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Confessions of a theatrephile
17th February 2006

If like me, you go to the theatre quite a lot, aren't actually a billionaire and occasionally get bored of spending your ENTIRE LIFE EATING SANDWICHES, the issue of combining theatregoing with eating can be a tricky one.

This is where our friends at ThEATre Box (do you see what they did there?) come in. ThEATre Box, which launched its wares last week, has come up with the canny idea of offering audiences delightful gourmet nosh boxes to provide them with interval sustenance. The boxes currently contain a selection of 12 tasty canapés (I am always unsure if apes should be put in cans, but we won't discuss this here), although I fervently hope that the range will soon be expanded to include fish and chips, toad in the hole and roast pigeon pancake pie at the very least.

So far, so satisfied, but ThEATre Box's ingenuity has left me in a rather tricky situation: Since I first started having such substantial nosh during theatre intervals, I have found that I am entirely unable to eat a meal anywhere unless it is immediately preceded and followed by at least an hour of quality theatre. Perhaps inevitably, this unhappy state of affairs has forced me to employ a full-time troupe of actors to perform for me whenever hunger strikes. This is not, alas, an ideal solution, as having 18 classically trained actors perform the violent bits of Tamburlaine at 1.05 every afternoon can cause some distraction to my colleagues in the office. On one level I understand their mild irritation with this but I also think it's a little unfair; I mean what do they expect me to do? Starve?