AS tour guides go, Richard Kidd hardly cut a dashing figure. His much-stained jacket and trousers may have been charity shop rejects, while his holey shirt must have been pressed into service after being rescued from a rag bag.

But he certainly stood out, and I joined him and seven others in Broad Street at the start of an Oxford adventure to several places loosely associated with William Shakespeare. It had been devised by those energetic members of Oxford’s Creation Theatre.

While larger groups learned of the city’s traditions and treasures, Richard treated us to some of the Bard’s best known speeches and soliloquies. Among a catalogue of characters he re-created as we moved from place to place, were Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, Iago, Shylock and Henry V.

There was an element of audience participation. Arming Felix, a 13-year-old from Dorchester on Thames, with a sword and a shield bearing the words ‘Henry’s boys on tour’, Richard enlisted the lad in the English army before the Battle of Agincourt, staged in New College Lane.

Their fiercest opponents were cyclists who forced even brave King Hal to leap for safety.

Miriam, a 22-year-old visitor from Heidelberg, was also drawn into action. She was handed a script that looked like a toilet roll, but resembled those Shakespeare would have produced, to read the part of Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We were given some strange looks, but who cares? It was a lot of fun.

The tours will take place twice daily until May 3.

WOULD you pay up to £20 to have your feet tickled by a shoal of tiny fish? Some people have, and a North Oxford grandmother declared it was worth every penny.

It was impossible to miss the range of fish tanks in the Clarendon Centre. Seated around were men and women of all ages, their bare feet dangling in water. One woman was peacefully reading a book as these tiddlers from the Far East, with a fancy name I didn’t recognise, enjoyed eating scales and dry skin. The name of the enterprise was Bubble Feet, a title that hardly described the carnivorous nature of these aquatic podiatrists.

Who was the grandmother? She asked to remain anonymous.

“Some of my neighbours might not understand – or approve,” she said while replacing her pop socks and sensible shoes.

THE young man juggling three flaming torches in Cornmarket Street had an accident that many of his fellow artists from time to time experience: he dropped one and the act came to a grinding halt.

His confidence must surely have suffered when a small child told his dad quite loudly that the juggler should practise more.