Amongst my fragrant souvenirs

It's hardly the Shropshire Star, but I have taken to looking at the Hemel Hempstead Gazette site.

Amongst other things, it has some good local history pages. This one looks at Hemel in 1973, which particularly interests me as that is the year I left the town and moved to Leicestershire.

And one item stands out:

• Herbert Christopher of the Hemel Hempstead Amateur Dramatic Society declared that the town needed a theatre. He said: "What a terrible thing it is to confess that a town beginning to approach 80,000 people does not possess its own theatre." HHAODS went on to buy the former St John's church hall at Boxmoor (now Boxmoor Theatre).

It happens that I have played St John's church hall. Boxmoor County Primary School stood next to it and as the school hall was not remotely large enough for plays or fetes, we put them on in the church hall instead.

In 1970 I played the innkeeper in our nativity play. My great memory of the experience is that I had to look at the Virgin Mary and exclaim: "My God, poor girl, she's half dead." I did so with such conviction that everyone laughed.

That is enough theatrical memoirs for now. But I hope to have my own show on Radio 2 one day.