Still sold on first love

CLAIRE Bloom never knew this, of course, but I nearly asked her to marry me.

Well, when you're 12 years old you're apt to do daft things, but as it happened I couldn't pluck up the courage.

I had to make do with pictures of her on the inside lid of my desk at school, along with Brigitte Bardot, Sabrina and Mimi Van Doren, a Jayne Mansfield lookalike with, if I recall correctly, an even bigger frontage.

However, while those three were good for a fantasy, Claire was the sort of girl you'd feel good walking down the aisle with.Very beautiful, cool and sophisticated, the typical English rose.

The years have been kind to her, too, for she has matured into one of our finest character actresses, in recent years getting a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in Shadowlands and a BAFTA nomination for her role in Brideshead Revisited.

Currently, she's getting rave reviews for Conversations After a Burial, the Almeida Theatre Company production which comes to Malvern from November 14-18.

The play was written by French dramatist Yasmina Reza, who was responsible for the very popular Art, which, to put not too fine a point on it, I saw as a load of pretentious rubbish. But there you are.

Conversations, thankfully, is completely different, exploring family relationships in the aftermath of a funeral. Not a bundle of laughs I grant you but, by all accounts, compelling theatre.

It also gave me a chance to chat to Claire Bloom, who appears as one of an older couple in the play. They demonstrate to all the young bucks with attitude that maturity can bring contentment.

Do you know, apart from my childhood, I've never been to Malvern before in my life," she said. "I'm so looking forward to it. I'm told it's lovely. So many nice walks on the hills.

We had a relation who used to live there when we lived in Bristol and I remember popping over occasionally as a young girl."

Whatever, the town will certainly be a change from London, where Conversations has just finished a successful run or, before that, Broadway, where Claire spent the previous six months.

Now in her late 60s, she has been a consistently successful actress throughout her career, switching easily from Shakespearian roles, which have become something of a speciality, to television productions such as The Camomile Lawn and even a Miss Marple.

I've tried to keep busy. I think it helps not having all your eggs in one basket, as it were, she said.

I'm thrilled with how well Conversations After a Burial has been received, because everyone connected with it has tried so hard.

Eventually I managed to blurt out my youthful passion for the young Claire Bloom in her pin-up days.

Oh how sweet," she laughed. "You really should have telephoned me and proposed. I might have accepted!"

Claire was once famously married to Rod Steiger.

But there again, he had her phone number and I didn't.

Conversations After a Burial is at Malvern Festival Theatre from Tuesday, November 14 to Saturday, November 18. Box Office 01684 892277.