Letter: Kenneth Haigh obituary

Kenneth Haigh, left, with John Osborne in 1956. Photograph: Frank Pocklington/Getty Images

I directed Kenneth Haigh a number of times on BBC Radio. The most memorable of his performances was in a play for radio by a young Caryl Churchill, called Identical Twins, and broadcast in 1968, in which he played twins who looked and sounded the same but were different characters.

He had a reputation for withholding the full weight of performance until the first night curtain went up or the red recording light went on. This was the case when I directed him in 1974 as Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard with Dame Gwen Ffrangçon-Davies.

He could also be offhand and I recall his squashing a sweet BBC canteen waitress who asked him if he were Joe Lampton. He replied “No. I am an actor called KENNETH HAIGH.”