Pause for the applause

A moment of dignified silence for the former Radio 1 DJ, Mike Read, whose musical venture Oscar Wilde, has folded after just one performance and a clutch of reviews that would have had even Boris Johnson refusing to face the cameras.

A moment of dignified silence for the former Radio 1 DJ, Mike Read, whose musical venture Oscar Wilde, has folded after just one performance and a clutch of reviews that would have had even Boris Johnson refusing to face the cameras.

True, some tickets had been sold for the following night. But the total of five was considered inadequate, and the show closed midweek having claimed the record for the shortest London run in a generation.

Easy to laugh at the travails of a DJ who had once been a byword for the oleaginous among the poptastics. Fame today, failure tomorrow. While the musical The Producers opens to celebrate the story of an impresario who tried to produce a flop and instead provided a smash hit, Mike Read has done the opposite. But then so did Verdi, Mozart and even Shakespeare in their day. And Wilde himself had his moments when the best of his efforts fell flat, as in his trial.

So "nil desperandum"... "better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all"... "look on the bright side", and all that. And please stop giggling in the back of the stalls.