Z Cars actor Bernard Holley among TV stars who trod boards at the Playhouse

WHEN it came to repertory theatre in Derby, there was only one place to go in the 1950s and 60s – Derby Playhouse, which had grown out of the Little Theatre that had opened in 1948 in a converted church hall in Becket Street.

In 1952 the theatre company moved to another converted venue, this time a former Baptist Sunday School in Sacheverel Street, and four years later it survived a major fire. It was probably tempting fate that the theatre was presenting a play called The Wick and The Wax and planned to follow it up with a production of High Temperature.

The building was expanded to take in several surrounding houses, and actors such as Marius Goring, Susannah York, Eva Bartok and John Nettles trod its boards.

I attended regularly until the theatre closed in May 1975, when it moved to the Eagle Centre in what is now Derby Theatre. Whenever I hear Kenny Ball’s The Green Leaves of Summer I always think of the Playhouse in Sacheverel Street because that was always played before curtain up, whatever the production.

In 1964, a new young actor Playhouse in Sacheveral joined the repertory company. Bernard Holley, who later became one of Britain’s most instantly recognisable TV actors with roles in Z Cars, The Bill, Dr Who and Casualty, lived with his wife, Jean, in a flat on Burton Road, around the corner from where I lived.

On Sunday lunchtimes we’d bump into each other in the Durham Ox. Bernard went on to bigger things but we kept in touch and he recalls his days here fondly.

He says: “My year in Derby was invaluable to me as an actor because of the variety of plays we did and parts we played. Young actors don’t have that ‘rep’ training any more, sad to say. I

The former Street kept in touch with Ian Cooper, Mary Laine and Michael Hall from the Playhouse – all sadly now deceased, with Michael being the last to go, at 93, a few years back. In his final days he lived in grumpy retirement at Brinsworth House, a theatrical retirement home.“There were also Carolyn Moody, a beautiful, talented actress who died tragically young, and Alan Mason who, in 1964, gave us a rather sombre Hamlet.“I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I’ve always earned a living, not a bad boast for an actor. Theatre dominated the first three years of my acting life and Derby Playhouse played its part.”