LAST Saturday we held an open day at the Regal Theatre.

As a volunteer-led charity, it’s about recruiting people but the focus of the day was just to invite people in to have a look.

No obligation; no pressure; no risk.

Stepping into the unknown has always fascinated me. I have founded two theatre companies and a strong mission for both was to get the TV audience off the couch and convince them that the stage is just a big TV with all the drama, comedy, thrills and popcorn they get at home.

Seeing people step over the threshold of a theatre, knuckles literally white as they clutched the doorframe, wide-eyed seeking ‘the catch’ and then two hours later having them walk out smiling, full of praise with the fog of the unknown lifted – well, it’s great!

I have a long history of stepping into the unknown.

I spent five years doing summer seasons for the holiday camps.

In the pre-google and pre-sat nav days, I would pack a bag and board a train for whichever seaside resort I’d been allocated, not really knowing where in the country I was headed.

One summer, in Weston-Super-Mare, I only realised I was in Somerset when I bought my first car and road map.

I went on a two-month holiday to New Zealand which lasted 18 years; we moved back and settled in Warwickshire, an area neither my wife nor I knew; I took a job in Tenbury Wells where I knew no one but in all these it was the thrill of the anticipation for what lay ahead.

As a stand-up comic for 20 years, every night was a step off the cliff. No script; no character; no set, just a sea of faces to entertain. Sometimes I did, sometimes…. let’s not go there!

Shortly after I started at The Regal, I asked a volunteer ‘why volunteer at a cinema?’

“Because I knew nothing about it,” he said.

Last Saturday, out of the blue, he said: “Until I started volunteering, I didn’t realise the fun I wasn’t having!”