An audience of one - the sequel to the sequel

When I first played the Edinburgh fringe in 1978, the first night I played to an audience of one. He wrote to me afterwards to say how much the show had affected him and that he'd taken up acting and performed at Edinburgh himself.

In these days of google and instantaneous information, you forget how it used to be. I knew he was a solicitor in a small English town, but how to get ahold of him? I had a job for the BBC on Crimewatch, recreating interesting and gruesome crimes for the viewing public. We had police advisors on the show and one of them came from the same small English town. So in the pub after a long day looking shifty and suspicious, I asked him to bring in the phonebook the next day so I could look him up.

‘Who are you looking for?’, he asked.

‘It’s such a common name, I won’t even bother to tell you’, I said.

‘Go on, try me.’

I told him.

There was a silence. Bloody silly question, how many people can there be in the world with that name? Hundreds, thousands even.

‘The solicitor?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘He’s my son-in-law.’