She met the stars at Opera

With a twinkle in her eye that belongs to someone a fraction of her 83 years, Joyce Bull lets the past flood back as she recalls her childhood visits to the Opera House, or rather the Boscombe Hippodrome as it was then.

"We met all the stars and I was taken down underneath to see the lions and tigers - I even touched an elephant once, very quickly," she laughs.

Joyce, with her older sister Nellie and their cousin Joan, used to go to the Hippodrome where Joan's dad, the sisters' uncle, Percy Saunders, started work as an usher in 1926 and rose to become manager during the 1930s.

There they met a host of stars of the late music hall era - household names like Arthur Askey, Charlie Chester, Paul Robeson and Linda and Margaret Lockwood; as well as the stars of the future including Bob Monkhouse and Des O'Connor.

"I first went when I was about six-years-old I think," says Joyce.

"In those days we used to have to sit on the hard wooden bench seats up in the Gods and watch the shows. It was threepence for me and sixpence for our parents. I remember all the dancers with their beautiful fans and sparkling costumes.

"I even saw Jane from the Daily Mirror, nude on stage with her dog Fritz.

"My parents were very Victorian and my mother said she didn't think it should be on stage because it was rude, but I think my dad thought it was all right in his own quiet way!"

When Percy was promoted to doorman he used to be responsible for keeping the queue in order as the audience waited in the alleyway to be admitted.

"He used to point out the gargoyle on the building opposite and told us to keep quiet and behave as that was the devil up there looking down on us," says Joyce.

"Once he got promoted we were allowed to sit in the Circle; then, when he was made manager he used to put us in one of the boxes.

"It was always the one on the right hand side as you look at the stage - that was our box for the Saturday night at the Hippodrome.

"Unless there was someone really important in then we had to go back to the Circle."

Joyce hadn't been back since before she joined the Army Ordnance Corps in 1941 - until a couple of weeks ago.

Having first paid her respects to the ever-watchful gargoyle opposite she and husband Bill are met by Opera House manager Ester Gill who guides them back down memory lane, past the foot of the main staircase where Uncle Percy used to stand, suited and booted, to welcome patrons.

Overcome with emotion and happy memories, Joyce stands in the box where she'd sat as a child, nearly 70 years before.

"It's beautiful, so beautiful," she sobs with joy. "I can still see the stars coming out on the stage there and looking up to where we sat here and giving us a little wink or a wave. Oh, it was so lovely.

"In those days there were seats on the ground floor of course and I remember watching the musicians come into the orchestra pit through a little door by the stage. Uncle Percy used to bring us an ice cream, Wall's ice cream it was, in a tub."

Then there was the infamous ghost "Uncle Percy said this ghost would start up in the Gods then work his way around the theatre and always come to sit in the second seat on the front row.

He said he felt him there many times, but was never afraid as it was a friendly ghost.

"I wonder if he's still there"

Standing there, immersed in her many memories, Joyce happily recalls the circus acts who would release coloured pigeons that would fly up to the Gods then back to the stage; and the trapeze acts who worked on a wire attached to the Gods from the stage.

Other nights would feature clapping seals that could play trumpets or even pianos; and budgies on swings and ladders.

"When it went quiet, or in the intervals, you could hear the roar of the lions down below. My school friends thought we were so lucky... well, we were!

"I think what they've done is marvellous, it's a lovely theatre. Now, if only they'd put on something by one of the old bands - Glenn Miller or Joe Loss, something like that - we'd be back like a shot."