Better a week too early than a minute too late….

A friend had set up the tickets, and left me a voicemail on Wednesday asking me what time we should meet on Sunday. I looked up the concert online, and saw that it started at 8pm - so sent an SMS back to him on Thursay to meet at 7.30pm. But what I neglected to look at was the date. Since my friend had led me to believe it was that coming Sunday, I didn’t think to check again - and duly arrived as agreed. (He had, meanwhile, realised the error of his ways - but assumed I would, too!)

Still, at least I can go back this Sunday now: I’ve not missed the show yet. But note to self: keep a better diary! (And don’t go on other people’s information about mine!) As an inveterate planner, there is, however, something quite pleasant about handing over the organisation to someone else; but I clearly went too far this time!

But sometimes even the best laid plans can be taken out of your control. Last night was the press opening for the new play at the Bush, 2,000 Feet Away, and in the late afternoon I got a call from the theatre’s PR: the roof had been leaking and there was a possibility of disruption to the performance. As it happens, all was well and the performance went ahead as scheduled. And just as well: I’ve not seen such a full turnout of first string critics in a fringe theatre for ages, with Michael Billington, Charles Spencer, Paul Taylor, Quentin Letts, Claire Allfree, Ian Shuttleworth, Georgina Brown, Kate Bassett, Susannah Clapp, Christopher Hart and Timothy Walker all in attendance, plus Sam Marlowe and Julie Carpenter covering for The Times and Daily Express respectively.

Perhaps it proves Jonathan Miller’s recent moan about celebrity casting: it’s not just West End producers who have what he called “an obsession with celebrity” but also critics, who may have turned out in force because Joseph Fiennes was amongst the cast last night. But actually, we need to look a little more fully at the facts before we jump to conclusions: after a crazy few weeks, things have finally slowed down this week, and it was the only major opening last night.

Miller’s own argument needs closer inspection, too - he dismisses David Tennant’s casting as the RSC’s Hamlet on the basis that he’s “that man from Doctor Who” - ignoring Tennant’s prior RSC pedigree that has seen him previously play Romeo for the company, and also a stage pedigree that has seen him star at the National in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. The Sunday Telegraph’s Tim Walker makes the same elementary error, who in praising last week’s production of The Chalk Garden at the Donmar Warehouse, wrote, “I do hope Michael Boyd, the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, will make a point of seeing it. This is the man who has got it into his head to cast the Doctor Who star David Tennant as Hamlet to ‘connect’ with modern audiences. This fine production, directed with his usual panache by Michael Grandage, shows what it takes to connect with an audience. It isn’t a few minutes of fame on the goggle box but experience and expertise that does it.”

And the same thing can be said about the job of a theatre critic. Tim, who has his own occasional minutes of fame by doing the paper review round-ups on Sky News, needs to brush up on his RSC actors just as much as Jonathan Miller does. But meanwhile, I gather, I should be compassionate about him: as Matthew Norman noted last week in his media diary column in The Independent, “I am increasingly distressed by sniping, on theatrical blogs, at the work of Sunday Telegraph critic Tim Walker (in the manner of my colleague Stephen Glover, I must declare an interest and mention that he replaced my wife in that post). For such paltry reasons as his genius for confusing very minor characters, such as Othello and Iago, certain so-called rivals never leave Tim alone. I would remind the Sunday Express’s Mark Shenton and others that Kenneth Tynan himself was prone to this sort of trivial slip. He once wrote that Julius Nyerere was stabbed on the Ides of March, and frequently referred to productions of Falstaff and Juliet, Titus Bramble, Cory Aquino and, of course, Henry the Ford Parts I, II and III (the “histories are bunkum” trilogy, as Ken collectively knew them). Now let the poor lamb be.”

And from the Observer’s Media diary last weekend, I have discovered that the poor lamb is going to have even less time to check his theatrical facts than before: as well as the daily, seven-day Mandrake column that he edits, “he has added the paper’s political diary, Three Line Whip, to his ever-expanding portfolio. That must make Walker one of the most productive journalists on Fleet Street” - if not, necessarily, one of the most accurate.