Julie Myerson on Sandy Wilson: 'I was 11 when, obsessed with The Boy Friend, I wrote to Sandy Wilson for help'

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/sep/07/julie-myerson-sandy-wilson

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I was 11 when, having become obsessed with Ken Russell's 1971 film of The Boy Friend, I got the book out of the Nottingham library and directed my sisters and some other kids from the village in our own production. But it wasn't going well and my youngest sister, aged seven, kept forgetting her lines, so I wrote to Sandy Wilson, care of his publishers, for help. Astonishingly, a letter postmarked London arrived within a week or so. His advice – "Why not cut some of your sister's lines and let her say only those she can remember?" and "Make sure to pull your cloche hat well down over the eyes like this" (here, he added a sketch of a woman peering fetchingly from under a cloche brim) – proved invaluable.