Happy 10th anniversary Hostry Festival - Eastern Daily Express

Happy 10th anniversary Hostry Festival

By Rowan Mantell

How did Olivia Newton-John become patron of a Norfolk festival? Hostry Festival artistic director and co-founder Stash Kirkbride explains all.

Everyone knows him as Stash, but he’s actually Stanislas - named for a Russian submarine captain who docked at his parents’ oyster restaurant in Perth.

Soon afterwards his parents, two sisters, one brother and six-month old Stash, moved to Norfolk. The anecdote is typically unconventional. And once settled in Norfolk family life was far from ordinary.

“I only went to school for six days,” he said. “We were all home educated. I learned by example, by doing projects around the house.”

The children staged their own plays, were taken to the theatre and read to a lot – but Stash didn’t learn to read or write himself until he was 15. From the age of 10 he was also a carer for his much loved and missed father. “He died in my arms when I was 15,” said Stash. “Caring for him for four years, I loved every day of it and it taught me a lot. I think I learned absolutely everything I needed to know from the age of 10 to 15.”

His father was a television producer and director (as well as running that restaurant) and one of the contestants on his Australian talent show was a young Olivia Newton-John. “She sat on a stool and did a song with a guitar,” said Stash. Olivia went on to star in Grease and the Kirkbride family moved back to Norfolk. But when Stash started the Hostry Festival he contacted her, mentioned his father, and she agreed to become a patron.

The festival also attracts national and international stars to Norfolk, and patrons, alongside Olivia Newton-John, include Melvyn Bragg, Hayley Mills and Susan Hampshire.