MOVIE • 1981

Laughing at Life

“A bundle of nerves, no music, one black dress”: Scarlet O’Hara, a Geordie queen of comedy, looks back at her life of grit and glamour.

A young Pauline Petty's Sunday dinner used to be sage and onion stuffing sandwiches, but in the 80s she topped the bill at her own nightclub in Whitley Bay as popular Geordie raconteur, Scarlet O'Hara. The comedian reminisces about nit nurses, husbands, debt, and growing up poor on the West End streets of Newcastle in a Tyne Tees TV documentary, which captures the impeccable timing of her stand-up comedy at working men's clubs that could make or break stars in the past. This documentary was broadcast on the 12th March 1981, as part of the Tyne Tees Television Northern Scene series.