What a difference a day makes. Nearer to thirty-six hours to be exact.

Hilary and I had scooted off to Cheshire on Saturday evening – staying at the Granage Hall Hotel, which is a large conference complex built onto the back and sides of a beautiful Victorian mansion situated just outside Knutsford – so that we could attend the last day of the Tatton Hall RHS Flower Show on Sunday. It was a superb sunny day too, even though the ground was still rather muddy from Saturday’s rain.

We left around 3.30, which was great timing because around 3.45 the heavens opened, quickly turning the car parks (waterlogged open fields) into even muddier car traps, especially if your own vehicle happens to be a very low to the ground MG sports car.

Once home, around 6.30, we decided to take a walk down to the theatre and river to see how far Saturday’s floods had retreated.

Quite a bit was the answer, with the remaining flood-water still half way across the Bancroft Gardens, which is on the theatre side, and wholly covering the park land on the other side, making Stratford look more like a lake side town.

It’s still pretty much the same today (Monday), although the Swan Theatre is opening for business tonight, with further performances of MacBeth, which is a fabulous show and one I shall be reviewing here in a day or two.

The real problems are now much further down river, especially in Evesham and Tewksbury, where the rivers Avon and Severn meet.

After our walk we ended-up in the Dirty Duck pub last night, where the wine and food tasted as good as ever.

My only wish now is that the British media gets a grip of itself and cools down the national disaster hype they’re peddling at the moment, and instead remind everyone of the truly devastating floods that hit New Orleans a couple of years ago, and continually hit Bangladesh.

The much photographed River Avon is a deceiving and dangerous river. It’s not very deep, no more than five feet (sorry 1.5 metres) at its deepest, but the currents are fast, and treacherous.

Watching the river the other morning, its colour a deep orange (after a night of torrential rain) from the top soil washed into it from the fields upstream, I was reminded of a little known tragic incident way back in the summer of 1947.

June 1947 was hot and sunny, and the river clear and much deeper and faster flowing than usual, with an icy temperature that lingered as a result of some of the worst winter weather Britain had experienced in over 100 years. It was a combination that would claim the life of a young 18 year old actor by the name of Albert Forster.

Albert was a promising talent, and his first job in 1946, after leaving drama school, and his native Edinburgh, was with the prestigious Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He was a handsome young man who looked a bit like Gordon Jackson, and by all accounts sounded like him too. His potential was soon spotted by none other than Sir Barry Jackson (who had run the Birmingham Rep, and was now running the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) who asked the startled young actor to join his company in Stratford the following winter. Naturally Albert Forster accepted and made a very expensive long distance telephone call to his proud parents.

The young Scotsman was not the only young hopeful to join Jackson’s company in 1947.

Joss Ackland had received a similar invitation from Jackson, but was not so thrilled at the idea of working in Stratford (he’d have preferred to stay in London where there was plenty of theatre and radio work, and the chance of the odd film role), but his agent said it was a good move, and would do his image a power of good, so he went.

Ackland remembered that the Memorial Theatre was like an island amidst the winter flood water that freezing February of 1947, and that the only way to get to rehearsals was by rowing boat, and for a non-swimmer like Ackland that was pretty scary.

Albert Forster and Joss Ackland were in good company that season. Donald Sinden and Paul Scofield were both 25 years old, and enjoying their first flush of stardom in Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Dr Faustus, and Measure for Measure. Albert knew he only had to look, and watch, and listen for some of the magic of Sinden and Scofield to rub off.

The season progressed and the little company of players grew ever closer to one another, with Albert Forster’s genuine talent soon becoming obvious to everyone. And all agreed, over the odd pint or four at the Dirty Duck, that they would do everything they could for each others careers in the future. It’s what actors, good and generous actors, do.

Eventually the floods subsided, and spring turned the Warwickshire countryside into a haven of green, with the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations one of the most colourful since the end of the war. Throughout the late spring and early summer thousands of visitors came to Stratford to enjoy the river, and eat an ice-cream in the shade of the old trees along the river’s edge. Even Joss Ackland was beginning to enjoy himself.

June the 5th was a particularly hot day, and the morning rehearsals for that evening’s performance of Measure for Measure had gone well, but were exhausting. What better way to cool off than go for a swim? Albert Forster, unlike Joss Ackland, could swim, but not well, but nonetheless felt relaxed in the jovial company of his new friend, assistant stage manager Ernest West, who was a strong swimmer.

The two young men set off in a canoe (dodging the pleasure cruisers taking visitors to the weir and back) for the ‘safe’ bathing area of the river alongside the town’s camping ground slightly up river from the theatre, and a spot which is today a haven for caravan holiday makers, and hundreds of Canada Geese that have made Stratford their home. When the two young men reached the bathing area Ernest stripped and dived yelling into the achingly cold water, leaving Albert messing about in the canoe pretending to be a Red Indian.

Suddenly Albert’s war cries stopped and there was a splash. Ernest turned and saw his friend floundering in the water, the canoe upside down. The young assistant stage manager then struck out for the canoe, but Albert was gone. Ernest dived frantically again and again in a bid to find his new friend, but to no avail. He never saw him again.

The police found the young actor’s body several hours later over a mile downstream.

That evening’s performance of Measure for Measure went ahead as planned as something of a memorial to Albert Forster. Joss Ackland remembers it as a very subdued and tearful affair.

Early next morning Ackland arranged to have swimming lessons, and vowed never to return to Stratford.

Last year, having a drink with the International Man of Love, Guy Adams, discussing the forthcoming literary loveliness of Humdrumming, and the long haired loveliness of Greg Doran, who was sitting outside knocking back chilled white wine, and talking to some rough looking cove who looked familiar but to whom I couldn‘t put a name, I was taken back to similar summer evenings in the same pub a mere 54 years ago.

As a Woodbine smoking, beer swilling, four year old I was well known in the famous establishment ( there was no age limit to drinking in those days, if you could pay for it and hold the glass steady you were welcome) with my own personal seat by the window which allowed me to take down car number plates (an old British pastime) and beg sleeping pills for my mother from an old wino of doctor who used to frequent the place.

“ But why do you want sleeping pills for your mother, young man?”

“ She keeps waking up, doctor.”

I was also known for my wit and conversation, especially with the actors who’d crowd around my table at the end of a show seeking my advice on the delivery of a line, or the inner meaning of a soliloquy, or beg ( for a fiver) the telephone number of my mother’s younger sister, who was a bit of a stunner with a small fortune earned in a munitions factory during the Second World War.

In other words I was a pretty cool sort of guy, and well in with the actoring mob, especially Richard Burton ( ‘Rich’ to mates like me) who would often sit with me after a show going through my latest list of car numbers just in case there was a Pontrhydyfen plate (there were only six cars in the place according to Rich) which meant somebody had made the trip up from the valleys to see the local boy knocking the acting shit of Prince Hal and King Henry V. There never was of course.

Rich wasn’t really famous yet, although he’d done a couple of films, but when the other thesps saw him spending so much time with me after a performance they knew he must be something a bit special, although one or two old timers of the Edwin Booth school of actin’ admitted they couldn’t understand a word he said, especially when he whispered.

“ He whispers me boy, on stage, whispers. One doesn’t whisper on the stage of the Memorial, one shouts, even if you’re supposed to be whisperin’.”

But Rich was rightly having none of that, especially if you’ve been described by Kenneth Tynan as having a voice that is “…a brimming pool running disturbingly deep.” Actually I gave Tynan that line, but we’ll let it go.

I remember there was quite a lot of concern as to whether Rich was ready for Stratford or not, even to the extent that Anthony Quayle ( he was running the theatre at the time) phoned me at my father’s bakery ( I was usually up around 3am to help the old man get the first batch of bread into the ovens) asking if I could be of any help. Naturally I put Anthony’s mind at rest, telling him of the time my mother’s younger sister ( the stunner) had driven me down to Wales to see a production of David Jones’ In Parenthisis, which was tremendous. I told him he had nothing to worry about. I like to think I helped Rich on his way to success.

But then, one late summer’s evening, after a particularly splendid performance of Henry V ( I’d managed to leave the theatre quickly and get my favourite seat at the Duck), a rather flustered Rich came hurrying in to the pub to tell me he had some rather important guests arriving any minute, and that they were going to help him get established in Hollywood, and that I was to ensure he was on his best behaviour.

“ Oh course, old man, my pleasure.”

“ Good. Knew I could rely on you.”

With that he bought me a pint of Flowers and a large cigar ( which I have to say was rather good for those austere times) and told me who was coming.

“ Damn!”

“ Indeed, old son. Do you think I ought to play the accordion tonight? Give ‘em a rendition of Cwm Rhondda, or something…”

“ No, that might be misconstrued. Better to give them a healthy belting out of the odd Cole Porter number, with a little Berlin for effect. But not too many low notes, they can be awfully unsettling, especially on an empty stomach. ”

He agreed. He always agreed. And then, suddenly, the door of the bar opened and in stepped Bogey and Bacall.

I’d met them before of course, albeit briefly, when thy flew me out to Hollywood to discuss a script idea I’d come up with. But sadly, and $50,000 better off, the project still hadn’t been made, and I have to say I’d lost interest anyway. But here they were again.

Bogey and Bacall really were delightful people, and that old pub really began to rock when Rich began playing his red and silver Melotone accordion, and Lauren sang some wonderful Porter songs, with Humph pounding out a wild rhythm with his fountain pen on several empty beer glasses that would have made Gene Krupa envious. Actually, it did make him envious when I told him about it a few months later in New York.

“ You say he actually did a 7/8 followed by a 16/4, on a beer glass!”

And how the drinks flowed, no more so than when Rich got behind the bar and began to pour them himself, with the landlord helpless to stop him, although I assured him I’d pay for any spillage; mind you I didn’t expect there to be much of that.

Toward the end of the night, with Rich dead drunk and fast asleep behind the bar, with a contract in his pocket for three Hollywood movies, and his beloved accordion floating down the river, Humphrey Bogart looked at me and proposed a toast.

“ Here’s looking at you, kid.”