Interview with Jane Asher

Music legend has it that when John, Paul, George and Ringo ran into the teenage Jane Asher backstage in 1963, The Beatles were so enamoured by her that all four proposed on the spot.

It’s easy to imagine why the Fab Four were so taken with the energetic, auburn-haired young actress who started her career aged just five; why Paul McCartney made her his muse and fiancée in the sixties; and why Gerald Scarfe, the prolific Sunday Times cartoonist behind Pink Floyd’s The Wall, wanted to make her his wife.

Her name casts your mind in one of two directions – towards a vast confection of acting work across screen, stage, and radio, or to her confectionary business, Jane Asher Party Cakes, launched in 1990 with a shop in London’s Chelsea, the product of her taking “time off” to raise her family.

Her acting CV is exhaustive, spanning at a glance her brief, first childhood appearance in 1952’s Mandy, as an adult with Michael Caine in the original Alfie – a tale of male promiscuity, regular appearances in BBC’s Holby City, as a favourite of playwright Alan Ayckbourn, right up to 2013’s stint in Pride and Prejudice at Regent Park’s Open-Air Theatre in London, and in rom-com feature flick I Give It A Year with Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne.

Yes, “it's fun and exciting when you are around well-known people”, Asher tells Society. Few things are more thrilling than the glamour of the red carpet set, standing on stage, or the stark intimacy of being behind the scenes.

But it’s her third big, lesser-known love that accounts for her latest Somerset visit.

For the past 35 years Asher has committed herself to campaigning for autism charities – work for which Bristol University awarded her an honorary doctorate.

In 1997 she became president of the National Autistic Society, the UK’s leading light for people with autism or Asperger’s, and their supporters.

NAS is one of two charities, along with the Somerset Trust for Arts and Recreation, recently picked by Somerset County Council chairman David Fothergill, to benefit from £50,000 local authority fundraising over the next four years.

In 1974 the county was the first to establish a specialist centre for adults with autism: Somerset Court in Burnham.

So just what kick-started Asher’s action for autism? A House of Commons’ tea party, almost four decades ago changed her life forever, she says.

“I was accepting a cheque for Save The Children, and there was a table of children there behaving a bit oddly, and I couldn't make out why. I went and spoke to their carer, and she explained they had autism. Having vaguely heard of autism I was intrigued, and I wanted to know more … I got more and more intrigued, and in many ways it makes you think about what’s normal.

“Most people have heard of autism, but it can be a tricky one to talk about. At the severe end it’s debilitating and distressing, and at present there is a great need, and not enough support in Somerset, so the more that can be done the better … the money is very targeted, and a little bit of money goes a long way.”

While portrayals of individuals with behaviours along the spectrum, such as Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Rain Man, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, and David Mitchell’s translation of The Reason I Jump, have helped plant an idea of the condition in the public’s conscious, “it’s sometimes not an easy one to raise money for,” she adds. “It’s good for people to give, to continue that understanding.”

Adding further strings to her already impressively well-strung bow, Asher has written three bestselling novels, The Longing, The Question, and Losing It, over two dozen non-fiction titles, including 1982 classic Jane Asher Party Cakes, and presented four series of her own BBC programme, Good Living.

Society asks, what’s the polymath’s secret? “There isn't a normal day, but I like all the things I do, except the boring stuff like emptying the dishwasher,” she admits with a smile. “The truth is, I'm very disorganised! People think I must be very organised but I'm not. I work to deadlines.”

At 67, Jane is showing no tells of stepping back. The prolonged popularity of the Great British Bake Off has been “great for business”, and “a great introduction to baking for so many people”, she says.

Meanwhile in her “main job”, she’s working on a play due to get its airing in Bath in the New Year.

Understandably, it would be hard to pin down a single thing she is most proud of. And indeed when Society enquires, she becomes coy, not wanting to sound ‘soppy’.

“I’m very proud of my charitable work, and I get a lot of pleasure from it. But if I get a rousing reception from the first night of a play then of course I’m very excited and proud of that … I have been very lucky and have had a good career.”

To find out more about the work of the National Autistic Society, visit www.autism.org.uk.