Which swine forgot the grilled eggplant?

To celebrate her birthday, a good friend of mine recently organised a trip to see Romeo and Juliet at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park. It’s a beautiful location to see a play, even though the nature involved sent my hayfever crazy and I nearly suffered an untimely death by drowning on my own snot.

It was obvious a lot of people had attended a show there before, since they were smart enough to bring picnics to enjoy on the grass before everything kicked off. It was all very Pimms o’clock. At one point my boyfriend heard someone exclaim, “Xavier’s here!” Of course he is, and he’s jolly well bringing stuffed vine leaves for everyone!

The play itself was really very good, marred only by the people sat behind me. One of these days I’m going to be rich enough to go all Kermodian and buy all the seats around me so I’m never bothered by the general public. This time I was treated to a wonderful family of American tourists – a teenager, a mother figure and the dreaded Small Child. Oh joy.

They annoyed me from the off by chattering to the sprog about what was going on. I lasted about ten minutes before I couldn’t gnash my teeth any harder without grinding them to dust and turned around to shush. I found myself nose-to-nose with the Small Child, who was leaning forward in his seat. He received every last drop of my bile as I ordered him to be quiet. His eyes widened, and his mother nodded violently, pulling him back.

Luckily, this seemed to do the trick, and the sproglet sat in silence for the rest of the first half, but when the interval arrived the teenager decided to wank on about where they’d got to in the play. I was treated to what seemed like hours of his nasal musings because it took forever to get out of our respective rows. “We’re, like, at Act Three, Scene Two… No, maybe, like, Act Two, Scene One… No, like, I think it’s Act Four, Scene Three… Or it could be…” At this point I roundhouse-kicked his head square off his shoulders and we all agreed to disagree.

When the play began for the second half he once again forgot how to behave in public and spent a minute or so talking over the actors to explain what was going to happen to the sprog. Not just, “Oh, and now Juliet’s going to be ordered to marry Paris. Let’s see how that turns out, ho ho!” but a SYNOPSIS OF THE WHOLE PLAY FROM THAT POINT ON, from the proposal of forced marriage to the death of our heroes. I tried to have a sense of humour about it and muttered, “Aw, what? Spoiler warning!” The people next to me giggled, and I felt validated in my wrath.

Safe in the knowledge their idiot child knew exactly what was going to happen, they stayed silent till the end (which, incidentally, borrowed a little too much from Baz Luhrmann’s version but brought tears to my eyes regardless). Romeo had poisoned himself in a dramatic fashion and Juliet had shot her pretty little brains out. They lay draped over one another, their families wept and the Prince made his dramatic, “Now look what you’ve bladdy well gone and done!” speech. The Teenager clearly found the performance somewhat lacking, and at this final moment felt it necessary to start reciting the lines in a stage whisper, saying them just before the Prince did. Oh my god. OH MY GOD. And to add insult to injury, he got them wrong.

I’m still not sure why I let him live. Actually, I’m annoyed at myself for not having turned to him afterwards and told him that he’d ruined the end of the play for me. Because he did. Totally. I should have said something, but I just clung to my boyfriend and tried to let my anger disperse in a non-violent fashion.

I understand that my fury is probably disproportionate to the various crimes, but that said:

1) If your child is too young to understand or be entertained by Shakespeare, take him to see the fucking Lion King. That’s what it’s there for.
2) DO. NOT. TALK. DURING. A. PLAY. With it being outside the ambient noise was distracting enough (planes, a random air-horn, kestrels going WAGH! WAGH!), and I didn’t need twunts like you pulling me even more out of it.
3) If you know the play well enough to recite it, good for you. Save it for the home times, the special secret sexy times. No-one is impressed that you can quote Romeo and Juliet. Like a lot of people, I know great swathes of the play by heart after studying it at GCSE, but I didn’t feel the need to show off. They are the actors. You are the audience. Know your FUCKING place, dickhead, and shut the goddamn hell up.
4) I hate the general public.

Snap Judgements For Funsies

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I love Big Brother. It won’t be the same without the lovely Dermot O’Leary on BBLB every evening, and Big Mouth has never really recovered since Russell Brand left, but I’m still entertained beyond all belief by the main show.

The contestants went in tonight. Here are my earth-shattering and ridiculously judgemental first impressions.

Dennis, a 23-year-old dancer, is this year’s Token Gay. He looks like a bloated Pete Wentz. He combines his sexual preference with being exceptionally loud and smug. As such, all the women in the house are taking turns to drape themselves all over him so he can squeal how “hot” they are and how he’d totally snog them if he liked girls. I bet a fiver they’re showing him their tits by Sunday – it’s okay, you see, he’s gay. I bet another fiver he’s not actually gay.

Dale is the Token Misogynist. In his intro film he said, “If there’s fanny in there, I’ll nail it”. To be blunt, he’s the kind of guy you wish knob-rot on within minutes of meeting him.

Michael is the Token Disabled. Being blind, people are invariably dragging him around the house to make themselves look good or asking in braying tones if he’s “touched things with his hand”. I hope that he grows weary of this treatment and starts touching everything in far more antisocial ways, just to see how far he can push their tolerance. I especially look forward to the day he wipes his knob on everything, starting with the toaster and finishing with Dale’s horrible little face. Loses points for coming dressed as a goat herder. There’s no excuse for a poncho, not even profound blindness.

Darnell is the Token Psycho. His entrance to the house was, quite frankly, terrifying. He stomped around the walkways like a furious toddler denied a multipack of Yazoo at the supermarket, flinging his belongings at the crowd. I give him four days before he smashes the place up.

Kathreya is the Token Wacky Foreigner. Dressed as she is in a hot pink lamé romper suit and gold stacked trainers, she looks like a demented baby from the planet Disco. She carries around a jar of cookies everywhere and everyone seems to be avoiding her. She seems all right, apart from the fact she’s clearly a lunatic.

Then we have the Token Idiot Women. Jennifer, Rachel, Sylvia, Alexandra and especially the vomit-inducing Stephanie are the type of girls that make you ashamed to be female. In fact, they make you feel ashamed to be human. They all think they’re eminently fuckable and their smugness hangs around them like fuggy clouds of yuck. Dale has already ranked them in shag order. They all want to shag Dale.

Mario is the Token Dogger. His real name is Shaun and he wants his girlfriend Lisa (also in the house) to lose weight and have bigger tits. Oh, and to stop caring about her looks so much. Everytime I look at him I hear Alan Partridge in my head talking about the big barns farmers have that we’re not allowed to go into because they contain chickens with giant beaks. Mario looks like an experiment in the genetic modification of Matt Le Blanc gone wrong. He lives in one of Alan’s imaginary big sheds, confused, enormous and, because of his charming opinions on wife Lisa, utterly hate-worthy.

Lisa seems all right, as do Mohammed and Rex. BORING. Luke is clearly meant to be the Token Weirdo, but his I-Wear-Suits-I-Don’t-Drink wackiness is already tedious beyond belief. He’ll be out within a fortnight, as will Screamy Nutpiece Rebecca.

I bet all of you a shiny penny that Mohammed wins.