Rocky and a horror start

Cherie Blair excused herself from the 40th anniversary gala of the Rocky Horror Show last night at the Wimbledon Theatre but sent her daughter Kathryn instead.

Richard O’Brien, who created Rocky Horror in 1973, recalled the first performance as Riff Raff at the Royal Court Upstairs. “I was standing behind a screen, sweating like a pig,” he said. The fear ended when the audience laughed in the first scene.

One subject was avoided, in as much as it is possible to avoid it when the entire cast wears corsets, suspenders and high heels and some of them come from the planet Transsexual. Understandable, perhaps, given recent comments by Julie Burchill and Suzanne Moore on transsexuals which — unlike Rocky Horror — were no joke.