Introducing Engelbert Humperdinck last Thursday to the people of Skegness, Terry Wogan was at pains to point out that he was not the one “who didn’t do very well at the Eurovision Song Contest” but rather the opera composer from whom his name was borrowed.

This was a good joke that Sir Terry was uniquely qualified to make. As the man who introduced the Eurovision Song Contest for 35 years he would, of course, be only too familiar with The Hump’s less than happy involvement in last year’s event. His Love Will Set You Free finished 25th out of 26 entrants, with just 12 points.

Less well known, but almost equally firm, are Sir Terry’s links with opera. He became an ardent fan during his teenage years. To overcome what would have been a serious problem — the high cost of his enthusiasm — he watched from the stage by working as an extra at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. For years, he has been a supporter, of Garsington Opera, a member of its advisory council indeed.

With his skill and fame as a broadcaster, he was clearly the ideal man to introduce the company’s relayed performance from its opera pavilion on Mark Getty’s Wormsley estate to a giant screen on Skegness beach (an interesting collision of cultures, you might think) as part of the Arts Council-aided SO Festival.

He did it last year with Jacques Offenbach’s La Périchole and is doing it again this year when the work is Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. He says: “I think it’s a terrific idea. It will be introducing opera to people who would never have seen [it].”

Though it is called a live relay, the opera was actually recorded on Thursday for transmission on July 7. Hopefully, the sun will be shining then, although — as I recall from various dismal days in childhood — sun is not something much associated with this Lincolnshire resort. The Great Northern Railway’s advertising copywriter who came up with the slogan “Skegness is so bracing” clearly knew whereof he wrote.

Bracing was one of the adjectives that might have been applied to the weather at Wormsley on Thursday. Sopping wet and perishing cold are others. Skegness holidaymakers ought to feel fully ‘at home’ when they glimpse the stair-rods lashing down behind Sir Terry during his introduction.

And yet there we all were, gaily picnicking on salmon, salads and strawberries — fortunately under canvas — when Irish stew and jam roly-poly would have been more suitable fare. There was much talk of British stoicism.

The weather had taken a turn for the better, although it was still rather wet, by the following evening. This again brought me al fresco entertainment amid another glorious landscape in the shape of a trimmed-down production at Sarsden Glebe, near Churchill, of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew by second-year students of the Oxford School of Drama. This is an admirable institution, run by George Peck, who was already an old friend of mine when he set it up at Woodstock 26 years ago.

Lovely Sarsden Glebe, built in 1818 to the design of Humphry Repton, is the home of Rupert and Amanda Ponsonby. They hosted the evening to support a fund recently set up to assist potential students at the school who might suffer from coming changes in government grants. They raised some £4,000.

Present to testify to the transforming effect the school had on her — “You have to prove yourself all the time” — was one of its stellar recent graduates, the delightful Claire Foy. She had the title role in the BBC’s serialisation of Little Dorrit and has recently played Lady Macbeth opposite James McAvoy in the West End, She is now making a film, she told me, in which she appears as a vampire teacher.

All present were impressed by director Juliet Seal’s ‘strolling players’ take on Shrew, which began in lapel-grabbing style with Nick Long’s irruption into pre-show cocktails on the lawn in the role of the belligerent drunken tinker Christopher Sly — to the intense fascination of one of the Ponsonbys’ young spaniels, which stood transfixed at the spectacle. Afterwards, beside roaring log fires in the Glebe, we ate a superb paella cooked in a tent outside by caterers Ross & Ross of Chipping Norton. Ross Bearman featured in Gray Matter a few weeks ago, serving terrines at Alex James’s Kingham farm. Now it’s the turn of his business partner Ross Whitmill to take his bow in this inimitable chronicle of the local scene.