Geoff Banks, sporting a small beard, is standing apprehensively between two pairs of horns in this scene from an early 1960s Rhyl Children’s Theatre Club production of ‘Macbeth’ at The Little Theatre, Vale Road. Geoff was known as Hughie in those days to save confusion with his father Geoff who was also active in local amateur dramatics.Hughie made an early bid for stardom in 1956 when the BBC television programme ‘Children’s Caravan’ visited Bangor. He and a dozen others from Rhyl went with director Joe Holroyd to take part in the programme. Rhyl Journal said: Main appearances fell to Dermot McBride, ‘Goodwood’, Paradise Street, and Hughie Banks, 1 Lake Avenue, when millions of viewers saw them do ‘impersonations of impersonations’.
The boys had to imitate TV impersonator Peter Cavanagh imitating the comedians Tommy Cooper and Mr. Pastry, you see. The cutting continues: For their parts in the programme Dermot and Hughie got mementoes of propelling pencils.
Quite right, too.
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