Having built up quite a surplus of cash in the group’s bank account, thanks to a win in the Telephone Treasure Trail and the prize draw for new members at the National Conference in Glasgow last year, Pickering and District members decided to splash out on a lunch date with a local celebrity, actor/director Dominic Goodwin.
The Fox and Hounds provided the venue for our celebrations and we were delighted with the food and service supplied by the whole team.
Dominic’s talk was informative and entertaining: his personal interests centring on some of our best-loved and famous actors who, sadly, are no longer with us. He regaled us with fascinating facts about Dame Margaret Rutherford, Peter Ustinov and Joyce Grenfell, amongst others, and his impressions of some of their well-known monologues had us all in stitches!
We were intrigued to learn of Rutherford’s extremely sad early life, blighted by both parents’ mental illness and her bouts of depression which were treated with electric shock treatment. She was fortunate enough to have a very happy marriage, after a courtship of 15 years (!), and was cared for by her husband until she died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 80.
At the end of his talk, Dominic read Deric Longden’s Nativity … not because it has anything to do with any of his ‘heroes’, but just because he enjoys it.
We all really enjoyed his talk, too.
Linden Quinlan | NWR Pickering and District
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