Properly envious of the Can.

Introduce yourself with the first five gigs you saw.

Anne Ziegler & Webster Booth
The Crazy Gang
Vesta Tilley
Kempe's Nine Days Wonder
Cliff

And anyone state-educated would be put off doing it by memories of the Good Old Days audience doing their sarcastic "oooooOOOOOoooh!"

Hot take: the bit in Yaketty Sax where it quotes Entrance of the Gladiators <<< the bit in the Carry On music where it quotes Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be.

Looks like I'm not alone. From a review of the 1957 ITV Play of the Week production.

I hope he took Susan Stranks with him. That would have given her a whole year's worth of ideas for Paperplay "makes".

Another scene worth learning by heart.

I'll have to work this line into casual conversation somehow.

It's not all talk, though. Here's a pivotal moment of action.

And then, out of nowhere, you get stage directions like this.

And it goes *on* like this...

Venus Observed was garlanded with awards at the time. The first production was put on by Olivier. So there's a chance I may just be too thick to appreciate its finer qualities. But this, for instance, is the opening exchange of the whole play.

The play involves a duke getting his son to pick his new wife from three visiting women. It's in blank verse, which, ah, fair enough. Oh, and the action takes place in the duke's bedroom, which he's kitted out with a massive telescope. And there's a solar eclipse. You know, for symbolism.

(Yes I know he's got a slightly earlier credit for an edition of the rubbish Carry On Laughing, but AFAIK he doesn't actually appear on screen in that, just provides "noises off". And anyway, bollocks to Carry On Laughing, an overlong Crackerjack sketch without the insane Peter Glaze cover version.)

Simon Callow's TV debut as a cockney Teddy boy about to duff up Robert Lindsay in National Service sitcom Get Some In. If this had taken place a couple of years later, he'd have been dressed in full punk gear.