Great Britain

I went to see an absolutely brilliant play at the Lyttleton Theatre yesterday. Great Britain is a glorious satire on the gutter press, the police and politicians. It was full of scurrilous, marvellously non-politically correct jokes, peppered with much Anglo-Saxon terminology. This together with a sparkling script ensured that I hardly stopped laughing the entire time. Which is not to say that the play did not have a very sharp edge, but it was just what we needed after the activities of some of the newspapers in recent years…

Billie Piper played the lead and astonishingly good she was. Also brilliant was Robert Glenister as the editor of the Free Press, a ‘red-top’. This was theatre at its absolute best, with a brilliant production using the latest video technology. I would say this is a ‘must see’, as balm for anyone frustrated with those three non-liberal professions, the press, the police and the political classes.

My favourite scene was when the rich and powerful newspaper proprietor was hauled up in front of a House of Commons Select Committee: ‘This is the hungriest day of my life’ he said…