The other outstanding player at the Altrincham Garrick in my time was William (Bill) Toothill. He was superb as Crocker-Harris in Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version – a tale of a schoolmaster who becomes known to the boys as ‘The…
Amateur versus professional... What’s the difference? It’s just the range of talent, really. At an amateur show you can watch an actor as good as you’ll see anywhere, but he or she will be on stage with a fellow-thesp who…
Graham Armitage was the Carpenter (the taller chap), in the Garrick’s production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I was the Walrus. Graham was very, very funny – not academically inclined – but a fine performer in school plays, usually as…
I was nudged into acting by a bolshie schoolmaster. He came out of Hitler’s war, still wearing his army fatigues, and revived play-acting at my grammar school. There was a small foreigner’s part in Sheridan’s play The Critic and Mr…
By Joan Crawford, co-founder of the King’s Head pub theatre Robert and I made contact, after 50 years, through the internet. I read the sections of his book, Are You Going to do That Little Jump part one. about his…
Introducing part two of Joan Crawford’s remarkable story The pattern of feast and famine continued over the years. Shortly after The Collector Peter Stevenson, then a solicitor, gave up his job and came to live and work at the Kings…