Last week Lloyd Evans was wondering whether it was about time audiences started booing dramatic productions of which they disapproved. He was right to trace this happy practice back to the ancient Greeks.

In Athens, trilogies of tragedies were put on in competition, and Plato tells us that the audience did not disguise its feelings about its choice of winner, though the judges had the final say (Plato disapproved of those who yielded to the ‘howling of the mob’).