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The Londoner: Fingers crossed for Park Theatre as actors step up

Fundraiser: Joanna Lumley: Getty Images
Fundraiser: Joanna Lumley: Getty Images

Joanna Lumley, Mark Gatiss and Bradley Walsh are among the actors who have helped to raise almost £300,000 to keep afloat the award-­winning Park Theatre in Finsbury Park.

Closed like all theatres on 20 March, the Park, then halfway through a sell-out run of Simon Callow’s new adaptation of La Cage Aux Folles, can put the money towards maintaining and paying its staff while also ensuring that there is enough in its kitty for a few weeks and then to prepare for a reopening.

Jez Bond, the Park’s artistic director, said: “I’m humbled by the outpouring of support from our donors — many local and many who have been engaged with the theatre since its early days.”

The theatre has seen six of its plays transfer to the West End since it opened in 2013, including Daytona with Maureen Lipman and Pressure with David Haig. It does not receive Arts Council funding or any subsidy from the local council, Islington. Today it is launching its GoFundMe money-raising campaign online for another £150,000 before a later video appeal.

The Park, a neighbourhood theatre, has also regularly given money for the local homeless. Fingers crossed it survives this crisis.

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(BBC)
(BBC)

Sarah Vine says that she likes the curtains in her house “even more now” since her husband Michael Gove was interviewed from his home by the BBC (above) and one wag commented that the white and blue drapes behind looked as if they were made of Stilton. “Also,” Vine added to The Londoner, “I can always eat them if we run out of food.”

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Historian Lucy Worsley says “the big advantage of not having fixed plumbing” was that if you were important enough there was “something rather freeing about having the toilet come to you”. Worsley tells the Fortunately podcast that Queen Elizabeth I was sniffy about the fixed lavatory installed in a Richmond Palace because “she had to go there”.

SW1A

Rallying call: Sajid Javid (Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Rallying call: Sajid Javid (Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

Sajid Javid says we should all now reflect on the contribution of immigrants to the NHS as “without them so many more lives would be lost”. Will there be a lasting change in attitudes?

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(PA)
(PA)

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage waxed lyrical about the “truly incredible” super pink moon. “This crisis makes us appreciate our world more,” he mused. Farage goes flower power.

Sunglasses, supermoons and a wild video mash-up

Laura Whitmore whiled away her Tuesday evening dancing in a video mash-up of two lockdown hits: the Savage dance craze combined with Netflix’s documentary Tiger King. Keeping up? Us neither, but it looked fun anyway. Nick Grimshaw enjoyed some virtual sunglasses in his radio booth, while Holly Willoughby brought a splash of colour this morning. The presenter said last night’s supermoon was “Mother Nature’s little reminder to us to look up, take a moment and breathe.” And exhale.