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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment

Anarchic delight in the UK’s real north-west

Maggie Fox, right, and Sue Ryding, of Lipservice Theatre, in their show Withering Looks.
Maggie Fox (right) and Sue Ryding, of Lipservice Theatre, in their show Withering Looks. Photograph: Doug Currie

The rural touring scene in the Highlands in the late 1980s was greatly strengthened by the arrival of Maggie Fox (Obituary, 8 April) and Sue Ryding. As LipService Theatre, they brought wonderful cultural anarchy to many village halls and were followed by other small companies that had heard of the delights of heading north in a van. Performers often stayed in local houses, and I am delighted to have Maggie and Sue’s names in my visitors’ book from November 1990. They returned in 2016 to reach out to new communities.
Duncan MacInnes
Founder, Skye Events for All

• DG Owen (Letters, 18 April) rightly criticises the Football Association for unnecessarily making fans travel a long distance to Wembley. But when I read that the two teams were from “the north-west of the UK”, I wondered if I’d missed a big game between Fort William FC and Mallaig FC. Manchester and Liverpool are in the north-west of England, but well south of the middle of the UK.
Adam Rennie
Edinburgh

• I hadn’t realised that Channel 4 was a youth-focused broadcaster (Report, theguardian.com, 15 April). Perhaps my enjoyment of some of its programmes reflects my mental rather than my physical age.
Shirley Williams (age 70)
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

• John White asks whatever happened to Flamin’ Nora (Letters, 18 April). I’m happy to confirm that I’m alive and well, and that I have been blogging at flamingnora.blogspot.com since 2007. I also tweet at @flaming_nora – so please come and say hello, chuck.
Glenda Young
Sunderland

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