Former Argus theatre critic remembered

The drama guru cut his journalistic teeth at weekly visits to the venue from 1960 to 1970. He then moved up to the Daily Sketch then Daily Mail in London.

After his death from an asthma attack in 1996 the lights in the West End were dimmed, an honour only reserved for five people before and never to a critic.

Jack had continued to live in Brighton and a memorial service was fittingly held at Theatre Royal Brighton with more than 950 friends and fans, including famous faces such as Victor Spinelli, Maureen Lipman, Paul Daniels and Dame Maggie Smith, paying tribute.

Jack was famed for fair, humane but honest comments on the plays shown at the theatre in what was widely considered one of its most revolutionary eras.

In the swinging decade of "Wesker and Pinter" shows expected to be big in the West End were first premiered in Brighton where audience reaction could make or break them.

Although friends with the stars Jack was not afraid to upset a few people in the name of honesty. In his early days he was banned from the theatre by late manager Melville Gillam after writing a negative review.

At a lunch with Melville former Argus Editor Victor Gorringe explained: "I can either send a reporter to say the curtain came out such and such an actor came on and the curtain came down - or I can send Jack who might actually have something to say."

Jack was let back in and remained a faithful but candid friend to the venue - one of his last features for the paper centring about his worries for its future as a commercial venture since, he said, it was managed as a 'labour of love'.

When he headed up to the capital's bright lights in 1970 he was presented with a wooden spoon by the Society of Brighton and Hove Entertainment Managers 'to stir things up in the West End as you stirred them up here'.

Jack Tinker's memories as written in his show Audience With a Critic - When I entered Brighton's Theatre Royal to review Marlene Dietrich I believed that a has-been and faded Hollywood star was an irrelevance in the sixties revolutionary theatre of Wesker and Pinter. But I was charmed and left the theatre to write an eulogy.

The next morning the editor's secretary came down to tell me that Marlene Dietrich was on the telephone.

Yes, I thought some wicked friend ringing me as a hoax. But when I picked up the phone the low, velvet, German tones were unmistakable.

"I have ordered 12 copies of your review,' she informed me. "I am giving a little party. Are you free on Thursday?' Does a moth eat cloth? Of course I was free. And by chance was going to see her perform again that night. Once again the performance was charming yet flawless. Except for one thing, one serious number got a laugh.

After the show we lined up on the bare stage to meet her. She appeared from the wings dressed in a simple, black Chanel suit. But this was not the Marlene who I had just seen slinkily glide across the stage. She came towards me like an avenging Hun marching, arching on Poland.

"You are the critic," she barked, "Before I have had a titter during 'Don't Smoke in Bed', but tonight a horselaugh. OK, what went wrong?"

I blanched. I was going to have to tell Marlene what was wrong with her act.

"Well," I hesitated nervously, "you sang The Boys in the Backroom, which is a very funny song and then you went straight into 'Don't Smoke in Bed."

"You are right," she replied, "Tonight I cut the song." And she never sung it again."

-Another time the editor's secretary came down that well-worn corridor to tell me that Terence Rattigan was on the telephone. I had just lambasted his play Man and Boy with the confidence and callousness of youth.

"I am making some revisions to the play," he explained, "are you free to come to the house (where he lived, on the seafront) for tea later this week?"

He took me through the changes, line by line, scene by scene, and act by act. I was honoured to have a master class in playwriting. It made me totally reassess the importance of Rattigan and of Noel Coward too. I realised without them there could never have been a Wesker or a Pinter.

Much later I met Cole Lesley, Coward's companion and editor of his diaries. He asked me how well I had known Noel.

"Not well at all" I replied, "We only met once and that was briefly."

"I am puzzled by an entry in Noel's diary," Cole explained, "He says "There is a rave from the normally acid critic in Brighton. Today I took delivery of my new electric typewriter. I love my electric typewriter. I think I will marry my electric typewriter. Unless I marry Jack Tinker first."

-I learnt so much in those early years when I was cutting my teeth as a critic at the Theatre Royal. Not only to respect what may seem to be outmoded plays but also to say what you feel. Then every artist knows that you are telling the truth.

Nicholas De Jongh, critic for the Evening Standard: "My cherished memory of the Theatre Royal is strange, sad and, for me at least, beautiful. This history-laden theatre is the only major professional theatre on whose stage I, a critic, have performed - if you can call it performing and I don't.

"I was speaking at the Memorial Service for Jack Tinker, the dear, departed Daily Mail critic who of course lived in Brighton. He died suddenly ten years ago last autumn. He was a fabulous, lovable, sometimes infuriating friend.

"In terms of my career I owed him a huge debt. I had never spoken at such a grand memorial service and I was seized by nerves as well as sadness. On this stage, I remember thinking, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson heard themselves being booed by bigots and philistines in the audience when respectively performing in Charles Wood's Veterans and Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. When I started to speak I was delighted and surprised by waves of laughter.

"It felt wonderful to be giving my goodbye to Jack, the most theatrical of men, in such a gorgeous theatre."