse.

Okay, oh good.

I guess I was still
a teenager to 21, 18 to 21.

So I wasn't, hadn't quite
hit my authority phase yet.

So I did a bit of everything.

I played Iphigenia or 'Iphigenia',

depending on how you
pronounce it - greek tragedy.

And then I played,
Gosh, it's hard to remember.

What did I play?
There was some George Bernard Shaw play

that was really dense,
something to do with D.H.Lawrence,

some Russian women
in hospital, I remember,

it was a very sort of mixed
bag of all sorts of things.

PAUL: And did you find kind of

a group that you've kind of stayed
in touch with over the years?

LOLITA: Well, my husband's from the year above.

PAUL: Well,

one part of the group.
Yes.

LOLITA: That part I kept in touch with a lot.
It's funny you know?

You all go off and work
in different places, don't you?

You kind of spread and head out and
whenever I see anyone, it's just lovely.

You just go back to that time.

So you kind of keep up with what
people are doing and where they are.

But no, I wouldn't say
there's a sort of core of us.

PAUL: No, it's interesting because obviously
thinking about lots of links between

yourself and Told by an Idiot, one was,
of course, you went back to RADA recently

to be in the production of Hamlet,
didn't you, with my dear friend Ayesha.

LOLITA: Yeah.
PAUL: And it must have been strange to perform

at RADA, wasn't it? For those
of you who are from RADA.

LOLITA: Yeah, it was a really singular thing.

It was a kind of grand fundraiser and also

an opportunity to do
a really good piece of work.

So we did Hamlet.

Tom Hiddleston was Hamlet. Ken Branagh

directed, and there were ten
of us in the cast and...

but we did it in there.

It used to be called the Vanbrugh theatre

now I think Jerwood or the Jerwood,
I'm not quite sure,

but it's 160 seat peak place

and the tickets were like
golden Willy Wonka tickets.

PAUL: Yes, of course.

LOLITA: But it was extraordinary to do a play
of that scale to that intimate audience.

And it was a three week run,
so it was really fast.

And I think we didn't let a single show

go, because in the long run,
you can often go on a bit tired.

Okay, I'll just cut this one a little bit.

But that was just thrilling.

It was pure storytelling and a pure

transfer of energy of us translating this
play for a very select group of people.

So it felt such a privilege to do.

And I've got to just tell you,
Ayesha was also in my play Red Velvet.

PAUL: Was she, Yes, of course she was.

LOLITA: She was in Red Velvet when
we did it, I think...

PAUL: Of course she was. Yes.

I'd forgotten that we'll obviously come

to your writing, but it's interesting,
that notion of doing those plays in those

intimate spaces, because
I've only had a brief experience.

We did a show that Kathryn Hunter director

called My Perfect Mind, which was
myself and Edward Petherbridge.

And on one level, it was a kind
of chamber version of King Lear.

So we played it at the Young Vic
in the Maria in the smaller space there,

and to be on stage with Edward,
who is such a brilliant actor.

And we did the scene where Cordelia
comes back to him, and I play Cordelia.

I thought, this is utterly surreal on one
level, but I think people really enjoyed

seeing an actor
like Edward play Lear in a very intimate

way where he could be very
subtle and very understated.

And I imagine it must be similar
with the Hamlet as well.

LOLITA: Sounds like a lovely gig.

I wish I'd seen it.

I think financially it doesn't
make sense necessarily, does it?

That's why we don't do it.
PAUL: No, no

LOLITA: We need to have a bigger reach
in order to finance the show.

But this was.
Yes, it was lovely.

It's one of those that, as you say,
you get a little bit worn down by the jobs

that aren't quite as
satisfying as you hope.

Yeah.

And then you do a job that really just
reaffirms storytelling and the purity

of it and why you did it in the first
place and allows you to play.

PAUL: Yeah, that's true.

That's very true.

And also that notion of doing
something for a period of time.

It's an interesting thing, isn't it?

When I remember I had a friend who was
in the original production of Warhorse.

And on the day when I realised he'd been

in it for a certain amount of time,
I sent him a message saying,

congratulations, you've now been
in Warhorse longer than the war itself.

LOLITA: Oh my God!
PAUL: He said back to me, I've got to get out,

because if you think about it, theatre
shouldn't go on for that long, should it?

LOLITA: Goodness me, unless you've got new
energies coming in to sort of reinvent...

PAUL: I'm giving an extreme example,
I suppose I was interested in,

did you not go into the bill for a while
and play something quite regularly?

LOLITA: Yeah, I did.
I was in the bill for two years.

In the end, I wouldn't stay too long.

I gave myself a sort of three year
limit and then I stayed for two.

And that was a brilliant job.

I absolutely loved it.

It was fantastic.

It was like doing theatre on telly.

And the bill was big.

It was a big show with
familiar characters.

I mean, I remember the first raid that we

did, and I've just been on the job a few
weeks, and I'm in one of the cars with one

of the sort of significant,
I think it was probably Graham Cole,

who played PC Stamp some
really familiar faces.

And there's about, I don't know, six cars.

And then Eric would go,
"go, go, go" on the radio,

we'd all run out of our
cars and put our hats on, costume said

you have to have your hat on.

And then we'd run into this house.

I thought, oh, my God, I'm in the telly.

PAUL: So obviously, you kind of,

I suppose a bit like most of us,

you kind of get going and you
go where the work is.

And hopefully it's interesting.

And then maybe, as you say,
you meet people along the way, like,

I met Hayley, which was
obviously significant for me.

Where did the germ of the writing
come from, or was it always there?

LOLITA: In retrospect, it was kind of, my love

of language has always been there,
but that's only in retrospect, really.

I mean, I did public speaking at school.

I don't know if you did that,

but I did a lot of public speaking
at school, which I had to write these

speeches and do these five minute
speeches on topics that they gave us.

So that's kind of where I began writing.

And then at RADA, my last show at College

that we showed to directors and producers
and things in the third year was terrible.

It was a terrible four hander.

And we were also appalled,

me and the other actresses
that this was our final showing.

So I rewrote it.

I went home every night
and I rewrote the scene.

PAUL: Wow.
LOLITA: Yeah.

I mean, who knows if it was any better?

But we did the version that I wrote.

I think I'm somebody who just goes,
okay, that's not good enough.

I'm going to do it.

I'll just do it.

So it gave me a flavour of,
oh, okay, that's possible.

And then about four or five years out
of college, when I've been working and I

was working quietly,
lots of theatre, it was great.

But there's always gaps, right?

There's never enough moments.

You've got to sit down for months
and wait and audition.

And I got bored and I thought,
this is my life now.

I can't just sit waiting for the next gig.

And I also was a bit frustrated

by the scale of not the scale, not the
size of parts, but the kinds of parts.

PAUL: Yeah, for sure.

LOLITA: So I started to write
to see if I could write.

PAUL: What did you write when
you sat down to write?

LOLITA: I wrote short stories.

I wrote a lot of short stories.
Yeah.

Because I've read a bit about how to start

writing, and they said,
see if you can tell a story beginning,

middle and end, and do not stop,
even if it's on a piece of toilet roll.

Write a beginning line,
a middle line and end line.

And just tell structure, work structure.

And then a friend of mine who is
an actress, was working for a company

called Interact,
who are professional actors who go

into hospital and read short stories like
ten minute stories to stroke patients.

And they were looking for writers.

And she knew I was writing short stories.

So I submitted a couple
of stories and they bought them.

And I thought, oh, I can get paid.

It occurred to me I could get paid.

So I wrote about 40 stories
for Interact over a few years.

And then I was right started to expand,

and I wrote a terrible
first draft of a novel.

I wrote a film, a telly series,

loads of things, but I didn't really share
them with anyone other than my other half.

PAUL: Yeah. And where did the idea
for Red Velvet come from?

LOLITA: So Adrian, my other half,
was doing a reading about Ira Aldridge.

Who's the subject of Red Velvet
in Brighton, in a festival in Brighton.

And it was just a two handed
sort of chamber piece.

And he said, he came home and said,
have you heard of this actor?

And I haven't.
And I couldn't believe it.

For those of people who are listening
who don't know, he was a black American

actor who came to England in 1824,
performed Othello...

Yes.

Othello at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden
in 1833, had a huge career across Europe,

was knighted and awarded and was
the highest paid actor ever in Russia,

had a state in 1867 in Poland,
and then was written out of history.

So it's a great story right?

PAUL: So you just thought I've got to tell this.

LOLITA: I've got to find him.

Yeah, I've got to find him.

PAUL: And I'm always interested in
how long something takes.

People who aren't in the industry,

I think, often ask me, well,
how long does it take you from the idea

to the actual standing on stage?
It's such a kind of movable feast,

isn't it? Roughly how long did it
take you to get that to production?

LOLITA: Well, because I,

from the first idea of finding him
in 98 to the first production of 2012,

that long.

But I researched him for about three years
solidly, and then thought it's a film.

I didn't feel I had the skills
to write a film, so I put him away.

And then somebody said
to me, write a play.

So I started to write the play,

having never written a play before,
really, other than at home trying it out.

And then I started to submit it

to theatres, but it got
rejected an awful lot.

So it took me seven years from starting
to write the play to getting it.

PAUL: Wow.
Gosh, it's that thing, isn't it, where...

And also,
which hopefully one tries to impart

to again, one's children is
the perseverance of something

that when you do have
that idea and the tenacity it's so

important because of course,
people are going to say, no.

I'm working on a show which is going to be

on at the Rep in May,
which is partly autobiographical

and partly about the greatest victory
that my football team, Aston Villa,

ever had 40 years ago when they
became Champions of Europe.

And in the show,

I recreate my first audition at Central,
which went absolutely terribly.

But I remember,
and I staged this in the show,

I remember thinking, oh,
they'll still have me

in some deluded fashion, even though I'd
chosen to do a ludicrous piece by Davies

from The Caretaker like
a 70 year old tramp.

So wrong.
And I thought it's some deluded way.

I thought, oh, they'll call my name out.
And then, of course they didn't.

LOLITA: Yes but isn't that...

PAUL: But then,
I think that level of tenacity to keep

going is quite important, isn't it? Or
delusion. However you choose to look at!

LOLITA: You saying that you chose that as a part
to play is totally linked to your

performance style now you know
so you're very true to what you were,

actually.

PAUL: Sadly Lolita the audition panel
at Central saw it differently.

I have to live with that and accept that
and move on. Do you think that

because the story Red Velvet is so
extraordinary, is there any desire for you

to, now it's been a huge success on stage,
to take it to film or not?

LOLITA: Yeah, I've written the film and again,
it's that long old frustrating

cap in hand job of, right,

can we get the money to get it made?
So we're getting closer and closer.

PAUL: Oh, I wish you so much luck,

because when you talk about his life,
I can imagine it obviously theatrically

brilliantly, but I can also envisage
it in film, of course one can.

Oh, gosh,

do you have any, this is the only regrets

question I'm going to loosely hang
it on the title of the podcast.

Do you have any regret that by becoming

successful as a writer,
do you feel that in any way affected

the kind of things you're asked
to do as an actor or vice versa?

How does that work?

I think the world has changed, hasn't it,
in the last few years, actually double,

triple threat or whatever you want
to call it, is acceptable now.

So when you meet young

up and coming artists, they're all
doing everything and it's great.

It's a very positive thing.

When I was writing and acting to start

with, people advised me, don't tell
people about the writing just when you

PAUL: I had exactly the same.
LOLITA: Did you?

PAUL: In fact, I had a thing which I didn't
quite know how to take it. I used to get

some people say, oh, you should
really focus on your directing

LOLITA: Yes.
PAUL: And

I
thought do they think I'm a terrible actor?

Or the other way round.
What do they actually mean by that?

LOLITA: Well, I had people when Red Velvet did

well said, oh, you're going to give
up the acting now, aren't you?

No, I love acting.

That is my first love.

PAUL: And also presumably I find

with my directing that my acting
completely informs my directing.

And presumably there must be similar
things to you with the writing.

Totally, well,
I soon found out that everyone knew I was

writing anyway when I was acting because
it was also reviewed and stuff

in the papers and people would say,
oh, you're writing that's great.

So I don't hide it at all now.

And actually, exactly right.

It completely feeds each other and it

feeds your choices because it's
very empowering, isn't it?

Not to go, okay, I've got to go and do
this job where I'm another doctor

saying difficult things in Latin.

Do I really need to say, do that now?
No, I've got writing.

So it empowers you to do both.

PAUL: Yeah, I totally agree I totally agree.

Well, it's flown by.

It's been so lovely chatting to you,
reconnecting with you Lolita.

One other thing.

I haven't seen it yet,
but I'm desperate to...

Actually I did have tickets

before the Pandemic when it first was

on For The Life of Pi with the family,
and we're in the process of rebooking.

And you're working with the lovely Max,

who was my assistant at the Royal Exchange
when we did an American comedy.

He was based as a young director there

and he was so brilliant when he assisted
me and he's gone on to do so well.

But it's such a wonderful production

and I've heard people who don't go to the
theatre say how much they've enjoyed it.

Has that been the case?
LOLITA: I'm so glad.

Yeah, it is.
It's an extraordinary piece.

I'm really proud of it.
I mean, it's this epic book, right?

It's an unstageable epic book.
LOLITA: Yes.

So I think that in itself is intriguing.

How did they put that on stage?

But it is a play.
It is completely a play,

but it's an event because there's so
many different disciplines within it.

So there's puppeteering, but
we found a puppeteering world that is

different to what you would
have seen in other shows.

So it's original for us.

And then there's amazing design,
sound, music, video projections.

So it makes this experience extraordinary.

And then this cast that works so hard

for you will be testament
to physical theatre.

I am in awe because that is
not my thing at all to do.

But they work so hard.

So when they all come out at the end,

you are absolutely applauding the fabulous
story and the storytelling and the event.

You're applauding how hard they have
worked for you in the last 2 hours.

PAUL: Also,

what I love about what you just described

is it sounds like something
the only theatre can do.

It sounds pure theatre,
how you talk about it.

I had an experience the other night
on Monday evening,

I went to see the production of the Chairs
at the Almeida with brilliant

Kathryn Hunter, and they're all
brilliant the three of them.

It was just so refreshing to see something

which again could only be theatre in how
it was presented, how it was communicated,

it couldn't work on film or it was there
in that moment and it was so refreshing.

It sounds like that's
what that is as well.

Well, Lolita it's been
lovely chatting to you.

I've got eight final questions
which are very quick fire.

LOLITA: Okay.
PAUL: And the idea of this is you say your first

response that comes to you so don't
think about any of the answers

LOLITA: Okay.

PAUL: Cricket or football?

LOLITA: Cricket.

PAUL: Pina Bausch or Matthew Bourne?

LOLITA: Matthew Bourne.

PAUL: Beyonce or Mary J. Blige?

LOLITA: Beyonce

PAUL: Oysters or Steak tartare?

LOLITA: Steak tartare

PAUL: Cannon Hill Park or the Botanical Gardens?

LOLITA: Cannon Hill.

PAUL: Staying with Birmingham, this is
a question on nightclubs, Snobs or Faces?

LOLITA: Difficult. That's difficult!

Edward's Number Eight.

You haven't got
Edward's Number Eight there!

PAUL: I know. Sorry!

LOLITA: Faces.

PAUL: Faces. The Three Sisters or Hedda Gabler?

LOLITA: Hedda Gabler.

PAUL: And if you were a contestant

on either of these shows,
which show would it be?

Celebrity Mastermind or
Celebrity Great British Bake Off.

LOLITA: Oh dear! Is that the choice?
PAUL: Yeah, sorry.

LOLITA: I'm going to be ousted straight away.

I'll go for the Bake Off
and just offer my sponge.

PAUL: Lolita.
It's been so lovely chatting to you and I

hope we can maybe get together soon
at the Rep at some event or something.

But thanks very much.
Have a good day.

LOLITA: You too. Thanks. Bye!

PAUL: Take care. Bye bye.

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