In 1977 Frank Grimes played Valentine in Anton Rodgers’s production of Shaw’s You Never Can Tell for the Oxford Playhouse Company. That season he went on to roles in plays by Ibsen and David Hare.
On the first night of You Never Can Tell, there being no way of getting from stage left to right behind the set at the Key Theatre, Peterborough, Frank hit his head on a concrete beam running below the stage to make an entrance.
After being out for 10 minutes, he recovered well enough to make his entrance stage right. His first line, “I’m sorry to have kept you all waiting”, brought the house down.
Valentine in the play is a first-day dentist – which made the delay almost appropriate.
