In 1983, actor Noni Hazlehurst was invited to London by Robyn Archer to be part of Archer’s new cabaret Cut and Thrust. Hazlehurst, less than a decade out of acting school and having just been fêted in Cannes for her performance of Nora in the film adaptation of Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip (1982), was ‘thrilled to bits’.

Born at Brighton Community Hospital in August 1953, Hazlehurst was the second of George and Eileen Hazlehurst’s two children, the couple having met on the variety circuit in England. Their careers disrupted by the outbreak of World War II – George enlisted and remained in the army until well after the end of the war – George, Eileen, and their firstborn, Cameron, eventually emigrated to Australia, hoping to escape the privations and instability of postwar Britain. Being third-generation performers, Hazlehurst’s parents ‘made sure I knew how to sing, dance, play the piano, and above all, how to behave in public – how to act’.