EXCLUSIVE: Corrie’s Amanda Barrie: ‘I grabbed a chair and hit peeping tom right on the head’

When it comes to defending her friends, Amanda Barrie takes no prisoners(Image: Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror)

To many fans, Amanda Barrie will always be Coronation Street’s Alma Baldwin. But there’s another role which might actually be even closer to home for Amanda: Bad Girls.

The female prison drama dominated ITV schedules for eight series in the early noughties – with Amanda and Stephanie Beacham playing odd couple cellmates, the “Costa Cons”. Yet if viewers thought the onscreen pair were tough – they should’ve seen Amanda when someone crossed her for real. And we’re not just talking about a belligerent Gordon Ramsay and Hell’s Kitchen.

Today, in an interview ahead of the release of her new autobiography, Amanda Barrie: I’m Still Here, the 89-year-old national treasure reveals how she once took down a gangster – while in a state of undress – with nothing but a chair.

Amanda Barrie slapped Gordon Ramsay on Hell’s Kitchen in 2004 – but the clip has just gone viral again

“I was working in Winston’s [CORR],” she says, referring to the famous West End cabaret club. “Danny La Rue was a headliner and Barbara Windsor and I were showgirls. They used to say she was the top half,” Amanda laughs, referring to Barbara and her famous bosom. “And I was the bottom half – because I had the legs!”

Amanda was in her late teens when she landed the job. She’d work all day doing TV, film and stage roles and she would perform at Winston’s each night from midnight. But glamorous, it was not. “Our dressing room was the same place where they stored the meat. Six to eight girls were squashed in there,” says Amanda. “Every once in a while, staff would come in to pull out some bloody rump steaks and drip the blood all over us. One night this big, hefty man came in and started to watch us undressing. We kept asking him to leave. But he just stood there, next to a dead sheep, staring. He wouldn’t budge.”

A 21-year-old Amanda Barrie at London’s Winston’s Club on Valentine’s Day 1957.(Image: Mirrorpix)

Finally, Amanda did the only thing she could. The same thing she would later do to a handsy tour manager, had already done to her mother’s love rival, and in 2004 would do to Gordon Ramsay. She lashed out. And deservedly so.

“I grabbed the chair and I hit him with it, right on the head, leaving him more than a little concussed,” she says. “He wasn’t happy. He vowed I would be sorry.”

It was only afterwards she learned who he was: the fresh-out-of-jail minder for gangster Albert ‘Alby’ Dimes. As moves go, it was not the best.

Stephanie Beacham and TV Amanda Barrie in Bad Girls

Winston’s Women: Amanda Barrie and the late Dame Barbara Windsor reunite years after meeting as club(Image: EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS)

This was the 1950s and Soho was crawling with gangsters. Hald Scot, half Iralia Dimes was the enforcer and a associate of The Richardson Gang, a violent gangland group, also known as the ‘torture gang’. He had already been in trouble with the law Winston’s even had its own role in the famed rivalry between the Richardsons and the Krays. Both were violent, brutal and powerful families. But like water and electricity, things would turn deadly when they mixed. “So everyone kept them apart,” explains Amanda. “Winston’s was opposite another club, Churchill’s. The Krays would go to Churchill’s and The Richardsons would come to Winston’s. That was the understanding.”

Having made an enemy of the entirely wrong kind, Amanda went to plead forgiveness of Dimes. But she got a surprise. In her book, written with her wife and bestselling crime author Hilary Bonner, Amanda explains: “Like most of his kind back then, he prided himself on treating women well and behaving properly around them.”

So instead of a beating from the wounded enforcer, Amanda found herself with a “huge bouquet of flowers” from Dimes the next day – and a new loyal protector in the club. “He and his henchmen used to tell the hecklers to be quiet,” she laughs. Amanda, who currently has a single crutch following her hip replacement in June, certainly had a lucky break that time. But she has no regrets, In fact, she teases: “Would I do the same if people crossed me today?,” she smiles, pointing at the crutch. “Maybe, if they deserved it. I do have that weapon over there!”

Amanda Barrie: I’m Still Here hits shelves on Thursday, September 11, three days before the Carry On Cleo star turns 90(Image: Supplied)

Amanda with Gordon Ramsay and the 2004 cast of Hell’s Kitchen – including Edwina Currie and Jenifer Ellison(Image: ITV)