Lee Anderson, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, popped a few monocles by saying asylum seekers reluctant to stay on a Home Office barge could ‘fuck off back to France’. Wash your very mouth out! Where did Anderson think he was performing? At the Royal Court theatre? The Guardian, which long teased Mary Whitehouse for being a prude, clutched its pearls at the ‘nasty’ remark. Westminster journalists, few of whom can complete a sentence without an F-word, wrote about Anderson’s ‘shock’ remark. Radio 4’s Nick Robinson (so one gathers, not having been a Radio 4 listener for seven years) was so aghast that he had to be given camomile tea and a cold compress to the brow. Now that Huw Edwards has been excommunicated, can it be long before Nick is asked to front Songs of Praise? Then Suella Braverman’s wheeze was torpedoed by the discovery of nasties in the barge’s water supply. Not safe. One of the wonders of recent years has been that crack British bureaucrats did not quickly stop the small boats on health and safety grounds. The first thing Border Force recruits should be taught, surely, is the Albanian for: ‘Unless you conducted a risk assessment for this journey I cannot authorise your arrival at Dover. You will have to return to France, sir/madam, and complete the correct form.’ That would destroy the traffickers’ business model faster than Lee Anderson could say effez-vouz en.

After roughly 4,000 reviews I am retiring as a theatre critic. Exit stage right. Curtains. No whoops, please. Whooping has become a blight on theatre-going. At Miss Saigon in Sheffield last month two teenage girls near me whooped after almost every song. At half-time they hooted through cupped hands. At the curtain call they mooed like cows separated from their calves. Press nights, when producers give tickets to friends and family, have become unbearable for this sort of thing. All it does is make two-star reviews more likely. Ditto the manic laughers who guffaw determinedly at opening nights of unfunny comedies. There were a couple at The Pillowman at the Duke of York’s but after 20 minutes even their jaws sagged at the awfulness of the show. Then there is the mid-act whoop after a character defiantly stands up to prejudice. This should create a moment of dramatic tension, the bully having to recalibrate. Whoops wreck that knife-edge scene as surely as the apocryphal heckle ‘She’s in the cupboard, Herr Hauptmann!’ in a theatre adaptation of the Anne Frank story.

After two decades in the stalls I came to relish anything starring Juliet Stevenson, Eve Best, Simon Russell Beale and Kenneth Branagh. Most of all I liked John Hodgkinson. He is not so well-known but like the late Leonard Rossiter he leans back with a banana spine, places his hands on his hips and radiates fun. Theatre could do with more of that.

Film pays well, as does the Indian Premier League, but the stage remains acting’s equivalent of first-class cricket. Although Kevin Spacey made a fortune in Hollywood it was only when he came to London’s Old Vic that we could appreciate his vocal agility, emotional force, the perfect memory and liquid gait. No one walks better on a stage. Cynics say Spacey reserved his greatest performance for his recent trial at Southwark Crown Court, where he faced sexual assault charges. The jury did not have to give him an Olivier award. It just had to say ‘not guilty’. Anyone who doubts the tears Spacey shed after hearing those words must have something wrong with them. What an ordeal he underwent. Part of Spacey may think ‘I can never step on stage again’ but that would be a waste. Imagine him doing a West End revival of something like The Shawshank Redemption. Audiences could shun him if they wished. More likely they would attend in their thousands.

To another theatre of dusty dreams, Edgar Street, home of Hereford FC. It was the first home match of the season, vs Darlington in the National League North. A middle-aged Bulls fan standing beside me at the Meadow Terrace end was taciturn. We exchanged maybe three sentences. Then, in the 88th minute, our team scored a fine goal. My neighbour unleashed a flurry of Anglo-Saxon imprecations, all while flicking V signs at the Darlington players and the referee. I hadn’t seen multiple flicking of V signs like that for years. The violence of reaction from this otherwise sober, even mouselike Herefordian left one wondering if Lee Anderson understands the English character better than those theatre first-night whoopers.