ROWLAND Fleming was born in Broadheath on March 4 1921 and for the past 40 years has lived with his wife, Beryl, 91, in Hale.

He soaked up show business from an early age.

His father was a professional entertainer who, when Altrincham Hospital opened in 1926, started Altrincham Carnival (now Altrincham Festival) to raise funds for an X Ray machine.

Rowland’s earliest showbiz memory was when, aged seven, his father took him to the Altrincham Hippodrome to see G. H. Elliot.

Rowland said: “He could dance like Fred Astaire and I still remember him singing She’s My Lady Love.

“Around the same time he took me to a cinema in Shaw’s Road. Most people called it the flea pit but we called it the bug hut.

“He often took me to see silent films at the Altrincham Picture Theatre. It cost 6p to go in and you had to queue.

“The Regal Cinema at Broadheath had a Compton cinema organ. John Cocker, who, on Sundays was the organist at Manchester Cathedral, played it.

“The restaurant there was known as “The Mecca of discerning tastes”.

Rowland said when the talkies came in, theatres, like the hippodrome, became cinemas.

In 1941 Rowland joined the Royal Navy and served in a destroyer with his namesake Ian Fleming of James Bond fame.

He left in 1946 to study architecture, his ultimate profession.

He met his wife at an amateur dramatic production in Hale Barns in 1950. She was playing the lead in Goodness, How Sad. The Altrincham Guardian said her lovemaking was weak and artificial.

He was so incensed that he booked a date. He took her to see An Ideal Husband at the Paramount Cinema in Manchester – and that was it.