Alfie Bass

Was your childhood tough, and was there hardship?

Uh yes, yes, there was. My father had to uh feed and clothe ten children. Did he? And after a bit my mother had an accident, and she spent a good the last few years of her life in a wheelchair. She was crippled. And my father used to say that he cared for nothing so long as his children didn't go naked and bourvas, which meant uh so long as they didn't go naked and without shoes. And this was his attitude to life and could hardly be anything else anyway. He had a rough time trying to cope, you know. And for us kids we weren't all that sort of carefully looked after because it wasn't possible. … uh with the result that we had to fend for ourselves.

Now you followed Topol in Fiddler on the Roof in the theatre — rather a daunting chore, wasn't it?

Well, I had this barley behind me, you see. I mean, this gave me confidence. No, I um oh yes, yes, daunting is uh quite the word.

How did you set about it? Did you watch the show a lot of times before you started once?

No, no, I saw it once. Uh … Only once. I saw the I saw the show once. And I had uh the great thing behind me, which if I hadn't had, God knows what would have happened, you know, I'd have run away, I think.