"Pleased to meet you Mr Ironside"

This story was told to me by Kim Robinson. A Production Manager and sweetheart of a man. Oh my, I wish I had been there to witness this! Kim told me this story as we sat in a hotel bar one night during a transfer of '42nd Street' Kim had been PM of an Apollo Leisure tour of a musical based on Great Expectations. The show featured a young Darren Day as Pip and in one scene he goes to meet his benefactor. The scene took place in an office set on a raised section of the multi level set. When the benefactor meets Pip he is enthralled by the young man's energy to the extent that he claims to hear music whenever Pip is around. He sings a song about this (of course), during which he tells Pip that from now on he will call him Handel.  As the song finishes,  Pip turns and flees. He runs through the doorway, slamming the door behind him and exits the stage. The benefactor, still in musical admiration mode goes towards the door to call out to the boy. He grabs the door-kob which come...

I once Company managed a European tour of 'Carmen Jones'. The tour ran for two months and consisted of a series of one night stands throughout  Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Denmark.  We played every style of venue from ancient old opera houses in the former East Germany to farmyard barns. The british cast and  Brataslavian orchestra travelled from town to town by coach with the technical crew going on ahead by mini-bus and lorry.  The south of Germany proved to be somewhat racist at that time which was challenging to our black cast. The predominently meat based German diet was a minefield for the vegetarians in the group as even the vegetable soup had chunks of pork floating in it. We had coach break-ins, illnesses, lorry fires and defections from the tour. Bob, our percussionist was late for the band-call in Frankfurt, I called him on his mobile "Hi Bob. We're about to start the band call, where are you?" "Croydon" came the reply. He'd...

The stage door of the Opera House in Blackpool is one of the grandest in the UK. Situated in the 'Floral Hall' of the Winter gardens complex, a Victorian extravaganza of cast iron, glass and glazed tiles, the stage doors themselves are a pair of highly polished oak doors around 3m tall. The doors lead you into a hallway where, back then, a  uniformed hall-keeper guarded the stage entrance like a rotweiler. I was there on the recommendation of the NATTKE union boss in Manchester. The previous day I had taken a train from Blackburn to Manchester and had turned up unannounced at the union offices opposite the library in St Peters Square. I asked if I could speak to whoever was in charge and this turned out to be the senior union official for the north of England. I was shown into the office by a kind receptionist, who coincidentally  I reconnected with some years later when I started working at the Manchester Palace theatre and we shared many a lunchtime wandering around the Ci...

I have a friend who is obsessed by bus routes, numbers and  timetables and also the Catholic Church. Spending time with them can sometimes feel like being trapped in a 'Rain man / Song of Bernadette' mash-up. Any conversation and I mean any, can quickly be turned around to an in-depth discussion of the local public transport providers and services It's endearing and exhausting in equal measure. Earlier this week, my friend had travelled to the city centre (McGills 950x. Port Glasgow to Buchannan Street. 10 past and 20 to the hour) and was walking along the river. He noticed a large crowd gathered around the entrance to St Andrew's cathedral. He first assumed that this was probably a wedding but, on closer inspection, discovered that it was in fact an event to celebrate Saint Therese of Liseux. My friend makes a quick mental  calculation (ditch the 950x, jump on the subway to Buchannan St and pick up the Dunoon Flyer at 14 minutes past the hour) and decides he can spare...

Do you think that train spotters are born with their compulsion or do they learn it? I'm with Lady Ga Ga on this subject as I have personal experience. Scientist have proved...(can't say that without picturing Dougie Squire's Second Generation wearing lab coats and glasses, dancing on a stage lift at the Talk of The Town in that TV advert for some washing powder or other)..they have proved that young brains, male brains in particular, go through a kind of growth spurt around the ages of 3-5 where, any and all information is sucked up into the cerebral cortex and regurgitated at will. When I was 5, I could name every make and model of car on the road. To be fair, there were probably not that many makes of car on the road to Fleetwood in 1968 but it proves mine and Dougie Squire's theory that young brains are eager to absorb. There was a young lad in my home town of Blackburn who had memorised the entire street map. His father would trundle the boy out to impress his pa...

In Lancashire, rolls are known as 'barm cakes'. A kind of flat floury white roll as big as a toolmaker's hand. The ones with very dark brown undersides are called 'oven bottoms'. The joy of this food begins at the point of sale, as they would normally be purchased at the local bakeries which in Lancashire are called 'confectioners'. Most of these establishments were family run affairs selling bread, pies and cakes. The pies are generally awesome with rich crumbly pastry and generous highly seasoned fillings with cakes of the desiccated coconut and butter cream variety and those individual strawberry tarts with the highly suspicious red jelly. Loaves come in large, medium or Hovis. None of your artisan sourdough nonsense here! Buying it ready-sliced was considered go-ahead. The interior design of these shops is always at least a decade behind. It's the rules and part of the joy to enter a world of shiny brown wood-grain patterned melamine, glass fronted...