Victoria Close

Helena B-C is a consummate professional and I've always enjoyed her performances. Until now that is. Unfortunately, she failed to capture the real Noele Gordon. Like Michael Caine notoriously playing himself, all I could hear and see was Helena. In fairness, she was hampered by the Ronald McDonald wig and also lacked Noele's trademark sparkling ice-blue eyes to help with the transformation. I don't know what it was, just too camped up a performance to be credible perhaps? But this caricature was unrecognisable. Watch 'The Real Noele Gordon' documentary on ITV X and you will see what I mean. It didn't do the woman justice. The script felt overlong and bloated and self-indulgently assumed you would know the Crossroads story beforehand and bowled aside those that didn't. As the saying goes, "That's 3 hours of my life I won't get back."