News: Luv'ly fush and chups

Jamie Oliver has been getting kudos for his new programme on Channel 4 where he has introduced something novel into a Greenwich School canteen - fresh food.

The programme is on Wednesday night's just before Desperate Housewives, so I don't get in early enough to see it, but his drive to serve fresh healthy food has now got MPs backing him

It turns out school meals at present are cheaper than prison dinners... perhaps the school caterers should swap with the prison caterers for a while...

Weather: Cold

It has been snowing on and off all week. More off than on however the Met office gives such colourful descriptions of severe weather... Strengthening northeasterly winds will also bring problems with blowing snow across hills... Oh the humanity!

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Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

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David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House.

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Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here.

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Swatting: The Flies @BunkerTheatreUK

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The Flies at The Bunker theatre is a chance for production company Exchange Theatre - which specialises in translating plays for English audiences - to return to the piece that put them on the map. With live music, video and eye-catching design, it’s an ambitious piece. But it seemed to miss any sense of drama. And it’s star actor Meena Rayann was off too.

Jean Paul Satre’s take on the Oresteia and the Electra myth, was written during the Nazi occupation of France. Fast forward seventy years, it's tempting to equate today’s new nationalists with yesterdays fascists. But it's a lazy comparison given the grand themes under exploration here. It feels more like an apparent dig at Nazi occupation, organised religion or group think over fake news, immigrant bashing and economic hardship.


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Fluffing it: Rouge @Underbellyfest

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It's not enough for a circus act nowadays to offer a series of acrobatic feats. Nowadays, they are pushing all sorts of conventions. There's the all-male, the all-female, the all minimalist. Rouge is the all gender fluid pan-sexual circus for grown-ups who like a bit of everything. But only if that everything includes a little bit of nudity and a bit of mild titillation. 
The men wear eyeliner, the pairings are male-female, male-male and female-female.Strong female types abound throughout. It's a unique concept that's marred by its own timidity. It's currently playing at the Underbelly Festival on the Southbank.
The performers are interesting enough. There's the aerial trapeze, the ring, and the strap. All are deftly executed. There's a terrific flame swallowing routine which seems all the more intense in the confines of the Spiegeltent.
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