Driving force
On a late autumn afternoon, the sun sparkles on the Sumner surf on the coastline near Christchurch city. Robin Judkins, 73, has just finished taking me on a tour of his house. Based on a Scottish sea captain’s house, it has an amazing art collection, and an upstairs room with a stellar view of the coast.
Judkins settles in to explain why he has written, funded and is about to stage a rock musical in the Christchurch Town Hall. It seems a far cry from the hurly-burly of the annual Coast to Coast adventure race, which he founded back in the 80s, and for which he is probably best known.
The musical began as a couple of lines in a diary. Those two lines tantalised him, but once he got going about five years ago, Free Bus to God almost wrote itself.
“Without really knowing consciously what I was doing at the time, I started to write it. And then, when I got hooked on the idea, I set chairs up in the lounge for the characters. I originally had 13 chairs but I decided 13 was too many to
