The art of a good actor lies in being able to draw the audience into the action. Dame Judi Dench tells Church Times that she realised she had this gift when her parents went to see her in Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic. As she crouched over the corpse of Tybalt, she sighed: “Where is my father and my mother, Nurse?” At which her father replied from the stalls: “Here we are, darling, in row H.”
The end of Dave’s line?
The bookies now make 2016 the most likely year for David Cameron to leave office, due largely to the EU referendum. But the PM told a reception for those in the transport industry last week that he intends to stay on until 2018. “I want to be here for the opening of Crossrail,” he said. New railway lines can mean a terminus for a PM. Jim Callaghan was gone less than a week after the opening of the Jubilee Line in 1979.
Alex Rae, a reader, was listening to a Radio 5 Live phone-in about tipping practice yesterday and heard a caller say: “I only tip taxi drivers if they go the extra mile.” Normally puts me off.
Bolero unravelled
It won Torvill and Dean a gold medal and got Dudley Moore into bed with Bo Derek in 10 but Ravel’s Bolero, which came out of copyright on Sunday, was panned by some critics. One called it “the most insolent monstrosity perpetrated in the history of music” and said the “vulgar cabaret tune” that sits over its 339 bars of rhythm was like “the wail of an obstreperous back-alley cat”. Ravel called it a “masterpiece”, but conceded: “Unfortunately there’s no music in it.”
Cathedral naming rights
Since there’s been only one cancelled subscription and emails keep coming in, here’s another affectionate joke about Americans, from John Wightman. He once met a retired American in Exeter cathedral, who asked his opinion as to England’s finest cathedral. “Lincoln,” he replied. The American thought it over, then asked: “Did they name it after Abraham?”
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Zac Goldsmith, the Tory candidate for mayor of London, didn’t endear himself to voters in southeast London recently by thanking those at an event for coming out to the “wilds of Orpington” to hear him. As one remarked: Orpington is 15 minutes nearer to City Hall by train than Zac’s home in Richmond.
Fifty years of not gossiping
Happy 50th birthday to . . . us. May 3, 1966, was the first day that The Times permanently had news stories on the front page. It was also the first appearance of a Times Diary column. “Some readers have been alarmed by reports that it is to be a gossip column,” the paper’s leader thundered before going on to point out that the vehemence of those concerns was nothing compared with the opposition to a crossword in 1930. We’ve tried to avoid mere gossip ever since, preferring jokes and anecdotes (some new, a few of them even true) or whatever raises an eyebrow or a smile. An antidote to the gloom of the news. Thank you for reading, especially all those who get in touch with stories and jokes of their own. They are often the best ones.
