"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...