All aboard at Bowes for sea change in diet; FOOD.

Byline: BILL OLDFIELD

OUR restaurants are lucky enough to have been asked to support an annual event that's one of my favourites of the summer.

Each year, in July, an organisation called the Castle Players stages an open air performance of a Shakespeare play in the grounds of the fabulous Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle.

Held under an ancient oak tree surrounded by an amphitheatre of tiered seats, I believe the event to be unique in this country in its success and longevity, with this year being its 20th.

The company's professionalism ensures that a few thousand people from all over the country travel each year to watch a self-sustaining performance that gladdens the heart and boosts the local economy. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs.

This year they're staging The Tempest and have set it in a 1950s cruise ship. Our restaurants' role is to provide the lucky occupants of one of the boxes, set up as a cruise ship cabin, with Champagne and canaps as they watch the play and feel almost part of the production.

And in carrying out some research into what sort of things pampered people in the 50s might have been nibbling, I stumbled upon a couple of books, by David Ellery and Jane Hunter-Cox, about the original Queen Mary and learned some fascinating facts. For instance, it was a proud boast of the chefs that they could produce anything a passenger requested. Now, I'd like to have been one of those asked, not least because I'd love to have travelled in such period style, but also because I'm sure they wouldn't have carried a Pot Noodle.

But allegedly, a bunch of rich American businessmen once asked for rattlesnake soup.

Having checked the inventory and searched the freezers in vain, the imaginative chief steward produced a dish made of eels while, as the passengers dined, the waiters shook baby rattles.

But the really astonishing facts are the quantities involved. I think our food bills at Oldfields are big, but when you see that the Queen Mary carried 70,000 eggs, 4,000 gallons of milk, 77,000lb of meat and produced 40,000 meals each Atlantic crossing, it makes you wonder how big the fridges were and how they fitted cabins on board as well.

First-class passengers were offered seven-course dinners with up to nine choices per course. Think of the waste resulting from storing food for each and every whim. What if nobody ordered a crocodile sandwich? And did Cunard, like the rest of us, get asked to pay their bills within 30 days? And did they really manage to get through 100lb of caviar in the austerity-stricken 50s? One particular practice of cruise ships is that it became traditional for the better-off passengers to tip the restaurant manager.

Obviously, this would tend to be towards the end of the trip and so he was particularly on his mettle during the last evening of the cruise, wishing all his guests goodbye as they left the dining room. However, the fact that the restaurant had two exits stretched his effectiveness, not to mention his nerves, as many of his sources of income left through one door while he was at the other. It's interesting to note that, when the subsequent Queen Elizabeth was built, it's said that the restaurant manager influenced its design and therefore it only had one exit - and no doubt he was richer.

While cruising has now come within the reach of more people, it's doubtful most of us will ever experience the relative excesses of those post-war years. So, if you fancy a taste of 50s opulence this summer, and a Shakespeare play performed in a way of which he'd undoubtedly approve, check out www.castleplayers.co.uk.

Who knows, if you book early enough, you may even get to eat our complimentary cruise-time canaps..