Paddy Ryan writes: I met Bob Hoskins in Israel in 1965. Like me, he had landed up on a kibbutz on the edge of the Gaza Strip. Volunteering for work there was a way of getting food and shelter. Bob wanted not only to act, but to write: his luggage consisted of a rucksack and a typewriter. We became friends and made a number of trips around the country. His gift of the gab was phenomenal. As a result, we dined with a senior Israeli official from the ministry of transport and later with a Druze Arab family on the Lebanese border. And we slept in empty buses in a Jerusalem bus depot at the invitation of some drivers.
We travelled back to England together in March 1966, with financial help from our respective families. I introduced Bob to a former work colleague of mine, Manny Goldstein, who was an officer of Unity Theatre in north London, and he began to act, as an amateur, there a few months later. He later joined auditions for a professional company, as he described it later, on the spur of the moment, and his career was born.
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