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There was a bit of a do at the BBC for departing Proms director Nicholas Kenyon, as though he’d changed the way the world was turning. Perhaps he has. Like all good administrators, he’s kept the people who do the real work around him happy, as he said himself, and has been as impressive at the BBC as he was as a critic on the Financial Times, New Yorker and Observer.

Nick always wanted to be doing something as well as writing abut it: he’s had an impact, climbed that greasy pole, next stop Barbican and the knighthood. Rather endearingly, he still lives with his family in an unremarkable Gospel Oak terraced house with a creaky front gate and chaotic curtains.

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Big Lucy’s lying in state in Modena was a splendid occasion. On my way to a wedding in Suffolk at the weekend I was told that the coffin was so huge it had to be transported in a Japanese camper van — a Nissan Dormer, in fact.

As pun jokes go, it’s not bad. Its weakness — apart from the whole joke itself, perhaps — is that Pavarotti had in fact shrunk to a mere eleven stones in weight in his final stages of illness.

I was intrigued to read Michael Henderson’s column in the Telegraph claiming that Big Lucy didn’t hold a candle to Domingo, the latter being a finer operatic actor with a far more wide-ranging and adventurous repertoire.

This seems to miss the point about great stars. Pavarotti was a huge, honking popular star, whereas Domingo is merely a great operatic tenor. You couldn’t have the Three Tenors phenomenon without Lucy, but you could have it without Placido or Jose.

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You go away on holiday and you come back from holiday and still the same old wittering goes on about too many musicals blah blah. Latest to jump on the creaky old band wagon (now there’s  a musical I would dearly love to see – The Band Wagon by Dietz and Schwartz with a song title suitable for all the authors of West End jeremiads – “Dancing in the Dark”) —  is columnist Jim White in the Daily Telegraph.

White’s grouse is that Peter Hall’s touring production of Pygmalion won’t be coming into the Garrick Theatre whereas Bad Girls – “The Musical” (ouch, aagh, groan, moan) will be. However good or bad this Pygmalion might be (reviews suggest the former) it would probably be a dicey commercial proposition; I mean, how many tickets would Tim Pigott-Smith as Higgins actually sell, exactly, fine actor though he be?

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Monday 3rd September was our whatsonstage Outing to see the Old Vic’s premiere stage adapatation of All About My Mother, the oscar-nominated film. The production stars West End legend Diana Rigg and Lesley Manville.

With top price seats, free drink and programme, the outing was sold out weeks prior to the event date yesterday and there was certainly a sense of high expectation in the theatre, which, from what I can tell talking to people in the interval, was meet.

We do hope you enjoyed your trip to this production and we look forward to seeing you all again very soon - if you do have any feedback on the production or on the outing please do add!

Is there still an audience for plays? It may seem a daft question. But I was having lunch with a leading theatre executive who suggested the demand for plays was diminishing. There’s plenty of evidence to support him. There are now 27 musicals in the West End; everywhere you look you find adaptations of old films and books. And the young show an increasing appetite for the kind of physical theatre provided by groups like Kneehigh, Punchdrunk or Complicité. So have traditional plays had their day?

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