Apra Ames Roberts has led an eventful life and her adventures are far from over. A teenage cancer survivor who appeared in a Hollywood blockbuster, she became a fire-eater, knife-juggler and historical reenactor before launching a successful business that was swallowed up by the Covid pandemic.
After hitting rock-bottom, she sold her possessions to start over again. Now, at the age of 56, Apra is a food writer who runs a life-affirming café and shop in Wrexham, selling condiments that give long-forgotten recipes a modern twist.
This is a woman who simply won’t give up, driven in part by tragedy. Not surprising, given her roots: her great-great grandparents were Isaac and Miriam Jones, who lived in a cave on Llandudno’s Great Orme for 37 years, raising 15 children. Many of her recipes are informed by her family’s fishing traditions at the resort.
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Apra was taught weaponry skills by legendary swordmaster Bob Anderson. He was Hollywood's premier sword-fighting choreographer who played out Darth Vader’s lightsaber battles in two Star Wars films. Even now, when preparing food at festivals, she can’t resist the temptation. “I like to give the knives a quick flourish,” she chuckled.
Her juggling skills were refined following a chance encounter with a Romanian market trader who, in a previous career, happened to be Bobo the professional clown. People keep telling her she should write an autobiography. She hasn’t yet – but her first book, The History of Spice in a Nutmeg, will be published next spring.
“I was never encouraged in anything I did,” said Apra. “But along the way I’ve had a lot of help from people who really knew what they were doing.”
She set out to be an actress, attending drama school after an early break. At the age of 17 she appeared as an extra on the 1998 Ron Howard film Willow starring Val Kilmer. “I was chased by a troll,” she smiled.
But she was always destined for behind-the-scenes work. Joining the Sealed Knot re-enactment group, Apra was invited to a workshop run by Bob Anderson (“the best swordsman who ever lived”) and she was hooked.
She specialised in the short sword and rapier but also mastered the pole and short axe. For a while, her party trick was balancing a Trojan war axe on her head. “I can’t do it anymore,” she sighed.
Apra also studied martial arts, from full-combat karate and kick-boxing. She was a keen archer and became competent with the longbow. Such skills were in demand by filmmakers: her fight choreography credits included First Knight and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. She was also involved in stage productions, from the Three Musketeers to the Pirates of Penzance.
She married, then divorced and as work dried up, she threw herself into historical re-enactments, having studied history and archaeology when younger. Donning wool-and-linen, Apra demonstrated traditions dating back to the Tudors and Celts. Often, some kind of sharp-bladed weapon was involved.
At the turn of the millennium, life switched gears again. She’d met her future partner, Diane Hughes, who’d trained as a nurse before launching a dance school, Top Hat and Tails, in Wrexham. Later, Diane formed a performing arts school. In 2006 the two merged to become the Delta Academy of Dance and Performing Arts, now one of the biggest in North Wales.
Together they opened a fancy dress shop, Acrobats and Buffoonery, in Cefn Mawr. “It was something I had always wanted to do,” said Apra. “But before long we had more people coming in asking for costumes to be made, than costumes to buy. Parents wanted kids outfits for dances, plays and World Book Day, and there was also demand from drag queens, cross dressers and others.”
Within a year, by 2004, the shop morphed into costume-makers and was renamed Crazy Ladies. Growth was rapid and soon TV producers came calling: Crazy Ladies outfits were to be seen on everything from Dr Who to Channel 4’s Big Brother. Apra’s tight-lipped but it’s not too hard to imagine that MP George Galloway’s skin-tight leotard, in which he pretended to be a pet cat licking imaginary milk, originated in Wrexham: a meow all the way from Cefn Mawr.
As business blossomed, so did Apra’s interest in cooking and its historic context. In 2019, she and Diane launched a second business, Happy Hedgehog Foods, perhaps named in deference to her trademark spiky hair. Supplies were readily on hand from the pair’s orchard and garden in Bangor-on-Dee.
“It was just a hobby really,” she said. “I was thinking of my retirement. I’ve was always interested in food but my siblings went into catering, so I had to find a different path.
“Everyone makes jams and chutneys, and I wanted to be different. Coming from a fishing family in Llandudno, and having a reenactment background, I’d already been researching historic recipes.”
Her father was Llandudno boatman Johnny Yr Ogof (Johnny the Cave), her grandfather the larger-than-life Ted yr Ogof, whose memorial on Llandudno promenade was rededicated in 2017. Together they took pleasure boats on sightseeing trips around the Great Orme. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ted fished the bay, often mending his nets on the prom and selling his catches from a handcart in Market Street.
Sharing Apra’s interest in food was her stepson Bradley, Diane’s son. He too was a gifted actor who often joined Apra on her re-enactment weekends. At the age of 19, he hung himself, having long suffered mental health issues.
It was the start of the collapse of Apra’s world. Within a year, Britain was in its first Covid lockdown. With theatres, school and film studios shut, the Crazy Ladies business went into a tailspin. Apra improvised, making PPE equipment and body bags, but the company was eventually wound up.
“We’d built up the business from a £30,000 turnover to one turning over £1.5m,” she said. “Suddenly I was bankrupt. It was a depressing time.
“At one point I sat in the garden on the tree where Bradley had died, asking myself why he had done it and wondering if I shouldn’t do the same. I would never have carried it through of course, because of my partner, my family and grandchildren.”
Cooking was her salvation. Products made as Christmas gifts solicited a clamour for more. Apra was delighted but she still wondered if the plaudits were merely the kindness of friends.
She wanted to test this out but was penniless. So she sold enough possessions to raise the £130 fee needed to enter three products into the 2021 Great Taste Awards. “It was a kind of blind test, from impartial judges, to see if they were any good,” she said.
One, a Sweet Hot Sauce, was dedicated to curry-loving Bradley. It won bronze. Another, a Strawberry Balsamic Vinegar, collected a Gold award, one of only 10 products in Wales to do so that year.
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The judges weren’t the only ones to like her Strawberry Balsamic. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote Apra a hand-written letter saying he’d found it “absolutely delicious”. He’d been gifted a bottle by Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford during a visit to Scotland.
To commercialise her products, Apra needed them professionally tested and assessed. For this, she had to raise capital. She began selling more of her prized possessions, from handbags to swords and other weaponry. “I scraped together £2,000,” she said “But I still needed another £2,500. I was about to launch a GoFundMe page when a friend stepped in with the money.
“She told me, ‘You’ve helped me so much, now I want to help you’. She said it wasn’t a donation as she knew the business would succeed. I gave her 5% of the company and she was right!”
Happy Hedgehog Foods, launched formally two years ago, is now very much in demand. Its sauces, chutneys, marmalades and preserves are in restaurants, delis and farm shops. Others are crying out for stocks but Apra prefers to stay artisan. “We’re still not capital rich but at least we don’t have wolves baying at the door,” she said.
She has a production unit alongside her shop and cafe at Wrexham’s Queensway Community Building in impoverished Caia Park. It’s a remarkable place. The space is shared by a craft shop, Diane’s Delta Dance Academy with its 500 weekly youngsters, and a community group that provides a refuge for those affected by dementia.
It’s also under threat. The building’s owners are retiring and want to sell up. The community group has been given first option but it first needs to find £250,000. It’s a big ask: a GoFundMe page is running and just £6,500 has been raised so far.
It’s a cause close to Apra’s heart not just because she’s a tenant. In her dying years, her mother suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's, conditions synonymous with the building’s benevolence. It was her mother who was her confidante, researcher and translator when it came to tracking down historic recipes.
“Our house is like a library,” said Apra. “My partner is always telling me off for adding to it. But I’m fascinated. Old recipes weren’t like they are now – they were a handful of this, a pinch of that.
“Many were preserved by stately homes as a way of keeping track of costs: they were essentially shopping lists with no instructions. It’s where the word “recipe” comes from – originally they were called receipts.”
Auctions provided Apra with a way of collecting food receipts. One, held in Chirk, was to spark a six-year investigation with an eye-catching outcome.
“I rummaged through a box of tat and spotted a handwritten book from a stately home,” she said. “I bid £70 for the box and everyone was looking at me oddly for paying so much.
“The book was full of food receipts and diary entries from 1825 to 1938. The final entry read, “I hate bloody rationing”! When I opened it up, a scrap of vellum fell from a letter dated 1825. On it was writing in Old English. It took me six years to have it translated.”
It appeared to be a receipt for making marmalade. A note in the letter suggested the vellum was at least 200-years-old. Other evidence suggested a 16th-century provenance. Putting everything together, Apra came to a startling conclusion. “We now believe it was a marmalade receipt for the coronation of Elizabeth 1 in 1559,” she said.
Heartbreakingly, the receipt was later stolen at a re-enactment festival. Yet its spirit lives on: Happy Hedgehog’s product line-up includes a “1559 Tudor Style” Onion Marmalade.
Resilience and resurrection are themes in Apra’s own life. More battles lie ahead, as she and others fight to save the Queensway building, only this time Apra’s weapons won’t involve sharp blades and fake blood.
- The dog-friendly Happy Hedgehog Café is based at The Queensway, Wrexham, LL13 8UN. It's open Tuesday-Friday, 8.30am-4.30pm, and Saturday, 9.30am-3.30pm.. For details about the café and shop, plus recipes, visit the Happy Hedgehog website.
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