Welcome

Welcome to my new blog! I am delighted and amazed to have it, and enormously grateful to Mei, our daughter’s partner, for the amount of technical guidance an old fossil like me, from pre-computer days, requires.

So what do I want to say? I must have something to tell people about after fifty years in the theatre. Old Actor stories may come tumbling out. As an actor I began in repertory; my first rep theatre was Barrow-in Furness. I started as an ASM, Assistant Stage Manager — you’re involved in the get-ins and get-outs, taking part in putting up and dismantling the sets. It was very hard work. And the necessary limitations meant that strange things sometimes happened.

During my time at Barrow we had the Sooty Show on in the afternoon. The little bear still travelled at that time with his creator Harry Corbett. Sooty on television had been part of my childhood — and I found that from the wings, though you could see Harry Corbett’s hand in the puppet you still had no sense of only one person being on stage. Actually his show was more sophisticated than the old theatre at which he had been booked. There was one sequence called Sooty’s Magic Fountains, when Sooty touched his magic wand to various points where there were fine pipes connected to the water supply — Harry cried “Izzy Wizzy, Let’s Get Busy!” — and fountains gushed forth. The pipes led to a very ancient coupling in the wings, and one day the water pressure blew the connection apart. A great gushing alerted me to what had happened. Sooty’s Magic Fountains was getting close. I had to act quickly! I jammed the coupling together, rusty grooves cutting into my hands, water forcing its way out and drenching me. With the noise of the water I could get no idea what was happening on stage.

When Harry Corbett came off he found me crouching in the wings like a (large) drowned rat and was very solicitous. Apparently he had cut the sequence short when he realised there was a drastic reduction in the water pressure.

These things did happen in rep. And reps were everywhere — then.

Yes, here come the Old Actor stories. I’ll curb it from being an autobiography. All sincere good wishes to anyone who may read this.