An Exhilarated Octogenarian
Lindsay Jayne on life, survival, and bad grammar
FIONA POWERS
Lindsay Jayne is exhilarated by the knowledge that, as a newbie octogenarian (“How did that happen so quickly?!”), she has now successfully morphed into a theatre/film scriptwriter/screenwriter/producer/casting director/director and actor. “It has taken just over six decades to do something where I get job satisfaction,” she says. “From the age of six I had always wanted to be a famous actress – not rich, but definitely famous! In my early twenties, my dream didn’t work out because my nerves, waiting in the wings to go on stage, always overcame me. Inevitably, I had to return to working in offices in London in order to pay the bills.”
Now, in her 82nd year, Lindsay feels that the time left for her to become famous is limited.
Beginning AT THE END
She recently wrote, produced, cast and directed her debut play, A Spectacular Interview. It was filmed in 2025 and then performed in it in April this year (in The White Rock’s Studio 27) as a staged rehearsed reading with a cast of eight actors.
Lindsay’s motive for writing this script was to send-up the spectacular mess the world is in today, plus the fact that she, and others of various generations, cannot understand, for the most part, what people are talking about. For instance, she was listening recently to a programme on BBC Radio 4 when one of the presenters mentioned ‘… green-hushing versus green-washing corporate policies’. “What on earth does that mean, Fiona?” she asked me. I replied that I had no idea.
“Corporate ‘spik’ is universal,” Lindsay went on to explain. “I owned my first company when I was 29, and occasionally attended events where nominated speakers used corporate language which, as you know, changes considerably from year to year. In 1995, I held fund-raising events when I had to negotiate with duplicitous people in management who confused me with their unintelligible phraseologies.”
SPECTACULAR ADVENTURES
Born in Solihull in 1944, Lindsay was two and a half when her father’s employers moved him and his family to Singapore. They lived there for 10 years, then were relocated to Hong Kong, followed by Athens, and finally Beirut.
Coming back to England, in her eighteenth year was a real shock to Lindsay, both in terms of the weather and the (then) largely white monoculture in London. She worked for various organisations, including a famous publishing house, and also for the head of the then soon-to-be launched BBC 2 television channel.
Other jobs she held included air hostess – arduous and discouraging – and acting as Programme Co-ordinator on a Greek cruise ship based in New York, which sailed the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Fed up with her uncouth, desk-thumping boss, she jumped ship four months later at Gibraltar, and came back to England to one of the 85 addresses she has had during her lifetime
In the summer of 191 an advert in The Times to become a DJ in a hotel in Nairobi playing Motown-type music in the evening for the guests and diners. “I had fabulous experiences in Kenya at that time, even though the contract was only for six months,” Lindsay said. “One of the most memorable moments was when a local friend and I went on safari together. We were driving around the middle of the Great Rift Valley when we met Joy Adamson (remember Elsa the Lioness? Born Free?) and her driver coming the other way in a jeep. We were the only two vehicles in the whole of that area. We had long and interesting conversations which eventually led to Mrs Adamson inviting both of us for tea two weeks later at her beautiful house by an enormous lake. It was an enchanting afternoon!”
When she was 45, Lindsay finally made the decision to quit office life forever. She finally did a year’s ‘Access’ course in order to gain admittance to university. After that she applied to Leeds to read ‘Modern Chinese’ for four years, and was offered a place. Her aim was to become a translator of Chinese-English and vice versa, “… to be more in demand than European translators,” she explained. She and her 35 teenage fellow students spent their second year out in student accommodation in Beijing and Tianjin – another complete story in itself.
Lindsay graduated in 1995, but without the benefit of speaking fluent Mandarin (“Don’t ask! There were too many other subjects on the curriculum, plus we had to do a subsidiary course as well!”). She went to live in Salisbury to be near her mother. She bought a brand new 350cc Jawa motorbike and sidecar “way before The Two Fat Ladies were ever heard of.” In an effort to raise money for a breast cancer research charity, she rode through almost every county and region in England, Wales and Scotland. The whole ride took six weeks and the bike broke down every week. But, at the end of the journey, she was able to donate £1500 to the charity.
Thereafter, she became a public speaker for organisations such as the WI, U3As, Rotary Clubs, etc., a freelance radio presenter, a journalist and film reviewer for a local newspaper, a charity fund-raiser, and held one-woman shows on stage around England when she talked about her time in China. In addition, she has written three books: a biography of a tailor, one about being a mature student and another describing her bike ride.
In 1996 Lindsay formed her own limited audiobook company, and produced 30 titles which are still available on Audible’s various international websites under the heading of ‘The Lindsay Players’. “I loved being in the recording studio,” she says, “because you’re away from the real world.” She expanded her audiobook business by taking on additional clients and publishing their books. Over a seven year period she edited, proof-read, created the cover artwork for, then submitted 40 paperbacks to Kindle/Amazon for sale worldwide.
LOOKING AHEAD
In 2024, at the age of 79, the ever-enterprising Lindsay set up the Daytime Theatre Players, which currently has 14 members. Last year she founded her own film website, which features trailers of the four films she had made so far. This year she is hoping to make five more. One of her main priorities is to get the Daytime Theatre Players to stage their plays as often as possible. Another is for Rickshaw Pix’s films to be screened around the world.
Films at Rickshawpix.com. If you would like to join the Daytime Theatre Players and be involved in their stage/film productions, email Lindsay at [email protected]
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