The year 2016 continues to stick the boot in as another beloved icon bites the dust. Dear Vivean Gray, the actress who gave us not one but two notorious soap legends: Mrs Jessup from The Sullivans and the one and only Mrs Nell Mangel from the world’s most famous Aussie TV show, Neighbours.  Related: Neighbours' Mrs Mangel, actor Vivean Gray, dies aged 92  There are many reasons Neighbours became such a huge success, – and a cultural phenomenon in Britain – and Vivean Gray’s performance as Mrs Mangel is one of the biggest. In the midst of Ramsay Street, that magic cul-de-sac where the neighbours’ doors were never locked, everyone had a swimming pool and the sun always shone, there lived a “dark force”, a throwback to a moralistic, puritanical Australia of the 1950s … The curtain-twitching, sticky-beak, nosy parker neighbour that we all know and hate, Mrs Mangel.  Vivean would never know how far-reaching and ultimately devastating her work on this innocent little Aussie soap would become. She had already cemented her place in Aussie folklore as Mrs Jessup in war drama The Sullivans. Her subtlety and her attention to detail as an actor, and her unbending professionalism, helped create a legendary character that will live forever in many memories.  But the fact that Vivean had the ability and aplomb to repeat the feat on Neighbours is unprecedented and unlikely to ever be rivalled.  It was in the late 1980s that I was approached to join the Neighbours cast. I had been asked to be an original cast member but I was very wary of soap because of the shallowness of script and the fact that one’s character had no defined end, no ultimate journey – which creates a genuine difficulty for an actor. Also, the hours were long and the work rate required was legendary. Often actors need to produce 25 minutes of transmittable product in one day, including studio and outside broadcast. Even for younger cast members, the Neighbours schedule was gruelling. Vivean was no spring chicken but would always show the young ones how it was done.  I was asked to play Joe Mangel, the estranged son of Mrs Mangel. The prospect of playing Joe, a character who ran counter to the legendarily uptight, moralist busybody that was Mrs Mangel, really appealed. This will be fun, I thought, and will give us both the opportunity to do some real acting. I agreed and joined the Neighbours team for three months. It was hard work and a real test of our professionalism – but fun. My mantra has always been that of the good doctor, Hunter S Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.”. And it didn’t get weirder than Neighbours.  The storylines were ridiculous and far-fetched, but hilarious. Neighbours in those days was like Coronation Street’s early years: character-led and very funny, almost slapstick amid the kitchen sink drama. The cast of the day were filled with actors that could pull off the “soap madness”: Anne Charleston and Ian Smith (Madge and Harold) were both proficient at the comedy and drama that was required; Anne Haddy (Helen), was the show’s matriarch; there was the Clown Prince of Neighbours, Craig McLachlan (Henry); and of course the legendary Bouncer the dog.  But in the middle of all of it was Vivean, the stern face of wowserism – a strain of obnoxiously puritanical Australia that touched a nerve with viewers all around the world. They were heady days. We all “worked like convicts” but much fun was had within the arduous tasks at hand.  Related: Raised on Ramsay St: Neighbours at 30  I will always remember Vivean’s grace under pressure, her generosity as a person and as an actor, her sense of the absurd, her sense of humour and her unnerving work ethic in the face of a huge workload. She was a favourite and was given a lot to say.  She lived a long life, no sadness there. What became sad was that her success in the show and Neighbours’ popularity forced her to retreat into a life of privacy as many people couldn’t seem to discern the actor from her character. The great sadness and stress of playing a “baddie” in a soap.  Anne Haddy who is also now not with us, once said, to put me at ease: “The general public will only remember you after you leave a soap, for as long as you were in it.” She was right about a lot of things but when it came to Vivean Gray, who was only in Neighbours for two years, she was so, so wrong.
It was a pleasure to act alongside Vivean Gray as she worked her way into Aussie folklore. Her puritanical curtain-twitcher turned the show into a phenomenon