IT was surely written in the stars that actress Jean Fergusson would bring her one-woman show about Farnworth comedienne Hylda Baker to Bolton.

She first saw She Knows You Know at the West Yorkshire Playhouse's Courtyard The Octagon's Artistic Director Lawrence Till had been ahead of me. He had wanted the production before it went to Leeds, but it was not to be.

Now at last Bolton audiences are seeing the show which wowed West End audiences. London critics gave the production rave reviews and the show was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Entertainment.

When I met Jean before she went on stage at the Octagon she was being besieged by a crowd of little boys who wanted her autograph.

She cheerfully posed for them and promised them pictures "tomorrow". Jean is obviously the sort of person who won't forget.

But she confided. "They thought I was Natalie from Coronation Street. I'm quite flattered." Probably best known as the man-hunting, bike-riding Marina in Last of the Summer Wine, Jean has appeared in almost every repertory theatre in the country.

She was born in Yorkshire - although you would never guess it from her Bolton accent in the show - but has a love of Lancashire fostered by her stint at Oldham Coliseum in repertory.

"If anything a Lancashire accent comes more naturally to me than a Yorkshire accent," she said.

It's well documented that Jean has been fascinated for years by Hylda, who used to keep a chip shop in Plodder Lane.

Jean wrote, produced and performed in a one-woman show about Hylda for a couple of years before writing a musical drama about her.

She has also written Hylda's biography, She knows You Know, which was published in 1997 and was a sell-out. A paperback version should be out in the autumn.

The production has changed since its West Yorkshire days.

"I had always intended it to be in the form it is now," Jean said. "It is very economical and doesn't over-explain things."

She is genuinely thrilled to be in Bolton. "I walk round looking at things, thinking Hylda would have seen that." She has been in contact with Hylda's brother, Sid, who lives in Farnworth.

When he saw the show previously, he told Jean: "I thought Hylda had come back."

Jean says she knows the show so well that when she is doing Hylda's act, she can exchange wisecracks with the audience, then pick up where she left off.

'I am just loving it here," she said. "And it is just because it is Bolton. When I'm performing I think there must be people who knew Hylda out there."

The actress has strong views about the future of the Octagon.

"It would be a very sad thing if Bolton lost this theatre," she said. "This is a very special theatre and it is important that it produces shows here. I urge people to write and say 'We want our theatre'.

"One this theatre is lost it will never come back again. People should fight to keep the Octagon."

Playing Hylda in Bolton is obviously a labour of love. But Jean admitted that when she was asked to take the show to the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under Lyme, she had doubts because it was staged in the round there.

Then she was told that Bolton wanted to stage it afterwards.

That was it. "I have to go to Bolton," she said.

She certainly did. And the huge audiences her show is attracting proves that the people of Bolton wanted her to come.

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