18th July The quest for Reasons to be Cheerful

In an attempt to ease out of character as the Daily Mail-reading apoplectic Outraged of Walthamstow I have turned into of late, this entry is going to attempt to find Reasons to be Cheerful.

The Olympic security recruitment stuff had me Tweeting, and writing to my MP. Not so much the fact that the G4S company is clearly an incompetent bunch of cynical swindlers, but that our elected politicians – of all parties, in national and local government – didn’t think to check during the last three years that the EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS PLUS of our money being paid out to this bunch of twisters was doing what they said it would do, actually address unemployment issues in east London. In a country where there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people how on earth can they fall three and a half thousand short? And Mr Hunt the Government minister cheerfully and complacently calls it “a hitch”! They were being paid to recruit security staff, not brain surgeons! And now the farce of the Olympic bus-drivers collecting American and Australian athletes at Heathrow and then spending FIVE HOURS trying to find their way into London…..!!!

And today I find that the bank which “looks after”my hard-earned pennies and farthings (actually, my child, I can remember using farthings) that trusty high street ever-reliable depository, HSBC, has been boosting its profits by millions via deals with Mexican drug barons and Al Quaeda terrorists…

So, Reason to be Cheerful Number One: of course it’s the wondrous BBC 2 show “Twenty Twelve”.


 Hugh Bonnevile, Jessica Hynes and indeed all of the cast are quite brilliant and John Morton’s script about the “Olympics Deliverance Commission” is extraordinary. Apparently written and recorded months ago, the parallels with real events leading up to the Olympics have been spooky, except that for the most part the real-life cock-ups are far less credible than the TV comedy ones – see second paragraph above. Last night’s plot centred on difficulties in selling tickets for women’s football, and – guess what – only yesterday afternoon the announcement came that half the seating in the Millenium Stadium will be closed for the opening women’s football match because of poor ticket sales…Morton is truly a seer, and a seer with a forensic instinct for ridiculous behaviour, of which there is no shortage around this wearisome, sad pantomime.

Reason to be Cheerful Two has to be “The Hollow Crown”. I already championed it last session, so won’t go on about it too much, but suffice to say that it’s consistently the best television Shakespeare since the Trevor Nunn “Antony and Cleopatra” with Janet Suzman and Richard Johnson back in 1974.

Needless to say, we old RADA tutors are glowing with pride at the smashing work done by our ex-students.  I already mentioned Mr Whishaw and Mr Hiddleston, but there are also cracking performances from David Dawson as Poins and the increasingly stunning Maxine Peake as Doll Tearsheet.

The scene with Tom and David in the bath-house is already up there with Colin Firth’s wet emergence from the pool in “Pride and Prejudice” as an iconic fantasy…. My friend Lois phoned to say it had left her quite unsettled…




Settle down, settle down…Now on to Reason to be Cheerful Three. This section is especially for readers in Northamptonshire and Somerset, who have treats awaiting them at their local playhouses. According to the Daily Telegraph, reviewing “Hedda Gabler” at the Derngate Theatre starring yet another Radagrad says:

“Emma Hamilton, young and lovely as a Renoir… commands the part from her entrance, moving with a loose nonchalance that bespeaks both aristocratic confidence and appalling restlessness. Her graceful femininity shines a piercing light upon Hedda’s dilemma”



While The Guardian, writing about “The School for Scandal” at Bath Theatre Royal, observes 
“masterpieces of comic timing from the cast, particularly Edward Bennett’s Joseph Surface, making swift shifts between sham “man of sentiment” and “artful, selfish” swindler”
So yet another accolade for Mr Bennett, who is, of course, available as a mentor for subscribers to www.teachyourselfacting.com.

And so to Reason to be Cheerful Four: ladies and gentlemen, we give you THE JETSTREAM! Having spent weeks and weeks offloading 
unspeakably soaking weather over the UK, this seemingly key feature of the upper atmosphere is shifting north, we are reliably told by the BBC, and as of Tuesday next we shall have proper mid-July weather, including quite a lot of sunshine. So, imbued as we Brits are with indelible faith in the BBC, I am quitting the Olympic chaos of London and heading to Stratford on Avon by canal-boat. If my laptop’s dongle works in the rustic heart of England, look for the next report to be a despatch from a land of golden sunlight, glistening on calm, soothing water…