Dr Jack Watters

Jack Watters, seen here third from the left at Brick Lane Music Hall earlier this year.

Very sad news from Pat Michael and Josh Siegel to tell me that Jack Watters has died after a short illness in New York.

For very many years Jack and Ian have been frequent visitors to pantomimes that Peter Robbins and I have been in, and after Peter’s death Jack and Ian continued to come along each Christmas and we would catch up on things. A Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, and a tireless supporter of Public health both in America and Internationally, Jack loved the Pantomime genre, which he fell in love with in his native Scotland and through the Howard & Wyndham Pantomimes he saw as a child.

Each year he would come along with his spouse Ian to see pantomimes, and in fact we had arranged a day when he would be visiting me in Llandudno this year. We arranged this when the above photograph was taken earlier thois year when Jack visited me in Panto at Brick Lane Music Hall.

An avid collector of all things Frank Matcham, the Edwardian Theatre Architect, Jack also “collaborated” with me on scripts that we wrote for Patricia Michael & Josh Siegel’s pantomimes, in Connecticut, and was hugely supportive of all the arts. Ballet was his overwhelming passion, and he served on the board of the School of American Ballet, where he will be greatly missed.

I will miss those chats in between shows, Jack- and those visits where the talk was of pantomimes old and new. A true gentleman.

Our sincere condolences to Ian Archer-Watters over this great and sad loss.

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