I often write about local characters so I’m ringing the changes to talk about famous visitors.

Travelling to the shrine to King Edmund the Martyr at Bury St Edmunds every monarch from the 9th to 16th Century passed through Braintree.

In 1599 the comic actor and dancer William Kempe morris-danced from London to Norwich, reporting the road between Chelmsford and Braintree so thickly wooded on both sides and full of deep holes that he was thankful to reach the town.

In the Great War the novelists Arnold Bennett, who lived at Thorpe-le-Soken, and his friend HG Wells, at Little Easton, often visited each other.

Wells, incensed by our appalling roads, wrote a famous tongue-in-cheek article for the Daily Chronicle entitled Braintree and Bocking and the Future of the World.

His argument - what hope was there to build a new post-war world when the rulers of Braintree and Bocking couldn’t even repair the main road that divides them!

Max Wall the comedic actor and master of funny walks lived here for several years from 1920.

There was nothing funny in the gait of E McDonald Bailey, the Trinidad-born sprinter who jointly held the 100 yards world record from 1951 to 1956. At the 1950 Crittall Sports he gave the runners a five-yard start and won easily.

Braintree man Stanley Dance entertained his good friend the American jazz pianist Duke Ellington (pictured) at his Bradford Street home in 1958, and later wrote the Duke’s biography.

Film actor Rupert Everett was inspired by watching films at the Embassy Cinema in the 1960s, while Braintree-born Sally Hay became Richard Burton’s fourth wife in 1983 and survived him.

The Daily Mirror journalist and agony aunt Marjorie Proops was the guest at Charles Leek House, the home of Braintree Mencap, in 1965, and in 1985 the great cricket commentator Brian Johnston brought the long-running radio programme Down Your Way to Braintree.

Botanist and television presenter David Bellamy opened the John Ray knot garden at the Public Gardens in 1998.

Finally, Ipswich Town and later England manager Bobby Robson was guest of honour at the 1974 Braintree & Crittall Athletic FC annual dinner.

Ipswich had beaten mighty Liverpool that afternoon and he slipped out to watch Match of the Day. Returning he danced with all the players’ wives and stayed to the end.

What a fine man whom I was honoured to meet when he spent several moments talking to my ten-year-old son before the second half at a Boxing Day match in Ipswich. He was knighted in 2002.