It seems that not a week goes by in the summer without some list or other appearing that names the nation’s favourites in various categories, and the last few weeks have seen polls published on favourite musicals, comediennes and actors. Of course, one always takes such things with a pinch of salt – who exactly is being surveyed in each case, and just how long are their collective memories?
But they do provide some kind of litmus test about current popularity, and starts to give credence, for instance, to the claims that Les Miserables has long made to being the world’s favourite musical – it can certainly now claim legitimately to the nation’s favourite, at least as voted by Radio 2 listeners who gave it a mammoth 41.2% vote in the survey conducted by Elaine Paige’s Sunday programme to establish the UK’s “essential musicals”.
Intriguingly, half of the top ten list were of shows that Paige herself once or originally starred in – from Evita that she created the title role in (at position six) and Chess (that was written for her, at position seven) to Sunset Boulevard (that she took over in, and took her to Broadway for the first time, at number five), The King and I (that she starred in the most recent revival of, at number four) and Hair (that she made her West End debut in at the end of the sixties, at number ten).
In another poll of Readers Digest subscribers to name Britain’s funniest females, it was Victoria Wood who came out on top, with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, named separately at positions two and four respectively, and Jo Brand coming between them (so to speak) in third position. Also on the list: Julie Walters (five), Joanna Lumley (eight), Maureen Lipman (nine) and Kathy Burke (ten), while the late Joyce Grenfell and Hattie Jacques complete it at numbers six and seven respectively.
And in a poll commissioned by the Old Vic and wine-makers Mouton Cadet that polled 6,000 people, Anthony Hopkins was named the top British actor, beating Sir Laurence Olivier into 2nd place, Sean Connery into 3rd, Alec Guinness into 4th and Michael Caine into 5th, while Judi Dench came out as top British actress, with Julie Walters 2nd, Elizabeth Taylor 3rd, Maggie Smith 4th and Julie Andrews 5th.
