My two sweetest memories of Three Sisters (aside from the pre-show antics of the Nice Rice Band) are…

You comforted me in the dressing room one night. I was distraught, telling you I felt totally at sea. “Nicky-Nick,” you said, your eyes brimming with compassion, “what would Toozenbach really like to say to Irena at that point?” “Please,” I said, “touch my cheek.” Whereupon I burst into tears — knowing that with you it was safe to do so.

Then one night early in the run, I had been killed in a duel, and I was sitting in the dressing-room, doing the crossword with a kid I was convinced had no future in show-business (Colin Mochrie). Suddenly, just before she went out on stage to do her plaintive speech about the ‘happy birds’, Goldie came up behind me, put her arms around me, and said: “This is like hugging an old blanket when you know you have to go and do something scary.”