The Blackpool theatre tours which helped bring fame for actresses Geraldine McEwan, Jeanette McDonald and Ruth Madoc

We have a few 'Mc' names to cram into today's page, starting with Geraldine McEwan (1932-2015) well remembered as one of the many Miss Marples on television.

Fifty years earlier she collected plaudits from the Gazette on tour visits to the Grand Theatre.

At the age of 18, from being stage manager at Windsor Rep, Geraldine was "delicious" as the bewitching Colleen in John Dighton's comedy Who Goes There? for a week in March, 1951. It became a West End hit.

Back at the Grand in December, 1952, Miss McEwan starred with Leslie Phillips on the premiere tour of For Better, For Worse, a marital comedy by Arthur Watkyn. It was an even bigger West End success.

A third Grand Theatre visit, in March, 1955, saw the Gazette declare her to be "delectable" playing opposite Brian Reece in the American comedy The Tender Trap. Another success.

Jeanette McDonald (1903-1965) was the star of Hollywood musicals who appeared in Blackpool in an Opera House Sunday concert on July 21, 1946.

The Gazette noted she gave 100 minutes of great theatre with operatic favourites and songs from her films.

Jane McDonald (born 1963) made her name in the television series The Cruise and came ashore for theatre tours and a popular series of Sunday concerts at the Blackpool Opera House in 1998.

The Yorkshire-born singer included that theatre on her many UK tours and in 2015 she was Grizabella in a summer season of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats.

Kenneth McKellar (1927-2010) was the kilted Scottish tenor of three Blackpool summer seasons.

His first was in 1966 at the North Pier, when the bill-topper was Des O'Connor. Both artists went into the Royal Variety Performance a few weeks later.

In 1971 he was joint top with Jimmy Tarbuck at the ABC and at the same theatre in 1977 he was billed second to Les Dawson.

In a career that led to film fame in 1953's The Cruel Sea, Virginia McKenna (born 1931) was in two plays at the Grand Theatre.

In June, 1953, in William Douglas Home's The Bad Samaritan, she "touched the heart" wrote Bill Burgess, and the following year she was in Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. A career-topping film role, in Born Free, lay ahead.

Few artists have been to Blackpool in such a range of roles as Ruth Madoc, best known for her lovesick Gladys Pugh in TV's Hi-De-Hi.

Long before those holiday camp capers, Ruth Baker was her maiden name at the Grand in October, 1962, in a play titled Loud Organs and in the mid-1960s a two-week visit with the Fols de Rols.

In 1984 Ruth Madoc was in a stage version of Hi-De-Hi for the summer season at the Opera House, followed at the Grand by a farce titled Love At a Pinch.

In 1993 she was at the Grand with the Hiss and Boo Music Hall, and in 1999 made two visits; first in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and later as Dorothy Brock in the musical 42nd Street.

In the new Millennium Ruth starred in several Grand Theatre Christmas pantomimes.