Extraordinary Chat Up

In late 1974, early 1975, when students at Bedford College, London University, my best friend and I decided to explore what was on offer in the West End theatre. Neither of us knew much about theatre so we chose two West End plays which had been very well reviewed. The first was a Victorian drawing room drama starring Margaret Leighton and other famous old thesps;it was dire. The second we saw the following week; Dorothy Tutin in J.M. Barrie's 'What Every Woman Knows' at the Albery Theatre. Our hearts sank as the curtain rose on yet another Victorian drawing room; again it was painful and we only made it to the interval before making our escape. The acting had been especially dreadful; particularly the young man who played the "jeuvinile lead". It would be a very long time before we risked going to the West End theatre again. A couple of months later my friend and I had moved into a new flat near Kings Cross and one evening went for a drink in a tatty, and completely unremarkable pub tucked away in one of the streets behind the Pentonville Road. Being quite gorgeous in those days, we were soon chatted up by two guys. I talked mainly to the shorter of the two. There was much merry banter in the course of which he asked me what we liked to do and I told him in some detail about our disappointment at the two plays we'd seen recently. He seemed interested so I continued, making a particular point of stressing how apalling the young actor had been in 'What Every Woman Knows'. So apalling in fact that we had walked out, I told him. He looked at me and said that the play had, indeed been pretty awful, that it had folded fairly quickly and that he agreed the young actor had been truely terrible As he spoke I realised that HE was the young actor. I suddenly saw, without the false whiskers and moustache, that it was unmistakably him. Of all the people in all of London to chat me up and talk about that particular topic! I was mortified but there was nothing I could do. I had unwittingly ladled on the insults. He was very gracious; my friend and I even went back to the guys' place for a coffee. They were total gents. Years later, in the eighties, I saw the taller of the two on the Wogan chat show; he was Iain Blair, an actor who became a successful writer of romances under the pseudonym Emma Blair. The juvenile lead was Peter Egan; he did OK too.