UR TV CAST

This is not light-years away from my worst nightmares about the Chateau d’If on the South Bank

But reality is comfortingly different. The National Theatre is not an immutable bureaucracy, nor is it a cultural colossus riddled with the virus of institutional inertia. It is – to state what ought to be obvious – a theatre; or, to be more obvious still, three theatres within one building; and people work in these theatres for the traditional reasons that are often loftily dismissed as sentimental: a sense of community, a desire to share a common purpose.
The National Theatre exists to do work which either by content or by execution, or both, could not be performed – or would not be initiated – in the commercial sector. It provides continuity of “investment”, of employment and of theatrical tradition, and this requires a subsidy to supplement the revenue from the box office.Recently, a wilful attempt has been made to blur the distinction between the subsidised and the commercial theatre in order to argue that there is no longer any real need for subsidy: if market forces can prevail for large nationalised businesses, so they should for large theatrical companies.

The next time you’re at a supermarket till or behind a slow-moving elderly lady in the street, you’re likely to show more patience.”The experiment involves wearing ankle and wrist weights to simulate loss of strength and agility; putting on specially prepared goggles, to represent cataracts, tunnel vision and retina damage, and inserting ear plugs to reduce hearing.According to the charity’s research, “the United Kingdom is an ageing society and, by the year 2026, half the adult population will be aged 55 or over. Significant because supermarkets, department stores and other services obviously need older buyers. It is also significant that 80 per cent of the UK’s private wealth is in the hands of people over 50, who are also the biggest spenders in every sector”. They just never look for you.”She also had an explanation for the fury so often displayed by cyclists in any confrontation with drivers – one which the good citizens of Weston- super-Mare might do well to heed.”It’s fear.”. WHEN YOU are young and fit, it’s hard to sympathise with the limitations of old age. Young people are more likely to seethe and rev their engines than to empathise with the little old lady wobbling slowly across the road. With the aim of increasing understanding of the handicaps of old age, I have been muscled into taking part in Through Other Eyes – a scientific experiment to raise people’s awareness of a very real social problem In other words, show us how it actually feels to be old.

I was escorted on this mission by Gaby Brooks and Sharon Steele of Age Concern.
Age Concern believes that most of the younger population have no idea how difficult it is for some elderly people to perform everyday tasks such as open a milk carton or shop, let alone deal with more arduous chores. “Our ultimate aim is for people to realise how their mother or granny might feel,” explains Ms Steele. “Once you see how your close relatives are struggling, your attitude towards the aged automatically changes. It’s other cars.” So they’re just jealous.The cyclists on Critical Mass believe that hogging the road is a neat turnaround from the normal situation when they are squeezed out, often dangerously, by motor vehicles.Even the normally serene spokeswoman from the Department of Transport was moved to fury when I brought up the question of which gang, statistically, was most dangerous to belong to.”I’ll tell you what’s dangerous,” she rapped. “It’s bloody dangerous to be a pedestrian, because of all the cyclists on the bloody pavement! That’s what’s dangerous You tell them it’s illegal. This approach makes life much easier during confrontations: “I tell them there’s no need for bad language, and ask if they’ve had a bad day.”In the end, he says, “it’s not cyclists that hold them up. “Last time we ended up having a party in a disused petrol station on the City Road,” says one of the organisers, “with music from a pedal-powered hi-fi system.”Patrick Field, head of the London Cycling School, brings a Sufic philosophy to the battlefield: “I don’t get angry at motorists; I feel sorry for them,” he says.

“He was weaving in and out of all the busy lanes, and he almost killed a guy on a motorbike – he had to swerve to get out of his way.” So did Paul take him on?”No, I called the local police station on my mobile phone and told them what was going on. They said they’d go round to his house with a warning.”On London’s Embankment last week, several hundred cyclists gathered at the height of the evening rush hour to test the tempers of other road users in the monthly Critical Mass run. This event is replicated in cities across the world; it involves a gang of cyclists stretching across one entire side of a road and pedalling at their own pace to a destination chosen at random by the lead cyclists. “I’m not trying to hit them, but I’m sick of getting out of their way when they do something stupid. In a car, I can just put my foot down in this and get out of trouble.”Others are more protective of the vulnerable creatures on two wheels.”This guy was driving like an idiot in this Golf on the A3,” said Paul Ross, a 31-year-old researcher who had stopped for petrol. “Maybe I could get stickers, like stick one inside my cab for every one I get.”"If cyclists want to cut me up that’s their problem,” said Wayne McKinsey, who was reloading his red Peugeot 306 GTI at the Texaco station on the Talgarth Roundabout.