Among the welter of cultural anniversaries that we have been swamped with this year, 50 years of the Royal Lyceum and 70 of the Glasgow Citizens among them, it had entirely escaped my attention that the capital's Church Hill Theatre was also celebrating its golden jubilee. On Wednesday, however, there was an event, hosted by the theatre's general manager Shona Clelland and with Edinburgh City Council's culture convener Richard Lewis adding his customary debonair charm, that launched an exhibition celebrating those fifty glorious years. Guests of honour were Chistelle Steele and Deryk Goule, veterans of the Edinburgh am-dram scene, who apparently were in the venue's first show, a staging of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest for the Scottish Community Drama Association. The whole tenor of the celebration of the Morningside venue's history this week was geared towards that role as the home of non-professional performance, something that Edinburgh has arguably managed rather better than Glasgow, where venerable institutions like the Apollo Players and the Pantheon Club have been shunted around venues where they once had a regular King's slot.

But the back pages of the programme booklets for the Church Hill Theatre contain a great deal more than that, and when I thought on about the theatre, I realised it was probably the place that not only gave me some of my earliest experiences of watching performers on a stage, but also kept me drawing me back as those became what I suppose is as near as I'll ever get to a proper professional career. Between the National Library of Scotland's collection of programmes from the venues and the Scottish Theatre Archive at Glasgow University you will find records of the annual show by the June Geissler School of Ballet where I would watch my sister being uncharacteristically cute, and productions by Davidson's Mains Dramatic Club, which included a neighbour or two, as well as the annual offerings at Christmas and on the Fringe from Edinburgh People's Theatre, a company in which a colleague in my first journalism job was a leading light.

But those same archives spark other recollections as well, because as well as little girls learning poise in tutus, the Church Hill also saw visits from Scottish Ballet in the era of its founder Peter Darrell, with triple and quadruple bills for the cognoscenti, rather that the story-book favourites that filled bigger auditoriums. And in 1989, when I was just beginning to gravitate towards an arts role at The Herald, I recall reviewing the first night of Clyde Nouveau, the earliest satire on the City of Culture, by playwright Iain Heggie, then at the height of his enfant terrible fame. It had a mixed reception as I recall, but, a little like 7:84's The Cheviot, The Stag it would be interesting to see it revisited now.

And then there were the regular visits to the Church Hill of jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, to which my father and I would make a regular pilgrimage to the extent that, aged about ten, I recall having a dressing room chat with the maestro about the merits of the Tattoo. Was it that same year that he introduced on stage a precocious young fiddler barely a year older than myself? Anyway, his name was Nigel Kennedy.

Happy birthday, Church Hill, stage of many memories.