'It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture, All we want is a Dunlop tire and the devil mend the puncture.'

They don't write them the way they used to.

My old mate knew Louis. He worked for him at the BBC after leaving drama college. It was the drama department at the Beeb radio which I believe Macniece ran. Auden and Louis's other old mates used to call in (maybe collaborating on programs), then everyone would go to the pub and get totally smashed.

My mate was later offered the part of Johnny in Linsey Anderson's cult film IF, which came out in 1968 and portrayed a revolution in an English public school (Marlborough).

Johnny is the best mate of Malcolm McDowell, who drives the stolen motorbike in the famous scene in the field with the beautiful Italian girl standing on the handlebars with her arms outstretched, Johnny perched on the pillion and Missa Luba intoning Sanctus! Sanctus! surreally in the background. (This is the point where the film goes seriously rococo).

However, my mate turned the role down, as he didn't want to give up the West End theatre for some hick, no doubt soon to be forgotten whimsy of Linsey's. Hmm..

He also turned down the offer of Benvolio, Romeo's big buddy in Zefferelli's haunting and ethereally beautiful Romeo and Juliet (with the divine Victoria Hussey).

The role of Benvolio passed instead to Bruce Robinson, who in his turn went on to write and direct the cult film Withnail and I in the 1980's, which introduced the world to Richard E. Grant as the unforgettable Withnail.

All of these above people went on to achieve legendary status of some order.

My friend, however, went into Coronation Street, as Len Fairclough's son, a role for which he is now entirely forgotten, especially as Peter Adamson was subsequently airbrushed out of the history of the Street.

However, my friend has the consolation of knowing he was never part of a cult (get it? groan..).