Cherie Lunghi - the ultimate manageress

Ahhhh, Cherieeee Lunghiiiiiiiiiiiii. Oh, sorry. Er, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, she always did have a mesmeric effect on me.

Those almond-shaped eyes first sparkled into my consciousness back in 1984 when, my diary records, she appeared in three quite different major dramatisations which we Smiths watched at home.

The first was a BBC adaptation of CP Snow’s Strangers and Brothers novels. It wasn’t my usual TV fare but if memory serves I became quite engrossed in this somewhat earnest series. How much of that was down to Cherie Lunghi’s acting as the wife of Shaughan Seymour’s lead character I couldn’t say but it certainly introduced her name to my vocabulary. And what a name! An exotic mix of Italian father and alluring French first name was bound to stick in the minds of casting directors and audiences alike, even if she hailed from humble Nottingham.

She did make an impact a few months later when she cropped up in Master of the Game, one of those glossy Sidney Sheldon saga mini-series so beloved of American TV in the Eighties. Dyan Cannon was the star but I had eyes only for Cherie. In my diary she received the rare accolade of an individual name-check, and a description as “delicious”.  Looking back, this seems a peculiar choice of adjective, and yet I trotted it out again later in the year following her appearance in the “exciting, absorbing” crime thriller Praying Mantis. Obviously this twenty-something’s TV taste buds had been well and truly tickled.

In ’86, she brightened the bleak but gripping Alan Bleasdale Great War drama The Monocled Mutineer which so wonderfully wound up Prime Minister Thatcher and her acolytes. However her first starring role I remember witnessing was as Channel 4’s The Manageress. It became  required viewing for Dad and me in 1989 and 1990. Football and Cherie Lunghi: how could they go wrong? It portrayed an attractive woman making her way in a malevolent masculine world, with club chairman Warren Clarke and old-fashioned trainer Tom Georgeson needing to be won over by Gabriella Benson’s football tactics rather than her vital statistics. The excellent cast, and credible on-pitch action, made it work. At the time, there was lively debate about the likelihood of a female football manager in real life; it was widely considered inevitable. Yet here we are thirty years later and, for all the progress made by women’s football, gender equality in the men’s game dugout looks as distant as ever. Perhaps if QPR could sign up Ms Lunghi our luck might change. Let’s face it, in the last twenty-five years, all the men have failed.

I didn’t notice her as often in the following two decades but according to the IMDB website she never really went away. I know she cropped up as a guest in various cop shows such as Wexford, Lynley and Lewis mysteries. I definitely saw Cherie in one of the later Touch of Frost series, clashing memorably with David Jason’s irascible inspector. She was also a crown prosecutor (Helen West) in an enjoyable one-off BBC film A Question of Guilt back in ’93 but, by the time ITV made a series from the books featuring the character, the ubiquitous Amanda Burton got the gig.

Through the Nineties, Lunghi proved the perfect fit with Kenco’s marketing strategy, and she starred in umpteen TV adverts. However, for all her undeniable allure, Cherie never persuaded me to drink coffee. She never spurred me to dabble my two left feet in ballroom dancing either, but she was a popular competitor in the 2008 Strictly Come Dancing run. That must have been one of the first Strictly series I watched with any real enthusiasm and I’d love her to have won, although I was torn between her and Rachel Stevens! For the record, Tom Chambers claimed the glitterball trophy but never has there been a more elegant, and dare I say, sexy fifty-something on the show than Cherie Lunghi.

There have been numerous central casting upper-crust actresses on the telly over the years. From Joanna Lumley and Caroline Langrishe to Emilia Fox and Sophia Myles, they all play the ‘posh totty’ roles with great aplomb and yet Cherie Lunghi has the edge because she seems to portray such characters with more warmth and humanity. She is rarely the hard-hearted haughty cow; those eyes have plenty of sparkle but without the ice. And that seductive voice of hers could melt the coldest of hearts, too, such as when narrating a few series of Who Do You Think You Are?

Be she the lady of the manor, starchy matron, football manager or effortlessly elegant exponent of the waltz and cha-cha-cha, Cherie Lunghi is the ultimate class act.