To Shaftesbury Avenue to see ‘Lady in the Van’. Beautiful image at the beginning. The window of A’s house, elongated at night against a black background, A’s face peering anxiously out into the night. An unforgettable image of Alan, private, internal man with an insatiable appetite for, and instinctive sympathy about, whatever’s happening outside.

It also creates an ominous tension which is very effective. The play never really delivers on a dramatic and emotional level. It’s a feast of surreal humour, with Maggie in fine form as the Lady, and a sort of discussion on the Alan-ness of Alan, by two men playing Bennett (a clever, very well-executed
idea).

Champagne in a very hot little room at the interval, then escorted backstage to see Maggie – who promptly produced another bottle for us all. She looked well – had freed herself from the bodystocking which Alan had warned me about this morning (‘She sits there, with her legs apart. I think she forgets she’s not dressed’). She was in her most enchanting form. Fluffing around with her hair – always one of Mag’s most eye-catching features. She hugs Rachel – and cannot believe she is the shy six-year-old on the ‘Missionary’ set.

Peeping from her dressing gown on an elegant lower leg is a bloody gash of make-up against a half-scrubbed black background. (‘I think she makes herself far dirtier than Miss Shepherd ever was,’ Alan tells me later.) She agrees it’s athletic – physically gruelling, but she looks so much stronger than when I last saw her.