June. When in 2019 I had a flutter with my heart and a momentary loss of speech, it must have been around the time of the stand-off between Boris Johnson and the Supreme Court because the young doctor in A&E at UCH testing my mental capacity asked me what the word was for closing down Parliament, i.e. proroguing, which I got in one. One of the pleasures and indeed consolations of a memorial service is in looking round to see who’s there, not something that’s possible on Zoom. So, ideally it should be a roving Zoom. Not, I’m sure, that Geoffrey would have thought he was worth the trouble. For much of 1983 and 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood dominated the pop landscape so totally that... ★★★★✩ It was a smash hit, with every night the audience studded with celebrities, and accordingly at one performance there was the queen. My particular tour de force in the second half was an Anglican sermon, which always went well. Less successful, earlier in the show, was a monologue – stand-up it would be called today – on the subject of corporal and capital punishment, both in those days still going strong. Young enough then to believe that theatre and indeed satire could do some good, I was proud of this piece, though it garnered few laughs and was referred to by the rest of the cast as ‘the boring old man sketch’. The character I played was vehement in his defence of corporal and capital punishment while strongly rebutting any suggestion that the thought of either gave him pleasure. ‘On the contrary,’ I intoned. ‘They produce no erec … no REACTION at all.’ They didn’t produce much of a reaction from the audience either, and on the night the queen was present none at all. To be fair, the management had urged me to tone down the offending sketch, particularly the erection/reaction gag but (rather self-righteously) I refused. There wasn’t much laughter that night in the rest of the show, which normally went by in gales of hilarity, but with the audience only concerned with what the Royal Party was thinking, much of it passed in awkward silence.

House Arrest: Diary selections from the pandemic year, House Arrest: Diary selections from the pandemic year,

With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Venice is the only city I’ve been in, with the possible exception of Cambridge, where there was nothing to offend the eye, and going in winter as I did in those days one would find the Piazza San Marco empty. It was at the Accademia with its thin walls that I first overheard sexual intercourse, and the shout of a man coming, ‘Vengo! Vengo!’ Rupert goes upstairs to do his Pilates on Zoom. His teacher lives round the corner, but she is currently with her husband in Canada. Still, up he goes in his T-shirt and shorts as it’s quite strenuous, and it makes no difference that she’s on the other side of the world. Rishi Sunak told Starmer: “Rather than comment on piecemeal bits of information, I’m sure [Starmer] will agree with me the right way for these things to be looked at is the Covid inquiry.Scottish Business Digest Serica could revive North Sea’s Kyle oil field: 5 need-to-know business stories

House Arrest - British Theatre Guide Book review: House Arrest - British Theatre Guide

August, Yorkshire. Write it and it happens. In the monologue The Shrine I wrote for production during Covid, a biker travelling down the A65 dies in a crash and I imagined incurious sheep gathering to look at the scene of the accident.It is filled with wise and often witty observations drawing on a lifetime of cultural interests, often alluding to the author’s stage and TV work but stretching much further afield. October. One casualty of Covid (and I don’t think it’s age) has been chronology. These days I’m often confused by what day it is, not to mention the date. Keeping the diary has been a different sort of casualty as politics became difficult to ignore and Boris Johnson tedious to chronicle. By the time I’d got round to Liz Truss she’d gone. Though this annual bulletin has never tried to be other than serendipitous, this year’s instalment seems particularly patchy while being a fair representation of my routine. The largest segment is occasioned by the death of HM the Queen. Some years ago I was one of several writers asked by Radio 4 to record their thoughts on Her Majesty’s eventual death. When earlier this year the broadcast became relevant I didn’t hear it, leading me to think it might not have been considered appropriate. Happily, I was wrong and the talk did go out but I thought it was worth repeating here.