Were it not for a friend, thousands of miles away on the other side of America, his death would have passed me by, as it passed by most of mainstream media here. Which goes to prove the validity of an instruction given to me by the then editor of Woman’s Way magazine when, as a teenage freelance, I pitched to her profiles of famous people: “If they’re on TV or in films, yes. If they’re on stage, no. Onstage actors are not famous.”
You can — and Frank Grimes did — electrify and enthrall audiences in Dublin, Paris, and New York, but you’re not going to make the front page of the papers here when you die, as he did at the start of August.
This is exclusive subscriber content. Already a subscriber? Sign in
