May 3

‘Sit down!’ the fat man shouted at two people three rows ahead who, at the end of Waiting for Godot, had leapt up to applaud the actors. ‘Bloody sit down,’ he grumbled.

In the interval he had mumbled his way through his entire repertoire of plays he had seen and how better or worse the actors in the current play had been.

‘Seeing Mckellan I gave up my acting ambitions.’

‘Why?’ asked his equally large wife trying to co-ordinate her two black walking sticks into a folding position.

‘So good. How can you compete?’

‘How do you fold these bloody sticks down?’

And now, having seen Mckellan again, he shouted ‘sit down’ at two people as overjoyed as he once was. Only they were able to stand up to express their appreciation.