THE interest groups are thriving with the Wine Appreciation Group to visit a winery at Welford-on-Avon in October.

This month the Church Group will go to Chaddesley Corbett church and the Ambling Group will walk from Cleeve Prior and enjoy a well-earned pub lunch afterwards. The re-formed Discussion Group is also doing well.

Speaker at the July meeting Mr Gresty gave a very enjoyable talk about Mr Stanley Holloway and his monologues, three of which he recited to the amusement of his audience.

Stanley Holloway was born in 1890 in London. He became a choirboy and also sang in music halls as a boy soprano. When his voice broke he worked in a boot polish factory and Billingsgate fish market to earn money for voice training. He then joined a touring concert party but left to train in Milan for opera; after six months he returned home and joined the Fantastics on a tour to South America.

World War I started and he returned to London to join the army and later he entertained the troops as a member of ENSA. Stanley's monologues started in 1919 with And Yet I Don't Know.

In 1921 he opened with the Co-optemists in London and his career thrived. The first Albert Ramsbottom and the Lion monologue, in which the lion ate Albert, caused such consternation among children's protection societies a second monologue was written bringing Albert back!

His later career in films and musicals included Major Barbara and Brief Encounter. He was the grave digger in Hamlet with Sir Laurence Olivier, Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream and Eliza Doolittle's father in My Fair Lady, for both the stage play and the film. He had four children and died in 1982 after suffering a stroke while on stage.