Great celebrities who trod the boards at Horbury School:
- David Munrow, early music historian
- R. D. Woodall, local historian and head teacher
- Jane McDonald, singer, who appeared as Snow White in a Pageant Players’ pantomime (she’s now starring in pantomimes at the London Palladium, so we taught her well!)
- Sir Christopher Chataway, runner (one of the pacemakers for Roger Bannister when he ran the first 4-minute mile), who officially opened the school in 1963 when he served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education in Harold Macmillan’s government
- Allan Schiller, classical concert pianist
. . . and not forgetting:
- My brother Bill who played a pirate on the Hispaniola in the Pageant Player’s performance of the Mermaid Theatre version of ‘Treasure Island’ (we used their scripts and Bill told me that one of them was dotted with odd doodles: we suspect it was the script Spike Milligan used when he played Ben Gunn)
- My sister Linda, who played Lucy Lockit in the Ossett Grammar School production of ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ (a new assembly hall was under construction at Ossett so they used Horbury’s stage for several years)
- And me. I never performed on stage but I painted scenery for the Pageants for 40 years and, as a young member of the Horbury Concert Society, I illustrated and designed posters, leaflets and programme covers, including those for David Munrow and Allan Schiller
Happy birthday to Zac, who may get tread the boards at Horbury Academy in the next few years.
Link
Jane MacDonald, singer and BAFTA award winning TV presenter
Allan Schiller, classical concert pianist