IN 1935, after watching a play at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, two teachers from Darlington’s Polam Hall School made a £5 bet with the star of the show that he couldn’t make repertory theatre work in their hometown. And so, in 1936, Charles Simon, an actor from Wolverhampton, pitched up in Darlington to try to win the bet. He established the Darlington Permanent Repertory Company, which was based at the Theatre Royal in Northgate. Within months, the theatre was sold for conversion into a cinema, so Simon put on his shows in the Temperance Institute in Gladstone Street. In January 1940, he married his leading lady, Nancy McDermid, from Blackwell, and they were back on stage that evening in a play called Meet the Wife.