The globe (Golden and otherwise) has rightly fallen h-o-h for Olivia Colman who, before The Crown, The Favourite and Peep Show, had an early role as Bev in the ‘Bev-Kev’ ads for AA insurance. But I was there at the very beginning, when she starred opposite her husband-to-be in a 1995 Cambridge production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners, directed by the incomparable Kate Pakenham. I was in charge of the sound and lights, which weren’t very elaborate, given the 80-seat Corpus Playroom could be lit with a 100-watt bulb. But I did have one minor creative triumph. Act one, scene one opens in an empty dining-room in late afternoon, and I persuaded Kate that as the lights faded up, so should Radio 4 — allowing Olivia to switch off the radio as she entered. And so each night I recorded the opening fragments of the PM show, and watched the audience grin as they recognised that day’s headlines.
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