The Loft, sometimes more grandly known as the Cork Shakespearian Society was the place where all budding Cork thespians cut their teeth.
Miss Curran, who ran the place by the time I got there, was determined to give as many of us as possible a chance to get on stage.

Now one way of ensuring a good house for our productions was that we used to put on the play which was the prescribed one for the leaving and the inter on the relevant years.

I wasn’t long a member when The Merchant of Venice came around and Miss Curran decided to cast me as Salerio.
Now this, not exactly pivotal part, only existed in some of the editions of “The Merchant”. Most editions agreed that there were two characters who were, it must be admitted, fairly peripheral, called Solanio, and Salerino.
In some of the editions of the play Salerio appeared- I have no doubt invented by an earlier transcriber’s slip of the quill- and so she kindly used this as a chance to give me my big break.
My main function, as far as I can remember was to be made up and put into tights and then to hang about back stage most of the night before I ran in dramatically and said “What news Ho !”
One night, out of the blue, Miss Curran (who was holding, I later discovered, an edition of the play which didn’t admit Salerio’s existance) suddenly hissed at me “Your’e On !” and shoved me on from stage right.
There I promptly collided with Solanio (or indeed Salerino) who had correctly entered from stage left.
I did the only thing I could do and shouted my immortal line “What news ho !”
Solanio(or Salerino ), who afterwards went on to Do Great Things on stage, with enormous sang froid turned to me and ad libbed cuttingly “No news yet ” which gave me the opportunity to slink back into the comfort of the wings.
A few years afterwards I gave up the stage and started cooking.