and Paris.........

The following year as I shuttled around Europe, I found myself at the Paris Opera for a new production of La Belle Helene. This was a grand affair to be filmed and televised live throughout France on big screens with the entire Government in the front row. I had to be in good shape but didn't need to worry about exercise as my dressing room was on the sixth floor, I had nine costume changes and the lift was broken. One day with a few precious hours to spare between rehearsals, dialogue coaching, fittings and interviews I ran to the beautician, a hectic emporium where apparently everyone went, although we were all so muffled up in face cream and turbans and lack of make-up that no one would have known anybody else.

In between treatments I waited for the ladies room, but the passage was so narrow that when the occupant came out we both had to breath in, laughing with scarcely a towel between us.

 I did however recognise her..Farah Dibah, the Empress of Iran.