But he overdoes it when he lashes out at the “fiscal orthodoxy that is manifestly contradicted by the economic riches we deliver day in, day out”. I am happy to accept that theatres contribute to Britain’s success, though to argue “economic riches” you do have to subtract what is spent on you in the first place, not something he or other directors choose to dwell on. Worse, slamming “fiscal orthodoxy” is just a lazy way of saying you don’t like deficit-cutting because it hits your own fiefdom (if Sir Nicholas has be- come an expert on macroeconomic policy, I seem to have missed the transition).

Arts leaders who aspire to being heard by government in times like these had better make a more nuanced case than this windy rhetoric—unless they only wish to talk to one another.

It is possible that I liked the staging of Seventies Britain so much because today’s dramatists have such difficulty with Cameron and modern Conservatism, which they detest, without taking much trouble to understand. I must have sat through a dozen plays in the last year where the word “Tory” is used as a swearword, in the certain knowledge that it gets a cheap laugh.

This sort of unthinking bias emerged in the otherwise near-flawless Cinderella, the Hammersmith Lyric’s recent pantomime. Now you may say, if I go looking for political trouble at the panto, I will surely find it. But here was a production so sparkling and brilliantly conceived to appeal to all ages (peerlessly directed by Sean Holmes, the Lyric’s artistic director) that it deserved to avoid the bear-traps of predictability on this count. Writers Joel Horwood and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm deftly transformed Cinders (Julie Atherton) singing “All by Myself” into a number featuring a trio of partially-sight- ed rodents and a diminutive chap in a red pointed hat keening, “All blind mice, Elf,” with many other zany riches and acts of prestidigitation besides.