大象传媒

Brian has told us before about his . Sitting in a quiet room at the 大象传媒, I ask him how often he used to go to the pictures. "Not a great deal when I was really young, but when I got to school - and girlfriends - yes. Then there was a double interest! I went fairly regularly. I lived in Coventry, and when I'd just gone to secondary school, the whole school was evacuated, as a unit, to Lincoln. Then I started going to the cinema very regularly, because it was an escape. From your digs. They had about four or five cinemas in Lincoln, and a very busy theatre. One of my landladies used to take me every week to the theatre, for tuppence in the gallery, sitting on benches, on planks. It was a bit of an eye opener."

I started going to the cinema very regularly, because it was an escape from your digs...

Was that how he picked up his love of theatre? "No. That came from my father, oddly enough. Because although he was a classical musician, he was also very busy in the church dramatic society, as indeed was my mother. My father had the great foresight to take me to Stratford on Avon every year for a week in the summer holidays. You could see all eight plays that they had in the repertoire, by dint of going to a couple of matinees as well as every evening. That's where the bug really got me, and made me think 'that is what I want to do'.

Brian doesn't remember any of the better performances, but he does recall that he "was taken to see Donald Wolfit doing his Hamlet, and I remember thinking it was awful... which it probably was! Many years later when I was in the Old Vic, half the company had auditioned to tour Australia and New Zealand, which I failed to get into. One of the stars in the company that season was Roger Livesey, and I remember him making a farewell speech on our last night which I think was in Liverpool. He said, 'Well, that's it for some of us, and next season you're going to have Donald Wolfit... so God help you!'"