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In 1984, at the age of 18, Sweetpea (née Jane) Slight, geeky and naive, moved from Dorset to London, clutching dreams of attending Rada and becoming an actor.
What actually happened was that she was effectively kidnapped by legendary theatre producer Thelma Holt to work behind the scenes, not on stage.
Her memoir is an absolute treasure trove or who’s who of London theatre, the very type of stories that theatre-goers hope are going on beyond the cyclorama wall.
In the 30 years in which Sweetpea worked in theatre she encountered great hardship in the hours that had to be kept, great fear and eventual joy in the staging of productions, and great generosity of some of the best-known actors of the past three decades.
There is a cast of thousands, almost, so the names and timelines can be a bit knit-one-drop-one but it is an utterly beguiling book, full of hilarious and tragic incidents. Absolutely wonderful, darling.
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