In my case, it was my father and not my mother who played the piano. My childhood was wrapped in a blanket of melodies by Chopin, Liszt and Tchaikowsky, as Dad tried not to get his huge fingers stuck between the keys of our upright piano, that stood behind the door of our little lounge, directly below my even smaller bedroom, where I was trying to get to sleep. I inherited the hands but not the musicianship.In 1947, Santa Claus delivered the cheapest in the range of Pollock's Toy Theatres to a stage struck 8 year-old and so I did my first Shakespeare in our lounge in Wigan, with scenery and cardboard cut-outs from Olivier's film of HAMLET, sliding Sir Laurence onto wire and waggling him at a petite Jean Simmons - me doing both voices.
