‘ello, ‘ello, What’s All This, Then?
I was making my way in a reasonably orderly fashion towards the first night opening of Grease at the Piccadilly Theatre, m’lud, when I found my progress obstructed by a member of the local constabulary. “You can’t go there, sonny” he said with a degree of what I took to be smug satisfaction, “not until I get the all-clear from my superior officer.”
This, I have to confess, was a “first” in all my days and nights of theatre-going. Since when, and indeed why, has Her Majesty’s police force been deployed to regulate the ebb and flow of a first night crowd? Doesn’t the Ambassador Theatre Group have a front of house team, or a few flunkeys in red tailcoats they might have borrrowed from the Really Useful Group?
I was pressed unceremoniously against a milling crowd of plump girls in skimpy skirts and pink Grease boleros — a not wholly unpleasant experience, I readily admit — while Mr Plod pursued his duty with a cold stare and a firm wrist.
And then it happened. The reason for the excitement and the hubbub was that no less an exalted figure in public life than the disgraced politician and popular novelist Jeffrey Archer was signing autographs. And not only that: his “fragrant” wife Mary Archer was also signing autographs. And then again, not even just that: the Archers, having signed merrily away for several minutes, turned to the crowd on the other side of the street — and waved at them!
Good grief, they must be as much loved and widely recognised as Neil and Christine Hamilton, or Gloria Hunniford, perhaps even Lionel Blair and Christopher Biggins. These are dog days indeed for celebrity watching. Real stars stay home while the B-list cavort in the spotlight with the blessing of the Metropolitan Police.
Then a big black car drew up and out jumped Grease producer David Ian, waving to the crowd — ah, yes, he told an interviewer the other day, with evident self-satisfaction, that he’d been on national television on thirty-one Saturday nights out of the past fifty-two, so he must be really famous by now — and ushering in his wife and two children, all looking extremely prosperous, sun-tanned, first-nighty and jolly pleased with themselves.
By this time, I suggested to Mr Plod that I should be alllowed to proceed to the foyer. “I’m afraid you can’t, sonny, not until I get the word.” Last resort time had come, it was the moment of desperate measures. “But I’m a theatre critic, officer, and I have a job to do, places to go, people to meet, that sort of thing.”
Plod gave me a very suspicious look indeed. But his resolve was buckling. “Can I see your Press card, then, sonny?” I showed him several and he let me through. The whole foyer was as much of a heaving mass of mini-celebrity squalor and confusion as it had been ten minutes earlier.
So what had the boys in blue been up to? More to the point, what had the staff of Ambassador Theatre Group been up to? I know the answer to that one. They were all in the pub next door which had been placed out of bounds to the public for their own private party. So the ATG were not only deploying the full authority of our police force, they were occupying our pubs, as well.
This was proving to be a very dark day for democracy indeed. Which is why so many people were blocking up the street and wondering what to do with themselves before the show. They couldn’t get in the theatre and they couldn’t get in the pub. Oh well, may as well hang about and wave to Jeffrey Archer, I suppose. I plead guilty to failing to assist in the right and proper obstruction of a first night audience and other funny people who happened on my way to the theatre.
