HE was credited as the man who saved Clacton’s West Cliff Theatre. Veteran funnyman Ken Dodd said he put the West Cliff on the map with his spectacular summer shows. Now the final curtain has fallen on the legendary Francis Golightly, who died at the weekend.

Back in the early 1970s, it was make or break time for the West Cliff.

The council had taken it over in 1959 and ran it as a rep theatre to avoid clashing with more traditional seaside shows at the resort’s rival venues.

As those theatres started to close, the West Cliff began staging summer shows again – but by the late Sixties audiences were in decline and it was losing money.

Producer Bunny Baron made a last-ditch attempt to save the Clacton theatre in 1972 by bringing in big-name star Tommy Trinder, who had performed on Sunday Night at the London Palladium, but it did not work.

The West Cliff looked doomed as the council prepared to pull the plug on funding, amid calls for the historic theatre to be demolished.

But up stepped the man who would turn around the West Cliff’s fortunes and transform Clacton’s theatre land. Francis Golightly was unknown in professional theatre.

Local historian and West Cliff Trust chairman Norman Jacobs said: “He offered to put on a show at the West Cliff without any star names, but with lots of glitz and glamour and dancing girls, so the council gave him a go and it was a big success."

Read the full story on Clacton's 'Great man of the theatre' Francis Golightly in the Clacton Gazette, out now.