Wednesday 7th January  22:29 pm Good Evening

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Nelson's Column July The Show Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Lady's on Page 3 17th July 2008 The Sun sets on Covent Garden The first night of a new Royal Opera House season is, traditionally, an occasion when the wives of Russian oligarchs and top City bankers take the chance to show off their jewellery in the bar, sneer at each others’ handbags in the toilets, and then sneak off in the interval, leaving a second-half audience of three octogenarian baronets snoozing in the stalls. The eagerly-anticipated new production of Don Giovanni (eagerly anticipated by the half-dozen people who actually know anything about opera, anyway) at the Royal Opera House is going to be a little different. The only way to get hold of a ticket is to buy a copy of ‘The Sun’ on 30th July, and enter yourself in the lottery. That’s ‘The Sun’. Home to Dear Deidre, Desktop Keeley (Google it), Page 3, and such noted opera critics as Jeremy Clarkson and Lorraine Kelly. The current top Arts stories on their website right now are ‘Madonna in Meltdown’, ‘Brooke to Bare All for Playboy’ and ‘Miley May Strip for Film Role’. The most recent mentions of ‘opera’ in the paper have been about Britain’s Got Talent’s Paul Potts (fair enough, but it is a year since he won it), and ‘Pamela Anderson goes bra-less for night out at Opera’. The theory (based, I suspect, on watching the opera scene in 'Pretty Woman') is that if you get White Van Man and Essex Girl to come and see 'Don Giovanni' just once, they will immediately swap their alcopops for Chateau Lafitte, buy a Hampstead townhouse, take out an annual subscription to the ROH and start reading Gramophone magazine instead of ‘The Sun’. The concept that people might choose not to go to the opera because it’s expensive and a bit boring is obviously not one that has been much considered by Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas DBE and her merry band of trustees. So when the show opens on 10th September, what can we expect in London’s most magnificent auditorium? There will be lots of journalists from the ‘Guardian’ and the ‘Telegraph’ wandering around frantically looking for interviewees who work in chip shops, and there will be plenty of City gents and oligarchs who bought their tickets on e-bay. There won’t be anyone who wouldn’t normally have turned up, since asking your butler to pick up a copy of ‘The Sun’ is not a challenge that would tax the wit of even the most antique opera-lover. I suspect, in fact, that this stunt is going to backfire spectacularly. For all its faults (intermittent truth-stretching, obsession with breasts, borderline fascism) ‘The Sun’ is completely compelling reading. I fear that rather than getting a whole new audience for 18th-century Austrian opera, we’re going to see lots of broadsheet readers converted to the tabloids. And from there it’s just a short step to being unable to head out to Opening Nights at Covent Garden because it’s Big Brother Eviction Night on Channel 4. Today’s Rubbish News, Tomorrow’s News on Rubbish Here’s a shocker – giving away millions of newspapers in central London is creating loads and loads of paper that’s not being recycled. Commuters, after having the freesheets thrust into their hands (never mind the latte and briefcase!), are not seeking out recycling bins but scattering the newspapers they probably didn’t want in the first place around town. The 70 bins were installed quickly enough when Westminster Council told The London Paper and London Lite that their distribution could be restricted but now it appears they’re expecting them to be filled too. On Tap There’s been a definite move to “just a glass of tap water please” in recent times but it now seems we can omit the “just” from that sentence in London restaurants as though we’re apologising for ordering something that’s free; obviously meaning it could never be as good as their glacial fresh-from-the-Schlatenkees bottled water. We snootily snub water, ice even, when we’re in Europe, in case of a “jippy tummy” – it’s as if we’ve always known that London’s tap water is the only type to be trusted but now it’s a fact; according to the people-in-the-know-about-water, it’s the best in the country. Four Years and Counting... Word is out that our Ken (Livingstone, lest we forget) is looking for a job... nothing quite so ironic as Tony Blair becoming a Middle East envoy or as predictable as his recent attempt to take over the airwaves. Nope, it seems all he wants is his job in City Hall back. He’ll have to wait till 2012 of course – just in time for the Olympics, so hopefully that’ll take over from the rancour over bendy buses – but it appears Ken has already started an early campaign trail which involves, well, whining about Boris really. December 2008 23rd December January is on the Horizon 20th December Merry Christmas November 2008 26th November All The World's A Stage 20th November Surviving the Crunch October 2008 24th October Boris v Jingjing 17th October Soaps in Pole Position September 2008 23rd September Chips too Chavvy for Chelsea 16th September The London Restaurant Awards August 2008 26th August No Smoking, No Ducks, No Barbecues 20th August The Olympics July 2008 24th July Sandwiched Out 17th July The Show Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Lady's on Page 3 June 2008 26th June Love All at Wimbledon 16th June Miller Puts the Heat on Tennant May 2008 27th May Booze Banned on Buses 20th May Same Again? April 2008 23rd April By George 11th April Back to the 80s March 2008 28th March How do You Solve A Problem Like Medea? 20th March Flight Fantastic February 2008 20th February Dark, Satanic Turnmills 6th February A Diamond in the Drink January 2008 21st January People Wanted for Plinth 14th January Boo! Hiss! December 2007 28th December Tate That - A Hirst for Art 20th December Christmas Shopping November 2007 27th November Mind the Gap 26th November London On A Tray October 2007 26th October Leaving the Station 14th October The Sky's the Limit September 2007 26th September The Play Within A Play 19th September Fashion, Frocks and Celeb Shocks 12th September Saying Tanks for the Mammaries August 2007 24th August Heathrow under Siege 17th August Gormless 10th August Losing Face July 2007 24th July Are We Reaching Boiling Point Yet This Summer? 13th July Red Ken versus Blonde Boris June 2007 22nd June Last Orders at the Fag Machine 11th June London the Musical May 2007 21st May What Lurks Beneath 10th May The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of April 2007 27th April London’s Walk on the Wild Side 20th April Stand Behind the Yellow Line 13th April Like Water for Chocolate March 2007 23rd March So, Another Magazine 16th March Avoiding iContact February 2007 23rd February Sex and Art... 16th February C-Charge Protest Fails to Bring Down Government 9th February Live Earth London January 2007 26th January A Vote for Shilpa is a Vote for Britain 18th January Carriage on up the West End December 2006 29th December Food for Thought 22nd December A Poisonous Marketing Campaign 15th December In for a Penny, In for Five Pounds November 2006 17th November Big Department Stores Leave Santa Out in the Cold 10th November Failing to Save the World October 2006 27th October Frozen Prawns and Melting Icecaps 20th October Predatory Pelicans and Happy Woodland Folk 13th October Hope at last for east end of Oxford Street September 2006 16th September Lite the Blue Paper and Stand Well Back 9th September Of Poles and Twiglets August 2006 25th August Free Fares For the Fat and the Fashionable 11th August London Friendly 4th August Archway To Organic Heaven July 2006 21st July London - Celebrity Frat House 7th July Out of the Galleries into the Streets June 2006 23rd June Mayors, Nightmares and Marias 16th June Downright Rude in Paris and London 9th June Enter the Inferno May 2006 26th May Curvaceous Border 12th May Vegging Out April 2006 21st April The Camden Crawl 17th April Down the Pan 13th April I Want to Break Free 9th April Big Brother seems to have been left in a bar somewhere 7th April Don't Box Me In March 2006 24th March Political Correctness Reaches New Heights February 2006 24th February A Stadium's Tale: Cup Final Goes West 17th February Modern Musicals are Rubbish 10th February The City-Side Alliance January 2006 20th January February Sales 20th January Moby Sick 13th January Glass Half Full 3rd January Three Cheers for the Tube Station Workers December 2005 22nd December January Bites 16th December A Remarkable Year November 2005 25th November And a Partridge in a JCB 11th November Driving Miss Sadie 4th November Spam, Spam, Spammity-Spam, Shakespeare, Zorro, Chico and Rasputin October 2005 28th October Trick or Treat? 21st October We Don't Mind a Little Delay... 14th October Final Resting Place for Young British Artists September 2005 16th September