Most actors, when faced with food onstage, are cautious. To the audience's exasperation, they prod, they toy, they rearrange. Bill Wallis didn't. I was in the cast of Mrs Wilson's Diary (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 1967) and each night I would watch as Mrs Wilson placed a plate of chips before Bill (as Harold Wilson, the prime minister), prompting a speech which started: "When the chips are down…" Bill would then attack them voraciously and carry on too, despite them being made of polystyrene.
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