From amazing highs to the deepest of lows. HANNAH DAVIES meets the teenage sweethearts who’ve made their career work for, not against, them

FOR many people, working with their other half would be a nightmare. But for Bev Fox, 46, and Ian McLaughlin, 47, stars of Northern Stage’s The Glass Slipper, it’s been a lifesaver.

“We made a decision really,” says Bev. “We were at the point where we could’ve split up and gone touring around the country. But we looked at each other and said, ‘I don’t want to be apart from you,’ and that’s what we’ve stuck with.”

The couple – Bev is Newcastle born and bred and Ian moved up to Washington, Tyne and Wear, from Croydon with his family aged six, have made their joint career work.

They met at the tender age of 15 and 16, and their lives have been intertwined ever since.

Bev says: “We met at the People’s Youth Theatre in Heaton. I was 15, he was 16 and we were in a play called the Greeks and Trojans. It was epic.

“We were each in different sections but we helped each other learn our lines. I helped him to put his blood make-up on and we were so young we became really good friends.”

Ian would stop off at Bev’s house in Jesmond and then they’d walk together over Armstrong Bridge to the theatre.

But it took the interference of friends to get them together. Bev laughs: “I remember clearly my friend Amelia saying, ‘so who do you think the talent is in the class?’

“I was so naive I thought she meant acting talent and I went ‘well I think Ian’s fantastic’. They all said ‘You fancy Ian’ I went ‘no I don’t’ and then I thought, ‘oh maybe I do?’”

The couple shared their first kiss in May 1980 in the bus stop outside the People’s Theatre.

Acting continued to be a big part of their life. After a short stint living in Durham together – they were both just 16 and studying at New College, Durham – they dropped out and returned to Tyneside to work in cafes and pubs. Ian managed The Percy Arms for a while, and they acted in their spare time.

Bev continues: “We got involved in the American Musical Society at Newcastle University, although we never went to university.

“They put on loads of musicals like Grease, West Side Story and Cabaret. We managed to get all the lovely student life and parties without the lectures.”

But the big aim was to move to London. The couple had equity cards from playing working men’s clubs with a pop group called One Plus One and moved to Croydon to live with Ian’s mum.

Bev changed her surname from Dobbing to Fox and the couple began working and saving.

Ian says: “We did some horrible cleaning jobs but we got good money for it. It was boom time and there was loads of temp work. We knuckled down for six months and saved a lot of money. Then we got our first flat that we shared with a load of medical students in Wilsden Green and felt a bit like, ‘we’re just in London with our equity cards, what do we do now?’.”

What they did was answer an advert in acting bible The Stage, which was advertising six week’s worth of drama improvisation workshops.

Despite an odd mix of young thespians and young offenders, they fell in with a crowd of friends around London’s “improv” [improvisation] scene.

Ian adds: “You get bitten by the bug and there were loads of good opportunities for Improv at the time.

“Whose Line is it Anyway?’ was just getting really popular.”

The couple’s skills became sought- after for adverts as well. Ian says: “I was advert king for a few years. I did lover 100 adverts.

“I became Malcolm the Mountie for a while for Labatts Lager after Tony Slattery and I did the first Cadbury’s Time Out, two big adverts for them.”

The couple were also cast together quite a lot. One time, Bev recalls was especially fun.

She recalls: “Lunn Poly didn’t know we were a couple but cast us together. So we had five days in Venice in a five-star hotel. And all we had to do was sit there and wait for Champagne bottles to pop.”

It was the Improv which would give them their steadiest work though.

Ian comments: “We helped create the Improv Musical which was very successful.

“Alan Marriott put together this show with six of us which had success for about 10 years. We did the Battersea Art show then the Donmar, the Gate in the West End then the Fortune Theatre in the West End.

“We did an eight part series up here for Tyne Tees and then we did Radio Four and the Edinburgh Festival. We travelled all over Europe.”

Bev says: “Both of us went to London wanting to do musicals but we went to these auditions with hundreds of people and we felt really young and unexperienced. We thought maybe we could do provincial theatres, touring around,. But that would’ve meant being apart.

“So we stuck with what we were doing which was great because we were doing performing, music and acting and we had a big group of friends, it was a great community.