John `Rumpole' Mortimer was in Brussels on Wednesday for the Royal Court's fine production of Conor McPhersons The Weir, yet to be seen in Dublin. Mortimer is chairman of the theatre and threw a party to celebrate its involvement in the Royal Flemish Theatre's English theatre festival. He described McPherson's Leitrim-based play as one of the finest pieces of new writing in the English language and the reaction of the Brussels audience was no less enthusiastic.
The festival's patron is the EU Transport Commissioner, Neil Kinnock, an old pal of Labour supporter Mortimer who proudly boasted of and displayed the latter's birthday present, a sturdy pair of bright blue braces marked with the EU stars logo. He also spoke of another Royal Court festival production, the controversial Shopping And F---ing, which the unusually coy Kinnock can only bring himself to refer to as Retailing And Intercourse. Mortimer observed that it was a sign of the times that shopping had become a dirty word.