WHEN a customer spotted writer and actor Alan Bennett browsing in a North Yorkshire bookshop, her instinct was to start chatting to him. But then she pulled back in case it might offend.
A few hours later, she had an opportunity to find out what Bennett would have thought in a question-and-answer session at Harrogate International Centre.
In a one-man charity show, Bennett, fondly remembered for his television monologues Talking Heads, devoted a large chunk of his performance to questions from the audience.
The 69-year-old said he would not have minded too much had he been approached for a chat in Waterstone's bookshop by one of his fans. Because writing was such a solitary business, it was often a real boost if someone told him how much they had enjoyed something he had done. "In that sense I enjoy it. Most people are not too persistent.
"But I don't like autograph hunters because they do wait outside funerals....and they affront me," said the one-time butcher boy from Leeds.
Bennett believed he should be left alone on such solemn occasions.
When the former Leeds Modern School (Lawnswood) pupil was asked if his Yorkshire accent was an affectation he retorted: "Certainly not"; though he noticed when attending Oxford University that people tried to get rid of an accent or, at least, iron it out.
Bennett is affectionately remembered in Harrogate for his perceptive television piece simply observing ladies who lunch in the Crown Hotel or take tea there.
He was reminded of the television masterpiece by some members of a 2,000-plus full house audience which raised £32,000 for the town's St Michael's Hospice.
The star waived his fee for the show in which he took many a memory lane trip down bygone Leeds. He recalled rock and roll tram rides down past the gas works at New Wortley where an aunt once turned to the gas holders with pride and announced, in a bid to impress the young Bennett: "That's the biggest gas works - and I know the manager."
One member of the audience asked him about his light suede boots which had caused something of a fashion stir when he took to the stage.
"I thought it might be snowy up here," said the man who could vividly recall everything on his grandmother's mantelpiece in Gilpin Place, Wortley, and how she saved on lighting bills by reading the Yorkshire Evening Post in the gloaming.
Asked why he turned down an offer to appear on TV's Celebrity Big Brother, Bennett replied: "I wanted to know who was going to appear with me. But they wouldn't tell me, so I turned it down." F W
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