At the end of the month Oldham Coliseum Theatre will mark the retirement of its longest running member of staff, David Rustidge, who took up his role as House Manager in 1982.
Now aged 70, David discovered his love for theatre at a young age.
“I think it must be in the blood,” he said, “my grandfather was a butcher who had a butcher’s shop in Chadderton and most tradesmen in those days didn’t work on a Tuesday afternoon.
"On those afternoons he used to go with my grandmother to the theatre in Oldham. As a lad, I went to go to the theatre myself, and that’s really the way it’s continued all these many years.”
David first visited the Coliseum in the mid-1950s to watch a play with his mother when he was 15. He began his career as a teacher at schools in Middleton and Shaw and started volunteering in 1979 with Playgoers, a group formed to help raise money for the Coliseum.
After a couple of years volunteering with Playgoers, he was offered a position working at the theatre front of house.