Today a successful painter in France, in the nineteen fifties and sixties Edwin Apps was a familiar face on British television. Born into a family of auctioneers and hop farmers in East Kent in 1931, a family break up led to his being sent to the Clergy Orphan School in 1940. Evacuated to a luxury hotel on the Cornish coast, he trained falcons and learnt Latin in a cocktail bar. At seventeen, he joined a weekly rep in the north of England. The 1949 Canterbury Festival saw him making angels' wings with Dorothy Sayers and rescuing her from a bomb crater after a festive evening. Reluctant National Service, the Central School, touring in the fifties, theatrical landladies, live television comedy with Jimmy Edwards and Harry Worth; visiting Corsica with Frank Muir and writing "All Gas and Gaiters," are all part of this amusing, fast moving narrative supported by a wealth of contemporary letters and seventy photos.
