Why Anneka Rice got the urge to find her waxwork head

Anneka Rice is finest known for racing about in a jumpsuit for Channel 4’s Treasure Hunt and the BBC’s Challenge Anneka.

She later on took to radio, presenting on BBC Radio two, and was a contestant on previous year’s Strictly Appear Dancing.

Also previous year, Rice moved into performing comedy and recorded The Clemmie Hart Years for Radio 4, in which she informed the legitimate tale of how she produced a fictional agent for herself.

Forward of her 2nd stint at boosting a laugh for the station in Aid! My Head’s in Wookey Hole, she gave BBC News an straightforward reflection on her expertise of fame.

I check out to assume of my lifestyle in comic episodes, as it’s been so weird. That’s how the stand-up began. The real variation is a tiny darkish for mass sharing.

A person of the most surreal episodes was owning a Madame Tussauds waxwork produced.

I hung from a rope ladder in the foyer in the ’80s, in a jumpsuit, the very first human being bemused holidaymakers noticed when they walked in.

When I cast ahead with Challenge Anneka they simply just improved my outfit and set a paintbrush in my hand.

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Anneka Rice

I only identified I’d been taken off when Channel 4 came to job interview me about the honour of remaining immortalised in wax.

I basked in their notice, till they informed me I’d been melted down and my head was in Wookey Hole.

My physique had possibly long gone into earning Kim Kardashian’s bottom.

If you Google “Wookey Hole Madame Tussauds” you will see rows of decapitated heads accumulating dust on a shelf.

I out of the blue had an urge to deliver my head household. I imagined a mini-bus entire of rejected Nationwide Treasures off on a journey to discover our heads.

Feel We are Going on a Bear Hunt fulfills Indiana Jones.

I desired to deliver my head again to demonstrate my sons, who continue to assume I’m a builder simply because I invested so significantly time up a step ladder through their childhood. This would be my badge of honour. “Glance who your mum was, boys!”

My look for grew to become a metaphor for my lifestyle. I was moved on from Madame Tussauds by security, my cell phone-phone calls unanswered.

It took me again to my teenage many years, when I was so invisible to my moms and dads I assumed the only way to get them to discover me was if I was sent to prison.

I took to shoplifting in a desperate endeavor to be arrested and was taken household in a police car or truck. I applied to steal broad bras, size 46FF, stuffing them into my faculty rucksack.

Individuals bras had a lifestyle of their personal – my geometry set equipped nicely into 1 cup, packed lunch in the other.

When I acquired lucky in Croydon and was arrested. Even though I was remaining held by the Surrey constabulary I gave the performance of my lifestyle.

I produced a break for it, running down the high avenue. Now you know why I cherished undertaking Movie star Hunted so significantly.

When they asked for my identify I proudly gave it: “Wendy Strategy”. She was the course bully and produced my lifestyle hell. Agonisingly however, they enable me go and I went household on the bus.

• From conserving orphans to Strictly Appear Dancing

I took myself off to London and gave a further terrific performance to the personnel officer at the BBC who accepted me on a BBC training system.

Immediately after two many years at the Entire world Support on The Entire world Today and Outlook, I desired to be aspect of that environment we had been broadcasting to.

A a few-year stint in Hong Kong followed, performing as a sub-editor at TVB news and then as newsreader, when the normal human being was taken ill.

I was so anxious the very first evening I ran someone more than on the way to the studio and had to be taken to perform in a police car or truck – my dream!

The 2nd evening Spike Milligan crawled into the studio and sat beneath my news desk stroking my foot. I was totally out of my depth, twenty pretending to be 26. But I was traveling.

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BBC/Getty Photographs

When I returned to the British isles, I acquired diverted from journalism and was pretty much traveling – this time in a helicopter without having any doorways. More jeopardy.

I had to improve my identify as Equity explained there was already an Annie Rice. I took the identify of my pal Gary’s sister, Anneka, and ping! I was a unique human being once again, this time with an exotic Swedish again-tale.

Challenge Anneka was heady things. An military of hundreds of volunteers more than the many years followed me anywhere the assignments took us.

These volunteers continue to carry on to touch me outside of anything else. Several continue to perform on the assignments, 30 many years on.

In the meantime, Cubby Broccoli auditioned me to be a Bond Girl, Hollywood came contacting seeking to make a film of my Romanian Challenge and I had a rose named after me.

I gave start to my very first son by means of a puppet on Spitting Impression, with Kenneth Kendal supplying me guidance. When son range 1 came out he was followed by a cameraman. Actually, look at it out. I’ve set it on Twitter.

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Despite all these qualifications, my waxwork look for was proving fruitless. Madame Tussauds set up a wall of silence.

On Twitter I was informed I’d been noticed not long ago in a pile of bodies in a Blackpool storeroom, maybe future to Frank Bruno or The Krankies.

Then a further weird twist. A pal reckoned she noticed Monthly bill Clinton at the RAF Museum in Shropshire, sitting in a tank.

A different swore they noticed Larry Grayson’s head impaled on a rusty pitchfork outside the house Ramsay Bolton’s castle on Activity of Thrones. Do Tussauds have a lucrative trade marketing off heads?

I assume I’m a tiny way off this remaining my fate at the BBC. I like remaining 1 of the longest-serving woman broadcasters. If you sliced me open, BBC would run via me like a stick of rock.

My Radio two audience have known me all their lifestyle. When I was undertaking stand-up at the Yard Comedy Club, I was touched there had been queues round the block of people today in their 30s who had developed up with me on Tv.

More surreally I achieved several Little one Annekas, named after me in the ’80s and ’90s. Now in their 30s we agreed collectively it was an outrage my waxwork was missing. They never want to be related with a lump of melted-down wax.

As Alan Bennett explained: “Keeping On, Keeping On.” This is a excellent mantra after 43 many years at the BBC. Work gives me a rhythm, which I require for my real head.

Aid! My Head’s in Wookey Hole can be listened to on Radio 4 and BBC Appears on twenty March at 11:30 GMT.

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