Saturday 20 March

What a performance! What a palaver! No sooner have I had my first acting experience than I’ve had my first drunken acting experience. The fault – like an erroneously-delivered Tory rag, for which the paperboy must be flogged – is at the door of Sir Dempson Makepeace QC (‘queer chap’). It is Dempson who with characteristic camaraderie assembles the ensemble between today’s matinee (shuffle across stage in chains: 21 seconds on and off) and the evening (what can go wrong?) showing of this jaw-dropping (pant-dropping? I shudder to think) production. The venue for more than several powerful IPAs is the Watership, down near the Town Hall, and while it is good to have Licky join us (in fellow ‘lifer’ and eternal student Reith she meets a friend of mine younger than herself for the first time since Erick had years taken off him by that kindly magistrate/hairdresser) it is Porthole to whom many of us are eager to direct our loose tongues.

Why?

Without wishing to in any way prejudice our man’s ongoing investigation into the theft of the coal barge, and with it our hopes for Voluntary Early Death payouts, it must be said that there is a certain member of the cast who perfectly fits the description of his prime suspect: ‘the outsider’...

...Rendell Pifflewax is less cool than even the least cool amongst us (and in this sub-group I must include myself and the two other readily-identifiable seniors; funky as we very well might be). While most of us retain an air of ironic detachment befitting the least paid, least appreciated members of the cast & crew (no matter how secretly thrilled we are at tripping the light fandango), Pifflewax is always at the theatre hours ahead of our call, dressed and chained and ready for those intense 21 seconds (to go). He appears to be a simple soul – innocently doting on the lead actress and calling Dempson’s Liverpool-based footerball team ‘scum’, with a heartening lack of ambivalence. But the fact remains: he is not one of us. The lad looks like he can barely afford to smoke, let alone purloin white bread. And with the links now proven between poor diet, lack of nicotine, and acts of irascibility, can we really doubt that it is Pifflewax who is the backstage miscreant responsible for repeatedly flooding the toilets and smearing the walls with our mud-effect make-up?

Fortunately, tonight the ‘us’ that is ‘we’ get away with it. Despite stage manager Mugs raising an eyebrow, and a troupe of us raising an illicit glass of wine back stage, no ‘breathalyser’ ever invented could stop a determined actor going about his craft. We may have won extra plaudits for looking a little worse than usual for our years of captivity. We may have tripped over each others’ chains, careered into the audience and inadvertently strangled the Mail’s theatre critic. None of us can remember. Yet one thing is certain – Pifflewax was missing from our number tonight, yet still bears the signs of some injury upon his crown – perhaps evidence of an earlier, and more serious, misdemeanour? I must tell Porthole at once; if you catch my drift, please tell him yourself.