On Tour With Maggie
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
More than 20 years ago GT's Amanda Zacharia was assigned to interview Prisoner star Maggie Kirkpatrick. An enduring friendship began. The pair recently caught up with eachother in Hobart, where Maggie was touring Shoe-Horn Sonata
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. You know those times when you meet someone and instantly you know you're going to be mates. This happened to me in unusual circumstances. It was sometime on 1985, i was working as a journalist on TV Week and assigned to interview Maggie Kirkpatrick, who at the time was riding very high indeed on the hit series Prisoner. I had never met Maggie before, but i was certainly aware of her on screen character Joan "The Freak" Ferguson on Prisoner. The tough, hard and mean "screw" who made jsut about everyone's lives unpleasant.
The interview was arranged for mid-afternoon at her home in Prahran. I arrived at the appointed hour and duly met by the publicist from Channel Ten and Maggie. I was a little intimidated simply because of her persona, but it didn't take a long time before her warmth, intelligence, humour, fabulous general knowledge, love of food, drink and generosity made an indelible impact. We hit it off and have been friends ever since.