Delighted and proud to have been elected member of the Concert Artistes Association a couple of months ago. Its Patrons include the dream team of Dame Judi Dench, Sir Brian May and Su Pollard. The CAA club is an oasis of calm amidst the hurly-burly of today’s Covent Garden and its premises have recently been refurbished. On my first visit there after redecoration, a fellow member, who will remain nameless, but only because I didn’t catch his name, was nearly hit on the head when one of the many framed pictures of celebrities there fell off the wall. To add to the excitement, I hope to bump into Su Pollard sometime to reminisce about the time we worked together in the 1970s at the Grand Theatre Wolverhampton.

The Stage reports that after a long campaign led by actress Julie Hesmonhalgh, the Coliseum Theatre Oldham has been saved from closure. Great news. This was where the world premiere of Alfie the Musical took place before going on to Coventry and Watford. It was also where I cut my teeth as actor, once working with Anne Kirkbride, soon to be Coronation Street’s Deidre Barlow. When we were in a play in which her character had to play the piano, one of the few skills she didn’t have, a music student was employed to play offstage, the cue light activated by Anne pressing middle C. The student wasn’t always as diligent as he might have been. At several performances Anne and I were forced to improvise dialogue while she bashed middle C in vain and the stage manager went to find the student. On one occasion Anne  got carried away with her improvisation and strode centre stage – at which point the piano started playing.

Surprised but grateful to be invited to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers for an event celebrating the centenary of the birth of my great aunt, Verena Holmes. Until the presentation by Elizabeth Donnelly, CEO of the Women’s Engineering Society, followed by the unveiling of a portrait of Verena, I had no idea what a pioneer she was – the very first female member of the IME, after a three-year battle to be accepted, and then an inventor of devices as varied as a deep-sea diving outfit, an apparatus for treating tuberculosis and valves for internal combustion engines. Having inherited none of her engineering skills, the only tribute I can think of is to turn her exploits into a work for the stage. Verena the Musical! has a certain ring to it, perhaps?

It was so good to see Jeremy Swan, who directed me in the BBC TV series Potter’s Picture Palace in the 1970s. He very kindly took me to the elegant dining room at BAFTA, where the food and ambience are wonderful. As well as recently entertaining cruise ship passengers with his ‘Legends of TV’ stand-up performances, Jeremy has a book deal for his autobiography. If his memoirs are as funny as his reminiscences they will be a great read. Which reminds me – I must get my Stagehand Stories ready to show publishers….

I’m sad to have lost a very good friend on Boxing Day after a long illness. David Kernan and I devised and produced the revue Dorothy Fields Forever (2001-02) which started at the Theatre Museum before long and successful runs at the Jermyn Street Theatre and the King’s Head Islington, where I was happy to mediate in disputes between the perfectionist David and the sometimes-disorganised Dan Crawford, who ran the theatre. I shall never forget David on television in That Was The Week That Was and in the musicals 1776, Our Man Crichton, A Little Night Music and of course in Side By Side By Sondheim, which he co-devised and starred in, along with Millicent Martin, Julia McKenzie and Ned Sherrin.

Congratulations to Indhu Rubasingham as she becomes the National Theatre’s first female Director. She’s on record saying, “I’m interested in stories and the drama that reveal the politics rather than the politics leading the drama.” She could be talking about The Postman & the Poet. She isn’t, but with any luck she will be soon after she starts work on the South Bank next spring. A script and CD will be waiting for her!