How did you make such a wild career change?
I went up to the Edinburgh festival after I’d resigned from the army.
I went for fun as a tourist and I thought, ‘oh I remember Theatre’.
While I was there I ended up working filling in tour booking and it
just evolved from there.
The skills required for both jobs are surprisingly similar, logistics
and managing people. Its not a light undertaking to go on tour in a
van taking a theatre show on the road for 7 months. There is crisis
management occasionally! On the very last day of rehearsals for
Tiddler ‘s last tour the actress fell off a ladder and broke her wrist.
And the next day we were opening in the West End – we luckily found
an actor to replace her who’d done the role before, he had been on his
way to perform on a cruise ship!
Its interesting you don’t really see many women fishing?
No you don’t, its like a big secret that men kept! I don’t know why.
I love fishing. I think there is only one girl in the England youth team,
we need to get more people out and discover it. Places like Grafam
Water have free introductory open days and tutoring, it really is great
people should go try it. It doesn’t have to be expensive, there is plenty
of second hand gear going round.
I have a smoker out the back, so I smoke a lot of the trout and give
a lot of it away!
A scene
from Stick Man
What can the people of Arlesey go and see by Scamp Theatre?
In production at the moment we’ve got ‘Tiddler and other terrific
tales’. Its four books in one show and that has just re opened at
Bristol Old Vic and is on the road to Bahrain! But its on tour till
August and nearest to here its on at Hertford Theatre on the 10th
April, London 30th April and Watford 4th & 5th June and then its
off to Hong Kong and Singapore!!
A lot of people go to the theatre to relax, so what do you do?
I fly fish. I grew up with two sisters and cul-de-sac full of boys,
so once I’d mastered football and riding my bike with no hands,
we took up fishing. I then discovered trout fishing which is
so relaxing. I’m actually currently the English nation