A talented and witty raconteur, our friend Bernard Hepton enjoyed reminiscing, especially about his youth. Climbing was a favourite, in the Yorkshire dales near his native Bradford, but especially in the Lake District. During the second world war he and his pal Bernard Kay often hitched to Keswick, walking on to Wasdale to climb the crags during the day and sleeping in barns at night. Coming off the fells one evening in the summer of 1940, the two 15-year-olds were arrested as German paratroopers.
Later he tried to join the army, choosing the Black Watch as his preferred regiment – the attraction, he said, was the kilt. As a result of voice training for the theatre, his accent was no longer that of a Bradford lad, and to his astonishment the recruiting sergeant asserted, “Of course, you’ll be going for a commission, sir?” He failed the medical because of poor eyesight (as a child he had requested but been denied a monocle).
One of a huge catalogue of tales involved a period when he was working as a fight arranger on location in Spain filming Richard III. His archer managed to miss the pad on the king’s horse and plant his arrow in the leg of the horseman: Laurence Olivier. Bernard held his breath for “about 20 minutes”, but Olivier finished the scene, and then took responsibility for the accident. “My fault”, he said, “I moved.”