SPEAKING as one who recently reached the landmark age of three score years and 10, I confess to never having felt better.

Oxford Playhouse in Beaumont Street is of the same vintage. Today, thanks to a wagon-load of tender loving care, dispensed by devotees of all ages, it too is feeling good – but, by hell, it has been a bumpy ride, what with financial famines and closures littering the way.

That’s history. As the year-long anniversary project draws to a close, it seems a good time to learn how successful the campaign has been. Who better to ask than Michelle Dickson, the young and energetic theatre director, whose love affair with the place began when she was a Wadham College undergraduate?

Flanked by her deputy Polly Cole and press and marketing officer Kayleigh Hellin, she tells a story of old friends and new helping to raise cash (£250,000 over and above that needed for every-day survival) and be involved in a catalogue of projects to make the Playhouse somewhere for everyone.

‘Old friends’ include Seamus Heaney, Philip Pullman, the West family (Timothy, wife Prunella Scales, and son Sam) Richard Dawkins, Michael Palin, and next month, my personal hero, Alan Bennett. Not a bad line-up of friends, wouldn’t you say?

Michelle’s eyes sparkle as she talks of efforts to take the Playhouse to the community; its work with young people; music-making sessions for pre-school children and their mums, and the free tickets scheme for under 26s.

She speaks warmly of the many volunteers, often the first faces seen by the public. If the Playhouse is for everyone, it’s everyone’s job to make new friends – and keep them.

TALENT is encouraged and there’s no better example than David Hastings. He was on the stage door staff when he wrote a play called One Small Step, an amusing yet thought-provoking history of the space race.

It was given its world premiere in the Playhouse’s Burton Taylor Studio, has been twice to the Edinburgh Festival, and is now receiving worldwide acclaim, with invitations from as far away as Singapore and Sydney.

Needless to say David is no longer minding the door; he’s in London developing his career.

ANOTHER David is on the stage door – David Golder – and he has been there for the past 10 years, witnessing crisis and triumph in equal measure.

Avuncular, he contradicts the youthful imagine of Playhouse 2009 because he is three years older than the building itself. But don’t let this fool you. His enthusiasm is that of a 20-year-old and his admiration of the ‘young blood’ is boundless. He's loving every minute.

The anniversary campaign officially ends this month. But Michelle and her team will not sit back and reflect. Dreams must be nurtured. This takes time and selfless effort.

Exhausting? So it seems to me, but after all, I am 70!