ROBIN Simpson feared he had missed out on the chance to play Stan Laurel, not once but twice.
"I heard that the New Vic were doing Tom McGrath's play Laurel And Hardy last autumn and I thought, I'd really love to do that', but for one reason or another I wasn't seen for it," recalls Robin.
"Then when I found out they were doing it again in the spring, I told my agent, you must get me seen for it this time', but she said I was two days too late!"
What happened next? "Luckily the director still looked at my CV and didn't dismiss me out of hand," says Robin, an actor familiar to York Theatre Royal audiences from his roles in Pinocchio, Pygmalion and The Little Mermaid.
He can be seen in McGrath's 1976 play at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until next Saturday, playing Stan in a fly-on-the-wall look at the real people beneath the bowler hats as the boys tell their own life stories from beyond the grave.
"The benefit of this play is that you get to see much more of their private lives, which is not as widely known because, away from the movie cameras, they didn't do anything in the public eye," says Robin.
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"Oliver Hardy didn't want any publicity about his illness or his death because he just wanted to be remembered for making people laugh, and Stan Laurel didn't go to his funeral because he didn't want to be seen looking sad. They always took their comedy very seriously."
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