Maureen's Monologues

Maureen Lipman has the knack of making the everyday supremely entertaining, the ordinary absurd and unexpected. Her new collection of pieces, I Must Collect Myself: Choice Cuts from a Long Shelf-Life, sparkles with her inimitable prose and pithy opinions. Encounters in the street, at the hairdresser, in the dressing room, on her travels at home and abroad, indeed wherever she goes, are sharply observed, joyfully and - at times - ruefully recorded.

Here, Maureen gives us a selection of her brilliant monologues which capture many voices in wonderfully diverse ways.

The actress and author has triumphed in television (Agony, the British Telecom ads), films (Roman Polanski's The Pianist, on stage (particularly her one-woman show as Joyce Grenfell) and in print (her memoirs and magazine columns). She was married to Bafta Award-winning Jack Rosenthal, who died in 2004. In l999, Maureen Lipman was awarded a CBE and she has won numerous awards for her theatrical and television work.