Blackpool ventriloquist Keith Harris created his own TV stardom with Orville the Duck but was able to switch off the showbuzz

The A to Z of stars who appeared in Blackpool is parked at letter H and we highlight another great actor who came to the Grand Theatre.

Rex Harrison (1908-1990, knighted in 1989) may stick in the memory for his Oscar-winning role in 1964's My Fair Lady but the film that made his name was the 1940 drama Night Train to Munich.

Only a few months earlier he had been at the Grand in Noel Coward's menage-a-trois comedy Design for Living, with Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard.

Rex and Diana repeated the box office success with the Christmas week, 1940, premiere at the Grand of another comedy of manners, No Time for Comedy, by American writer SN Behrman. It want on to a year's run in London.

In 1930 Liverpool-born Rex Harrison was on his way up in the Ben Travers farce A Cup of Kindness, at the Opera House.

Anita Harris (1942 -) starred here as a singer and an actress. Readers who were lucky enough to have been in the audience at the Royal Performance that formally reopened the Grand Theatre in May, 1981, will remember her classy number as Burlington Bertie in which she added a line to the original lyric.

"I've had a banana with Lady Diana . . ."

Prince Charles, in the Royal box, was seen to laugh. He was due to marry Lady Diana Spencer a few weeks later.

Anita also appeared in two of the Blackpool Night TV shows from the ABC Theatre, in August, 1966, and July, 1967.

As an actress, she starred at the Grand Theatre in April, 1992, in Daphne du Maurier's romantic thriller My Cousin Rachel.

Young ventriloquist Keith Harris was in the ABC Theatre's 1974 summer show, Larry Grayson's Scandals, and returned with bigger billing in the Les Dawson season show of 1977.

Keith had created two characters that were to bring him TV stardom: Orville the green duck and Cuddles, the monkey with attitude.

After hitting the number four spot in the charts with Orville's Song at Christmas, 1982, the time was right for a Keith Harris summer show and it was the Grand Theatre that got it, in 1983.

Keith had become a local resident after marrying Blackpool singer Jacqui Scott, who joined him in the summer show. They later divorced.

In the 1980s I went bowling a few times with Keith at the old Central Drive bowl in Blackpool and found he was able to switch off the showbuzz.

Keith's next Blackpool season was with Les Dawson and Frank Carson at the Opera House in 1988, after which he did five summers in Keith and Orville's Magic Castle at the Sandcastle.

Keith achieved an ambition of being a circus ringmaster in a season at the Blackpool Tower Circus in 1999 and had a further local season in 2001, at the Grand Theatre.

Next week: Another H handful of stars from Blackpool's theatreland. More H stars