Profit on day £30
There was a question on the deliriously lateral Only Connect last night that was about The Mousetrap and on which I scored 2 points, which is almost cause for a champagne celebration in our house (at least until the missing vowels round, of which I got 12 right ahead of the buzzer last night - just saying).
I knew the answer because, when I was about 14, I was actually taken by my mum to see The Mousetrap – for no other reason than that I was reading a lot of Agatha Christie at the time (all of Agatha Christie at the time, actually), and that it was the longest running play in the West End – twenty-odd years - which seemed unfathomable at the time.
The play was terrible, the acting worse and the atmosphere touristy and funereal, (a foretaste of my general experience of the theatre; “backache, a rumbling tummy and posh people spitting at each other” as Giles Coren memorably described it, shortly before getting (and losing) a gig as a TV theatre critic.
Thing is, that was 32 years ago. And The Mousetrap’s still going strong…
As Woody Allen once noted – eternity lasts a very long time, particularly towards the end…
no poetry