'Allo, 'Allo's Vicki Michelle's role of a lifetime
Vicki Michelle has experienced the highs and the lows of the acting world her entire career. As the story goes, Michelle, who struggled in the business for several years, gave it up to launch her own employment agency. She then got a call asking her to audition for one last role, a role for which British comedy fans will know her for forever, the sexy French waitress Yvette in comedy ’Allo ’Allo.
Mother Vicki now gets to impart some of her acting wisdom on her 22 year-old daughter, Louise, as she follows in her mother’s footsteps. “She tried to talk me out of it, she told me how insecure it is and how hard it can be but it has all I have ever wanted to do,” said Louise. A ‘compromise’ was reached, and after Louise achieved her A-levels, entered drama school where, like mother like daughter, she immediately excelled in comedy and musical theatre.
Up first for Louise is a role in what is likely to be the biggest British comedy film of the year, a film adaptation of Ray Cooney’s hit play Run For Your Wife, which is due to hit theaters in September. Vicki Michelle will serve as executive producer of the film, which sports a co-starring list that reads like a who’s who in the British talent world including Dame Judi Dench, Richard Briers, Maureen Lipman, Christopher Biggins, Neil Morrissey, Cliff Richard, Denise Van Outen and Danny Dyer.
Even though Louise remembers, all too well, both the lows where her mother would have to leave her for weeks on end with au pairs while she travelled around the world in shows and the highs that went along with it. “When I was younger I hated my mum leaving me, but it also meant I could go and see her in places like Australia,” she recalls.
Fortunately, as she begins her career, Louise seems to be grounded in the knowledge that being the daughter of someone famous is no guarantee of success. However, there was a funny side to having a mother that was instantly recognizable as ‘that sexy French waitress from ‘Allo ‘Allo’. “When I was about 13, boys would start talking about how gorgeous my mum is. They’d walk me home and then ask to come in for a drink. When I’d say my mum wasn’t in they’d say ‘OK see ya’, and I would just go ‘byeee!’“.
