One really does wonder sometimes what world Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, inhabits. The same one as us? I don’t think so. The other day — and it was bad sight of the year, frankly — he broke down and wept while apologising on our behalf for slavery. Thanks, Ken, but I’ll try and make it up to our black brothers off my own bat, if it’s all the same to you. I’d much rather have seen him apologising for bendy buses and the congestion charge.

The obscenity of Livingstone’s political posing is only matched by the stupidity of his transport policy. His ideology is rooted in the belief that we should all be on bikes, not in cars. To those of us dedicated to enlarging our carbon footprints with the aid of petrol-guzzling cars and holiday breaks on Ryan Air, this is a terrible slap in the face.

And why is another overpaid American mogul (less drunk, we hope, than the last one) in charge of the London Underground anyway? The least Ken could have done is appoint a black American with antecedent slavery credentials to the post. But then he has no idea of what people go through to get to theatres and concerts on time in London, let alone get home from them.

If I decide to forego the pleasures of the Northern Line and take a Number 24 bus instead into the West End, I invariably have to disembark after about ninety minutes around Bedford Square, usually, as it happens, right outside Cameron Mackintosh’s offices. It’s then a quick jog into Soho. I live about four miles from the West End and it is usually quicker to walk there. When I use London transport I leave the house around tea time.

Apart from trying to get around London, travel is one of the great joys of being a theatre critic, unless you are trying to get to Ludlow, say, which takes a day and a half; or to the Arcola in Dalston, East London, which in my case entails a rush-hour journey on the packed and smelly North London line and a half-mile trudge through the crack alley otherwise known as Kingsland High Street.  

Enjoying your destination, apart from the theatre itself, is an important critical duty. I was dismayed to hear from my chum Robert Gore-Langton the other day that when he was in Leeds for the female Casanova at the West Yorkshire Playhouse (and therefore in dire need of a pick-me-up) he couldn’t persuade a single colleague to join him afterwards in a drink or a meal.

The poor chap ended up having a solo snifter in the Nag’s Head, one of Leeds city centre’s most delightfully scruffy pubs, followed by a banquet for one in a superb Indian restaurant. 

This was a severe dereliction of duty by the other scribes, a bunch of Horlicks and orange juice wallahs by the sound of them, leaving Gore-Langton to fill his boots on his tod, like some black-balled bounder; it’s not as though the chap’s got bad breath or sweaty palms (not, at least, until after the Indian meal).

The matter should be addressed immediately by the Critics Circle who have been wasting their time recently issuing me with pompous and pious tickings off about the contents of this blog. There are some people whose noses it is a positive pleasure to get up as far as possible without asphyxiating oneself with nausea in the attempt.
 

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 10:03 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.