Horrocks

Each year I convince myself that you’re beneath one of the costumes on The Masked Singer, but I’m proved hopelessly wrong! Has your drama school holiday job – wearing a Snoopy costume in Harrods’ linen department – put you off? VerulamiumParkRangerI have been offered The Masked Singer, but it’s not something I want to do. It’s not because of Snoopy, although that wasn’t a great experience. The associate director at Rada was asked whether any of the students would be prepared to get into a Snoopy costume in the linen…

It surprised a lot of people when Bubbles, the dippy personal assistant from Absolutely Fabulous, turned out to have a belter of a singing voice. Jane Horrocks showed off her chops in the 1998 film Little Voice having already conquered the stage with the lead role in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. (The part had been specially written for her by dramatist Jim Cartwright, who heard Horrocks singing Judy Garland and Shirley Bassey numbers as she warmed up for a role in his first stage play Road.)Since then, Horrocks has…

Jane Horrocks is a tiny woman surrounded by vastness. There is the vastness of her Regency flat, with its towering ceilings and huge, open spaces. And then there’s the far greater vastness of the Channel across the road. We are sitting in her belvedere on a freakishly hot winter’s day, taking in the sea. Horrocks is barely a speck on her own landscape. And this is how she likes it. “Any issues I have are minor compared with what you see there. It’s so elemental. What am I in all this? Tiny. My little issues are…