Biddulph Grammar school opened in the Autumn term of 1960. By my calculations this means that when I got a place there in 1967 the original intake of 60 or so pupils were moving up to become the first ever upper sixth form. Some would say that the school’s first headteacher, Mr. E. S. Kelly, had visions of grandeur; the staff wore their gowns for assembly, we celebrated Founders’ Day, there was a school debating society and the like. Certainly, his expectation was that we should heed the school motto – ‘Let us aim for Higher Things’ - Sublimora - which was emblazoned on our uniform. We benefited from superb facilities – the domestic science rooms where I learnt to cook, the language lab where we learnt German and Russian, the technology classrooms with their state of the art equipment. Nor could we have had more inspirational and dedicated teachers, giving freely of their time in extra curricular activities well beyond the classroom teaching. The emphasis on music, choir, chess, drama, sport, social service and out of school activities set about preparing us for the world that we would make our own. We also had the advantage of being quite a small school. About 350 pupils in total. Everyone knew everyone’s name and although there were some ‘strong’ personalities, I was never aware of any bullying. There was a big emphasis on music making and something like two-thirds of pupils played musical instruments. In my 1st term I put myself down for violin lessons and was duly despatched to the medical room for a mass audition with a gentleman called Roy Mosedale, the peripatetic violin teacher. He went around the room asking each individual their name and why they wanted to take up a string instrument. My turn went something like this:

Mr. Mosedale: What’s your name?

Me:  Julian Hirst

Mr. Mosedale: [does double take] Julian Hirst? Any relation to Tim Hirst?

Me: Yes Sir. He’s my brother.

Mr. Mosedale: I’m not having you then. Next!

Quite what my big brother had done to piss him off, I never did find out. Suffice to say it did me a huge favour as I ended up having trumpet lessons with a lovely man called Sid Price. I was soon playing in the school orchestra and various other music groups. On a Saturday once a month a crowd of us would travel by coach to Stafford to play with the Staffordshire County Youth Orchestra. Transport was provided by a local coach hire company run by a chap called Bill Hall who also ran a coal delivery service. It wasn’t unknown for him to drop off the odd sack of nutty slack en route, or to be carrying live, loose chickens on the bus.  My mother reckoned that once it was snowing heavily on Biddulph Moor so he just drove back to his garage, turfed his passengers off the bus and told them they’d have to walk the rest of the way. I don’t recall of any adult supervision of the coach journey to & from Stafford. I do remember at about the age of 14 spending one Saturday lunch break in a pub drinking lager and smoking castella cigars with my fellow brass players. These were the days when child protection wasn’t really on anyone’s radar.

As you know, I’d been performing my comedy conjuring and vent act for the great unwashed since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I’d seen my Ma & Pa perform in amdram with the Pittshill Players many a time and oft but it never once occurred to me that I might go legitimate, considering myself a strictly variety performer. However, when it was announced that the annual school production was to be “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and that sprites and fairies were to be recruited from the 1st & 2nd years, I found myself in the role of Cobweb, one of the royal retainers who accompany Queen Titania in most of her scenes. I don’t recall any kind of audition process but I was as pleased as punch to be cast. Rehearsals were mainly after school with an all day Saturday close to the run. I particularly remember enjoying a rehearsal in the school library with head of music Mrs. Biddle who taught us the lullaby “Philomel with Melody” the tune of which I remember to this day. Rehearsing & performing with a group of people was great fun and far less nerve-wracking and, dare I say, less lonely than doing my solo act. Suffice to say that, metaphorically speaking, I had the bug. Unlike many of the cast who quite literally had the bug, namely Salmonella. I think there were only 3 performances, but on the 1st night a tummy bug started to spread through the company. Cast members were throwing up left, right and centre. Did the school cancel? Did they buffalo. Bright red buckets were strategically placed around the wings and doses of Kaolin and Morphine mixture were dispensed willy nilly to provide relief from sickness and diarrhoea. I seem to remember staying at home on the Friday to ensure being well enough to attend the evening performance. My Polish friend Karina has an expression: “So long ago, it’s no longer true”. The above feels like that and it is over 50 years ago, but I swear I’m not making it up.

And thus it was that I got my first taste of acting. No, I’ll rephrase that. My first taste of acting as part of an ensemble. I learnt quite early on that, no matter how technically accomplished I was as a magician, in order to put my act over to an audience, I had to be an actor who was playing the part of a magician. And I’d been doing that for years.

The following year the school presented a double bill. Younger pupils performed “The Willow Pattern Place” a classic tale of innocent, yet forbidden love humorously adapted from an ancient Chinese tale. I’ve no idea who I played but it was someone pompous, so I suspect I based my character on Pooh-Bah from Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Mikado”.

The senior pupils performed Jean Anouilh's “Antigone” a tragedy inspired by the play of the same name by Sophocles. Set in Greece in 441 BC the production called for swarthy make up and light diaphanous costumes. With a cast of 15+ this was going to involve a lot of body make up to be applied to pasty, sun deprived arms and legs and I suspect there was a very small budget for that sort of thing. Chemistry department to the rescue, the communal bath in the boys’ sports changing room was filled with a solution of potassium permanganate which is known to stain the skin shades of brown depending on length of exposure. Only one application would be necessary as the effect took several days to fade. The problem was that having been dipped, the cast members then wandered around the changing room, talking, chatting, making conversation, towelling themselves dry just as one would after normal bathing. This caused droplets of the solution to drip and run down the arms, legs and torso, producing a streaked, striped effect. To a man, the citizens of Thebes looked for all the world as if they’d been bathing in sunlight filtered dustily through the slats of a door.

A lovely girl from the sixth form called Hilary Moss played the titular role and her lover Haemon was portrayed by my brother Tim. He hadn’t shown much interest in theatre up until then, but English teacher Dorothy Moorhouse had recruited him to her after school drama club and his acting talent blossomed from there. I suspect he was also spurred on by the fact that he had the ‘hots’ for his very attractive leading lady. As the role involved a certain amount of snogging, this made him the envy of the school. My recollection is that Tim & Hilary were so shy that no actual kissing took place until the night of the opening performance. A bit high risk whilst sporting a short toga I would have thought. One got the impression that following the kiss Haemon delivered his lines whilst angling himself slightly up stage from the waist downwards. Whatever, Tim really was very good in this and every other part I ever saw him play. I’d go as far as to say that of the two of us, Tim was always the better actor, performing with naturalism and nuance. You believed him & always got a sense of his characters’ reality. On leaving school, Tim trained as a drama teacher but it wasn’t for him. In the 1980s, Tim spotted that the falling cost of video technology was about to revolutionise the future of TV and set up his own part-time business recording weddings and local sports fixtures. Eventually he went full time and spent many years as a freelance news and sports cameraman working for the likes of the BBC, Sky News and Port Vale FC.

Twelve Night was next up. I was cast in the role of Viola’s twin Sebastian. Played by Ann Jones (I think), Viola and I were the same height when cast, but I put on a growth spurt & was about 3 inches taller by the time we went on, so Ann had to wear heels. Two other things I particularly remember are my terrible wig which felt like it had been knitted from the pubic hair of a badger, and my misunderstanding of one of my lines which nobody ever corrected. Rather than saying:

“Where’s Antonio then? I couldn’t find him at The Elephant.”

I always delivered the line as:

“Where’s Antonio then? I couldn’t find him an Elephant.”

Maybe the director thought it was funny. Maybe nobody ever listened anyway.

Tim turned in a tip top performance as Malvolio and stole the show.

One evening in 1970, two men rang our doorbell. Tim was out for the evening and Mum answered the door. I braced myself, hoping for their sake that the weren’t Jehovah’s witnesses. They were way too old to be Mormons. On a quiet day Mum would happily invite religious missionaries in, ply them with tea and cake and then skilfully and eloquently dismantle their arguments and send them away seriously considering converting to Methodism. The two visitors were ushered into the front room while I skulked about on the stairs, curious as to what was going on. I wasn’t kept in suspense for long. Mum called me in and I was introduced to John Ashton and Harry Morris. John was a small, balding, grey haired man in his 60s. He had the look of Captain Mainwaring from “Dad’s Army” but the quiet demeanour of Wally Batty from “Last of the Summer Wine”. Harry Morris was younger and had the air of a shopkeeper. He also sported the sort of toupee that made you think that, if he were to turn suddenly, it would remain pointing in the same direction. It turned out they were emissaries from the Biddulph Players, whose next production was to be “Spring and Port Wine” by Bill Naughton. They were looking for someone to play the part of Wilfred, the youngest son of the Crompton family. Having heard that I was a talented child actor, might I be interested? Mum stepped in to her well known role as my agent, asked lots of questions regarding rehearsal commitment, show dates and venue, production values, etc. Having satisfied herself of their bona fides, I was asked again. “Would you like to join us?” You bet I would. And that was that. I was presented with a script; a list of dates was given to mother and I was on my way to becoming a local celebrity.

Rehearsals took place at Bateman Girls School, a mere 5 minutes’ stroll from our house. I daresay Mum went with me to the 1st rehearsal but after that I would chip up on my own and a kindly cast member would run me home. John Ashton directed the play with his wife Alice as Daisy Crompton, the gentle, understanding matriarch of the family. By day, Alice was manageress of our local Army Surplus store and in real life was an excellent Nora Batty to her husband's Wally. Local schoolteacher Arnold Williams was overbearing Father Rafe. I was terrified of him at first but we became firm friends. The cast couldn’t have been kinder or more encouraging, and I loved every second of rehearsals. I learnt a lot too. Not least that my casting was a case of mistaken identity. They had actually called round looking to recruit Tim. Hey! That's showbiz kid. The only aspect of the show I didn’t enjoy was being obliged to eat fried herring served with cold mashed potato every night. But it was important to the plot that all plates were cleared except one so I tucked in with gusto. Sadly, I don’t have a copy of the full review but the local rag said this of my performance:

“Possibly the most striking performance was that of Wilfred Crompton, played by Julian Hirst. Fourteen year old Julian, still a pupil at Biddulph Grammar School, gave an extremely good performance, being sure of his lines and confident.”

My first review was quickly followed by my first ever experience of post-show blues. No one had prepared me for the anxiety and sadness that actors often experience when a production comes to an end. I wept for days.

However, before I knew it, both Tim and I were invited to join another amateur group to play the Sheriff’s men in a pantomime version of “Robin Hood”.  It was fairly unusual for groups like this to have any kind of costume department, so Tim & I had to sort ourselves out. Tim assumed the mantle of ‘straight man’ and I don’t recall what he wore. Ever the fashion victim, I’m sure it was something fairly sartorial. I chose to wear hobnail boots, odd football socks, a long white tail shirt and my Mum’s beaver skin fur coat. Channelling my inner Eccles from The Goon Show I expect. Now, I’m not sure what happened to Tim on the last night of the show. Being 3 years older than me, maybe he’d gone off with friends to a party straight after the performance. But I was left to do the short walk home on my own. Anyone who has ever carried a fur coat will tell you that they are quite heavy, so the easiest thing was to wear it. So off I went in Mum’s fur coat carrying a small suitcase containing my other items of costume and personal props. My striking ensemble attracted the attention of a passing police panda car and a difficult conversation ensued as to why I was wandering the streets looking for all the world like a cat burglar.

A brief visit to Biddulph Police Station pending a conversation with Mother ensued. And that, Ladies & Gentlemen, was the only time I’ve ever had my collar felt.