Another year, another RAFTA project. Bums on seats people, that’s what we need…

On its first visit to Lincoln drill Hall, The Royal Air Force Theatrical Association proudly presents this classic, light-hearted and absolutely delightful French farce set in turn-of-the-century Paris.

Hotel Paradiso is a sleazy Parisian hotel chosen by Monsieur Boniface for an illicit night with Madame Cot, the wife of his best friend who happens to be investigating ghosts in the same hotel on the same night. And that’s not all – there is a nephew interested in philosophical passion, a country cousin who stammers when it rains and his four daughters. It all results in frenzied excitement for all involved and an evening of hilarious entertainment for the audience.

This time next week the cast of Hotel Paradiso will have finished their first performance at the Drill Hall in Lincoln. After a whole year of rehearsing, set-building, costume-making and heavy-drinking it is pretty much guaranteed that it will be a raging success! But don’t just take my word for it, why not come and see the show for yourself?

Tickets can be bought online from the Lincoln Drill Hall website. They are a reasonably priced £8.50 each.

Oh, did I mention that I’m actually in the show? What more reason do you need to buy a ticket?

Folks, make space in your diaries for the first week in October as Lyneham Stage Club will be performing their next production, Constance Cox’s reworking of the Oscar Wilde short story Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.

After a fateful palm reading reveals that Lord Arthur Savile will one day be a murderer, Arthur decides to postpone his upcoming wedding until he has committed the murder, therefore preventing his fiancee from becoming his victim.

Aided by his long-suffering butler and an anarchist, Arthur soon learns that it is harder to commit a murder than popular fiction has led him to believe…

Tickets are available from myself, the names on the poster or from the Lyneham Stage Club website.

And before you ask, yes, I am in it and I can’t provide free tickets.

Oh, and can I mention that I designed the poster as well? I thank you.

The Skull Family Gathering

“He said the [Skull] surname seems to have originated in the Brecon area and spread over the centuries into Bristol, the villages of Dauntsey and Edington in Wiltshire, Bitton in Gloucestershire and Ashmansworth in Hampshire.”

It all started after a chap named Sid Skull had attended a Lyneham Stage Club play. He had noticed my name in the programme and was intrigued by the similarity in our surnames. As a hardened genealogist and postmaster, Sid used his investigative skills to track me down and interrogate me for information about my lineage.

The interrogation took place at The Skull/Scull Family Gathering last weekend. More than 70 Skull/Scull clan members attended a gathering at Lyneham Church Hall to pool their resources and help solve some of the puzzles in the Skull/Scull family lineage. People from Hampshire, Derbyshire and Australia attended the event, with previous gatherings hosting Skulls/Sculls from afar as North and South America.

To discover the fascinating facts about my family, how cleverly inventive and handsome we are and whether we indeed have any skeletons in the closet, visit www.skulltoscull.org.uk.

Come and see the RAFTA 2007 project at the Blakehay Theatre this September. Not only will you get to visit the splendid seaside resort of Weston-Super-Mare, you will get to see a wonderful performance by a cast of wonderful people, including myself in a role that reassess, nay confirms my position on the social ladder.

Find out more by visiting The RAFTA projects page.