YORKSHIRE actor, director and playwright Jack Shepherd recalls a bygone era of entertainment in his new drama, Only When I Laugh, whose world premiere can be seen at Harrogate Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday.

The setting is the 1950s in the glory days of variety theatre. At the Leeds Empire, theatre manager Stanley is not having a good day. The top-of-the-bill spot belongs to Reg, number one comic and hero of the working classes, but with the city council on his back to tame Reg’s routine, how will Stanley ensure the show will go on?

Jack, best known for playing Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe in the television series Wycliffe, will play the aforementioned Stanley: a role that draws from his love of post-war variety entertainment in Leeds.

He was born in the city in 1940, and while most people’s idea of variety in Leeds would be the Leeds City Varieties Music Hall, Jack has rather different recollections. “What you have to remember, for people of my generation, is that the City Varieties was synonymous with sleazy sex! It used to take number three or number four tour shows and always had a stripper as the leading act,” recalls Jack.

“Anybody who went to the City Varieties was there to be sleazy. Only The Good Old Days television programme changed all that.”

Jack never went to shows at the City Varieties. “My first experience of theatre was at the Leeds Empire, going there with my family.

“I didn’t enjoy going to the cinema much, all that violence, but I remember my grandmother ducking into the Empire on Briggate – about half way down with a big foyer sticking out into the road, next to Schofields – so that we could get out of the rain and I found I was totally happy there,” he says.

“As a little kid I was in love with variety, as was Tony Harrison [the playwright], who grew up in south Leeds. You don’t perceive it as vulgar when you’re young: I remember going to see Max Miller and I’ve never seen such expectancy, everyone smoking, and the theatre full of soldiers.

“I’ve been to see Olivier at the National Theatre in Othello and the atmosphere for Max Miller, the electricity, it was 2,000 times that.”

Jack recalls how a Max Miller show made you feel like a corset had been removed, allowing theatre shows to breathe again. “We’ve now gone so far the other way, so it’ll probably swing back again, but at that time, when it was so grey after the war, Max Miller lifted the lid on entertainment,” he says.

* Love & Madness Productions present Only When I Laugh at Harrogate Theatre, February 3 to 7, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01423 502116.