Tom Mitchell

The chance meeting took place in Edinburgh, on the corner of Hanover Street and Princes Street. He was driving a vintage blue Jaguar sports car. His beard then was far less flamboyant, and so too was his dress.

He had the look of an athlete, a man of action who was bound to enjoy an outdoor life. His dark hair was already streaked with grey - I reckoned he was in his early 40s. As the years passed his dress and his general appearance became that of the artist. He explains this away to his rugby league friends with the words ''by mixing with theatre types'', referring to his friends who helped him set up the Traverse

Theatre. How did it transpire that such a man, known as ''the father of rugby league'' could transform the cultural life of Edinburgh? The full story deserves to be translated into a Traverse play with a very large cast.

He was unknown in Edinburgh, with a distinctly Cumbrian accent, which gave a clue to his role as a farmer representing the eighth generation of a farming family.

He died peacefully in his sleep in his beloved family home, Salmon Hall in Workington, his physical strength diminished by a series of heart attacks but with his will power and ''joie de vivre'' still evident. Indeed, it was only one month ago he had sent me the recently published autobiography he had been working on over the past few years. It was entitled Memoirs and Sporting Life of Tom Mitchell. With the copy of his book he had enclosed his account, and therefore in his mind the only true account, of how the Traverse Theatre had come into being.

Edinburgh's cultural life would simply not have blossomed in the sixties without him. He had come to Edinburgh when its city centre was full of run-down buildings. One of them was a 400-year-old tenement on the Royal Mile, a short walk from the Castle Esplanade. It backed onto a courtyard called James Court. To the original six-storey building there had been built a three-storey addition, comprising a cellar and two low-ceilinged floors no more than 20ft in width. In this unlikely building the Traverse was born because Tom Mitchell had bought it for a mere #300 and was prepared to accept my suggestion that a group of Cambridge under-graduates should use it as an alternative festival venue to that of the Cambridge Footlights.

Led by John Cleese, they called the first floor space The Sphinx Club in time for the 1962 Edinburgh Festival. Six months later, Tom Mitchell encouraged two actors, Terry Lane and John Malcolm, to set up a small 59-seat

theatre inspired by the way Jim Haynes had transformed his Paperback Bookshop into a festival venue for an audience of no more than a dozen.

Tom Mitchell thus became the Traverse patron and landlord, charging a nominal annual rent of one pound. He had become part of a small group of friends attracted to the lifestyle of Jim Haynes and John Calder and their commitment to the international world of literature, theatre, music, and in particular opera.

He chose to inhabit his Scottish and Cumbrian worlds for more than 30 years, carefully keeping them well-apart, representing as they did his two contrasting lifestyles.

As the driving force behind Workington Rugby League Club he was known for his courage and resourcefulness, and total loyalty to those who shared his love of the sporting life. These were the very qualities he displayed as a champion of the avant-garde in theatre. He loved winning against the odds, while taking risks, and that was the spirit he infused into the Traverse, so that its name, like that of Workington, became synonymous with innovation, daring, and success.