Back to Where the Lights First Came On
| A return to the Octagon Theatre, Bolton Some places stay stitched into you long after you’ve walked away from them. Today, standing beside a plaque in the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, I found myself face to face with one of those places, and with the boy I used to be. The plaque marks the opening of the theatre by Princess Margaret on 27 November 1967. I was there that day, not as a guest, not as a dignitary, but as a wide-eyed trainee sound and lighting engineer on my very first job in any theatre. I was seventeen, skint, dyslexic, and absolutely certain of only one thing: I wanted to be part of the magic. And somehow, I was. I wasn’t just behind the scenes either. I found myself on stage in Oh What a Lovely War and a handful of other productions, a part-time actor with more enthusiasm than technique, learning the craft by doing it, failing at it, and doing it again anyway. The Octagon was the first place that let me be both the lad in the wings and the fool under the lights. |  Pointing back to the spot where I first learned how to make magic happen on stage, long before I knew I’d spend decades doing it around the world. |
Today’s visit was meant to be simple, a meeting with my dear friend Khun San, over from Bangkok, and Tony, an old Front of House Manager who’s still as sharp and warm as ever. But walking through those doors again pulled a thread I hadn’t touched in decades.
I remembered the early days: the smell of dust on hot lamps, the clatter of scenery being dragged across the stage, the quiet panic before a cue, the louder panic when you missed one. I remembered the actors, some of them just starting out, and a few of them destined to become household names. And I remembered the characters behind the scenes, the ones who never made it to the programme notes but shaped the place as surely as any director.
The first Front of House Manager, for instance, was the marvellously named Mr John Whacket. A posh London “lovie” with impeccable manners and a voice that could butter toast. He treated everyone, even the scruffy trainees like me, with a kind of gentle dignity that made you want to stand a little straighter.
And then there was the Wardrobe Mistress. I wish I could remember her name. She ran her department with an iron fist and a heart that beat for the theatre. She died suddenly in the sewing room, and within weeks the stories began, footsteps where no one walked, the faint smell of lavender backstage, costumes shifting on their rails. Every theatre has a ghost; the Octagon didn’t waste time acquiring its own.
Standing there today, pointing up at that plaque like a tourist in my own past, I realised just how much that place shaped the road ahead. Without the Octagon, I doubt I’d have become a professional entertainer. Without those early lessons in timing, chaos and camaraderie, in the strange alchemy of making people feel something, I might never have stepped onto stages across the world. From Bolton to New York, Bangkok, Shanghai and a thousand more places, from refugee camps to royal halls, the thread began here.
It’s funny how life works. You think you’re just taking a job. You’re actually stepping into your future.
And now, as I write the final chapters of Crackmask, I find myself circling back to these beginnings more often. The places, the people, ghosts and lovies, they all have their part in the story.
If you’d like to follow the journey as it unfolds, you’re welcome to join me over at crackmask.com or on X at @EddieHaworthWrites. There’s much more to come, and some of it started right here, in this photograph, in this theatre, in this moment of remembering.
I remembered the early days: the smell of dust on hot lamps, the clatter of scenery being dragged across the stage, the quiet panic before a cue, the louder panic when you missed one. I remembered the actors, some of them just starting out, and a few of them destined to become household names. And I remembered the characters behind the scenes, the ones who never made it to the programme notes but shaped the place as surely as any director.
The first Front of House Manager, for instance, was the marvellously named Mr John Whacket. A posh London “lovie” with impeccable manners and a voice that could butter toast. He treated everyone, even the scruffy trainees like me, with a kind of gentle dignity that made you want to stand a little straighter.
And then there was the Wardrobe Mistress. I wish I could remember her name. She ran her department with an iron fist and a heart that beat for the theatre. She died suddenly in the sewing room, and within weeks the stories began, footsteps where no one walked, the faint smell of lavender backstage, costumes shifting on their rails. Every theatre has a ghost; the Octagon didn’t waste time acquiring its own.
Standing there today, pointing up at that plaque like a tourist in my own past, I realised just how much that place shaped the road ahead. Without the Octagon, I doubt I’d have become a professional entertainer. Without those early lessons in timing, chaos and camaraderie, in the strange alchemy of making people feel something, I might never have stepped onto stages across the world. From Bolton to New York, Bangkok, Shanghai and a thousand more places, from refugee camps to royal halls, the thread began here.
It’s funny how life works. You think you’re just taking a job. You’re actually stepping into your future.
And now, as I write the final chapters of Crackmask, I find myself circling back to these beginnings more often. The places, the people, ghosts and lovies, they all have their part in the story.
If you’d like to follow the journey as it unfolds, you’re welcome to join me over at crackmask.com or on X at @EddieHaworthWrites. There’s much more to come, and some of it started right here, in this photograph, in this theatre, in this moment of remembering.
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