Three Tall Women was Maggie Smith's triumph; but Frances de la Tour, as her daughter, was brilliant too. In When She Danced, her friend and fellow socialist worker Vanessa Redgrave was incandescent as Isadora Duncan. Then there was Rising Damp, which earned her unheeded fame in millions of households containing not a single theatre-goer. But she took 20 years to do another sitcom (Every Silver Lining, a stinker). "When people talk about Rising Damp," she says, "I have to take a beat, because it was a tiny part of my life. "I'd like it to have happened at 41 and not 51, but then I think 51 now is like 41 was in the 1950s I think we're all allowed to go on a bit.

I'm not sad any more, or bitter that I didn't do what I didn't do. I do feel optimistic."It's scarcely a tale of blockage and failure, but there is a sense in which opportunities have been repeatedly lost, wrong turnings taken, strange connections made. She was in Peter Brook's Dream, the most famous experimental production since the war, in which she gave us the first of her many gawky, vulnerable, sexually frustrated women And yet she's hardly done any Shakespearean comedy since. Since people started to call her Frances, a career that has never assumed a conventional shape has started to look less amorphous and random. Occasionally I said, 'Call me Frankie if you like', and they said, 'Uh huh?' " She says the "uh huh?" with the withering sarcasm that the young reserve for the middle-aged trying to stay hip and spry. There's a tempting neatness in this unbidden change. In the last couple of years, though, more or less coinciding with her 50th birthday, people have been reverting to the old name, perhaps intuiting, along with its owner, that "Frankie is a very young name: I feel rather odd being called Frankie at 50 The last two jobs I've done, everyone called me Frances.

A year later, in Budapest, Hungary proved it was no fluke by dismissing an England team containing Billy Wright and Tom Finney 7-1. This is all well known to anyone with more than a passing interest in the game, but it is worth remembering as an illustration of football's changing order At that time Hungary were the best in the world. Today offers England the chance to continue redressing the balance, and signal a new era of their own. Hungary's first visit to Wembley, in 1953, brought England their first home defeat by continental opponents, by a shattering 6-3. To anyone over the age of 50, the name Hungary conjures images of magical Magyars, and humiliated Englishmen.

He is keen to combine playing for the club with a role in developing the code further afield in Europe, including the prospect of a Super League club in Milan.John Monie, the coach at the Auckland Warriors, has indicated that he would be willing to release Kirwan from the remaining year of his contract.. Their coach, Ross O'Reilly, knew what a challenge he faced when he arrived from Australia this season. "You probably couldn't find a tougher job in the game," he said. "Success for us would be staying up at the end of the season." An already thin squad has been depleted further this week by the loss of Phil McKenzie and Tony Smith, two fellow Australians.The experienced McKenzie has had a recurrence of his knee injury, while Smith broke a bone in his wrist in his second match for the club last week."It is a blow losing players like that, who could give us some direction, but the spirit here is good and I know that the team that does play will at least have a go," O'Reilly said."We can only hope that Wigan may not be totally focused on this game."Wigan will be without Scott Quinnell and Kelvin Skerrett and possibly Neil Cowie but could welcome back Henry Paul after his ankle ligament problem. Substitutes used: Jones, Sumner, Barrow.St Helens: Prescott; Arnold, Matautia, Newlove, Hunte; Hammond, Goulding; Perelini, K Cunningham, Leatham, McVey, Booth, Joynt. Substitutes used: Pickavance, Martyn, Morley.Referee: D Campbell (Widnes).. Workington Town could not have a sterner examination of their prospects of climbing off the foot of the Super League than the visit of Wigan this evening, writes Dave Hadfield.