Meeting with Mike (Unabridged)

Reggie Oliver is a stage actor and playwright. His biography of Stella Gibbons was praised as "a triumph" by Hilary Spurling in the Daily Telegraph, his play Winner Takes All, was described as "the funniest evening in London", by Michael Billington in The Guardian, and his adaptation of Hennequin and Delacour's Once Bitten opened at the Orange Tree Theatre in London in December 2010.

MEETING WITH MIKE: It looked as if one of Mad King Ludwig's fantasy castles had developed middle age spread. It clung to a steep, fir-clad slope; the many turrets and pinnacles, Gothic in appearance if in nothing else, turning its skyline into a forest of steep conical roofs.