B renda Fricker is sitting up in a bed plumped with pillows, wearing a sapphire blue blouse and a head of grey-golden ringlets. One bedside table has her medication, 25 pills a day. Another has a cup of water, an ashtray and her cigarettes. Above and on either side of her are shelves jammed with an eclectic hoard of books: Salman Rushdie, Edna O’Brien, Brian Aldiss, Alex Ferguson. Meanwhile, gazing out from framed black and white photographs on the walls, are writers, producers and actors from another era, plus a young, luminous Fricker herself.

The current version of Fricker is 80 and not so well, happy to be interviewed but only from the bed of her Dublin home – not exactly a common setup with stars, but then she is no ordinary star. “I’m out of breath just talking,” she says. “I’ve ne

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