Matthew Waterhouse: Musicals

The narrator introduces a hugely successful theatrical producer at work in his office, until Matthew Waterhouse barges in uninvited, sets up a portable keyboard and starts pitching. His first idea turns a grim borstal film into a song-and-dance show, complete with half-remembered lines from it. The producer politely explains he isn't looking for new work, but each refusal only prompts another pitch: a stage spectacular about the teletext service Ceefax, a musical simply about musicals, and an adaptation of a comedian, each relying on the same wildly impractical crowd of extras. When Waterhouse finally offers a period drama the producer actually likes, he reveals the set he has built for it, a toy theatre in which the leading man is played by his own hand.

Matthew Waterhouse is named after the actor of the same name, who played Adric in Doctor Who in the early 1980s.