DEREK Aldridge, 40, is director of the Wyvern Theatre, which is undergoing a £200,000-plus refurbishment and preparing for Hairspray, this year’s Summer Youth Project Production, which opens on Thursday. He lives in Cirencester with wife Kate, a primary school teacher, and their three daughters.

DEREK Aldridge is one of those lucky people whose profession also happens to be his great passion.

“If you go to the multiplex and watch Mission Impossible, you know that millions of people around the world are watching exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

“If you go to your local theatre and watch a performance, there is something much more individual.

When you walk into a theatre and you sit down and you look at the stage, anything could happen that night.

“It could be the best thing you’ve seen and move you to tears; it could be dreadful; it could be somewhere in between; it could involve you because there may be audience participation at some point.

“You may suddenly get talking to someone in the bar who you haven’t seen for years and you’ll have shared that experience.

“I think it’s a really lovely treat for people, as well. It’s nice to look forward to something, and for a lot of people it’s the way they mark their celebrations.

“We’re a part of a huge amount of people’s lives at Christmas, for example. People come to the pantomime, they introduce their children to coming to the pantomime, and it’s amazing how often you get families who come back generation after generation because it becomes a part of what they do at that time of year.”

Derek has been in charge of the 635-seat Wyvern since 2009 and heads a team of 25 full time, 25 part-time and about 150 volunteer staff. He works for theatre company HQ, which has run the Wyvern on behalf of owners Swindon Council for many years. Last year his remit was expanded to include the Arts Centre.

Attendances at the venues average 66 percent, well ahead of national trends.

Career highlights include organising a Michael McIntyre Arts Centre gig at 24 hours’ notice last December, allowing the star to trial material for a major Christmas show.

For a lifelong lover of theatre there could scarcely be a better job. Derek has clear memories of his earliest visits to live shows.

“One of them is going to the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton. This would be the very first one. I would have been very young – pre-school. Their Christmas show was The Gingerbread Man and I was absolutely petrified. It wasn’t the Gingerbread Man so much – they had a big set with all these things in the kitchen coming to life.

“The other was a musical – I think it was Joseph – at Chichester Festival Theatre, and I can remember between the two of those thinking, ‘This is very exciting.’”

Derek is originally from Southampton. His father was a Merchant Navy captain and trainer and his mother a librarian. His paternal grandmother was an avid theatregoer and insisted on taking the family to shows when they visited.

He left school at 18, temporarily sick of education. A friend had rented a two-bedroom flat in London and Derek moved there.

“My dad said he’d pay the deposit and the rent for two months, and if I hadn’t got a job within two months I was to come back home to Southampton.

“I went and knocked on doors. I literally walked around the centre of London thinking a theatre might be quite an interesting place to work.

Eventually, like Joseph looking for the stable, somebody opened the door and actually said, ‘Yes, there is a job – you can come and work as one of our ushers.’ “That was at the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, which at the time was home to Les Mis. It had been there for years and years, doing eight shows a week. I started as an usher and within a few weeks I was also doing some shifts in the ticket office and on the stage door, and I used to occasionally work in the admin office.

I was one of those kids – a lot of organisations have them – ‘Oh, he’ll do it!’ I got a real bug for it and did that for about 15 months, working in the West End.”

A degree in drama followed. Derek enjoyed performing but realised he wanted to work elsewhere in the theatre world. By 1996 he was working in what turned out to be a variety of roles at the Everyman in Cheltenham, and by 25 he was marketing chief at a theatre in Milton Keynes.

He came to Swindon after a stint as general manager of the Cheltenham Town Hall venue, two years after the Wyvern reopened following major renovation. The first order of business was to try to offer a more rounded variety of attractions.

“The aim should be that when you pick up the brochure you don’t like everything – my point being it is there for everybody in Swindon.

“So it would be absurd if you looked at it and said, ‘I want to go and see everything there.’ There should be shows for very young children, teenagers, students, young adults, families, older people, the whole array.”

Derek tried to round out the programme with a balance of music, plays, musicals, comedy and community events. He also found himself in charge of a very enthusiastic workforce who needed a director because they had been without a full time one for two years.

He is more enthusiastic than ever about the future of theatre generally and also in Swindon. The ongoing regeneration of the town centre is something he feels can only be good for business at the Wyvern.

“As human beings we’re all quite screen-based now. All in our little worlds where you do you’re individual thing and you’re not really there in the moment, sharing it, and I think theatre reminds us of a very powerful human need – that we need to experience something really happening around us, and that reminds us of our creativity.

“I always say that theatres are gyms for the imagination.”