Ann Holloway stars as daughter Karen in Father, Dear Father, now in its fourth series. And this week, her husband Mike MacKenzie (sic) returns for a new series of Thames Television's children's programme Ace of Wands. Ann's success could have been a working man's nightmare. For some time, her share of the limelight was considerably greater than Mike's - who came to acting late. If this is a test of joint pay packet marriages, Ann would say she and Mike came through with flying colours.
Twenty-five years ago marriage in showbusiness was so much simpler. Ann Holloway's parents were both on the stage. But after the wedding her mother gave up her career completely. She went where her husband's work too them. What could be more natural . . . ?
"My mother retired and my father did a musical act. I travelled a lot with them until they put me in a boarding school. At school I wrote and produced plays. That was my training, really."
Two years ago, when Ann married actor Mike MacKenzie, whom she met while doing pantomime in Worthing (she played an "Amazon" and he a "demon"), history seemed to be repeating itself. Except for one little detail.
This time, nobody was going to retire to the knitting needles. Certainly not Ann, whose Father, Dear Father success was at that time giving her career a Cape Kennedy-style lift-off. Nor would Mike so much as dreamed of asking her.
Ann says: "I was brought up to the theatre. I have been in the habit of earning my living since I was 18 - first as a dancer touring the provinces, and later as an actress on stage. I want to have babies and sit at home looking after them. But not yet. Later, certainly. But I couldn't say exactly when."
Mike on the other hand came to the theatre comparatively late - almost, at first, as a gentleman enthusiast. He studied law at Nottingham University. A less-blatantly competitive securely wrapped in pin stripes was available to him. He might have taken it up, but a desire to try acting was so persistent ("I thought I would grow out of it, like wanting to be a train driver") that he switched to the stage, and began at the bottom. His first TV part didn't come until he was 26, two months after his marriage.
By the time she was 22, Ann Holloway had already made a first film and toured America. The couple entered marriage with few illusions of financial equality, let alone of masculine breadwinning. Nothing is equal about opportunity, especially in showbusiness, where it makes its appearance without any regard to seniority.
Now, after two years, both Ann and Mike are starring in successful return series, both for the same TV company, Thames. Both can feel they have survived any tensions better than most. Ann says: "Come to think of it, Mike never actually proposed to me. I certainly didn't propose to him. I suppose we both sort of arrived at the ceremony at the same time. A promising start."
She continued: "We have both been out of work at times. Obviously Mike takes these periods seriously, and doesn't like them."
She agrees there were "quite a few times when I was doing better" but disagrees that this created major pressure. Of Mike's feelings, she said: "He doesn't seem to mind as long as he is working. But if he is out of work he is a bit miserable.
"Like most actors, he gets patches when he isn't doing anything. I. try to make him feel better but there really is nothing much I. can do about it.
"I know when he is getting miserable because he takes it out on me by losing his temper, but this only lasts half an hour. One is always optimistic in this business. You always think - tomorrow it is going to happen. I just do my bit but there is nothing practical I can do but give him work, and obviously I can't do that.
"We do not feel this thing about the man having to be the breadwinner all the time. I am a working woman so I have given up the right to be kept by my husband. If I had married to be the complete housewife, I would expect my husband to keep me. But I intended to work when I married, so that doesn't apply."
A much bigger pressure on couples in the theatre, she felt, was the separations two jobs can cause. Sometimes it keeps them apart for months. "At the moment, though we are working at the same studio, we see each other literally once a day at midnight.
"I am free in the afternoon, but he is working. In the evening he is home but I am at the theatre. "Then I am away in the morning to rehearsals at about 6.30am. I suppose we are competing in tiredness. But there are only two of us, and the flat, which is easy to keep in order, so we don't have haggles about the dishes."
At work, they inhabit different environments filled with different faces and different shop talk. "But at home, Mike and I have masses of other interests to discuss besides the theatre which doesn't obsess our conversation at all. We do criticise each other's work firmly, but diplomatically, too."
Success is, anyway, something you have to get in perspective. Ann remembers with amusement being stopped in the street and asked for her autograph. The "fan" had thought she was Mary Hopkin.
A photograph - which might have come from the same shoot as that published with the 9th July 1970 article accompanied this article. It was captioned A magical moment for Ann Holloway and husband Mike MacKenzie dressed for his part in Ace of Wands, the children's programme.