The King’s was a fine theatre.... It was there that I was introduced to the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan. I had an aunt who was a school teacher and every time I mentioned a show I’d seen, she would say, ‘Ah, but have you ever seen The Mikado?’ I was sixteen at the time and you know what you’re like when you’re sixteen.... I determined that wild horses wouldn’t drag me to see The Mikado, but my Aunt Annie did. She arranged a party of four and announced that she would pay for the seats... ...The orchestra tuned up, the auditorium lights went down and the curtain arose on the male chorus of the D’Oyly Carte company singing, ‘We are gentlemen of Japan’. At that very moment I was captured and have been daft about Gilbert and Sullivan ever since (though I must admit that I prefer Gilbert to Sullivan). Of course, the D’Oyly Carte company of those days was a bright and shining one. Henry Lytton was in his prime and his Ko-Ko was only equalled by the enormous yet light- footed Leo Sheffield as Pooh-Bah. Bertha Lewis was a magnificent Katisha and Darrell Fancourt a terrifying Mikado... ...I was so entranced that I went to one Gilbert and Sullivan piece after another, as long as I had the money.... It took me some years to go right through the D’Oyly Carte repertoire and I was delighted when they revived two shows which had been dropped — Ruddigore (which Queen Victoria didn’t like because of the title), and The Sorcerer, in which Henry Lytton sang, ‘My name is John Wellington Wells. I’m a dealer in magic and spells’, and made audiences wonder why this delightful charade had been lost for so long. I made up the rest of the Gilbert and Sullivan canon by seeing some pieces which the D’Oyly Carte never put on — for example, Utopia Limited, which had the British Cabinet sitting in a half-circle in minstrel style and discussing affairs of state in the same manner. I should think it would be very popular if brought back today. These forgotten Gilbert and Sullivan tit-bits were revived by Glasgow amateur operatic companies. << less