None of your lino floors, strip-lighting and grey-suited registrars here. The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer on TV confounded those who feared the magic might be lost in the slow-
motion leap sideways from Channel 4 to BBC2, and if this riotous second night of the duo’s new tour is anything to go by, they are rediscovering the pleasure in live performance that made them such a joy in the first place.As always, Vic and Bob are impeccably turned out – in beautiful blue and yellow suits from Sidney Charles, their Deptford High Street tailor. BEREAVEMENT, mental breakdown and sexual non-conformity are the deep waters into which Amy Bloom plunges in her first book – though causing scarcely a ripple in the smooth narrative surface. WITH the wind blowing and the rain falling heavily it was a miserable afternoon at Ibrox yesterday, and for much of the time the football was also depressing.

Instead, these will all be channelled into advertising and service improvements aimed at bringing shoppers back into the stores.If it succeeds – and even Tesco admits that it could take up to two years before the market stabilises – profits should start rising again.But growth is likely to settle at about 2 per cent a year, rather than the 20 per cent-plus enjoyed during the 1980s. Women who would have been considered too feminist by mainstream publishers in 1973 are now bankable. Ayckbourn often likes to overturn what one might normally expect in a character, as with the former bank clerk, Douglas, in Man of the Moment. Yet chaotic, steamy Freetown, bursting with new arrivals, is as good a place as any to observe the ethnic mix.It may once have been elegant, this city with the third-largest natural harbour in the world. He’s there on his days off as well, and if his wife hadn’t rebelled a couple of years ago, he would still be spending his holidays at work, too.

A MAN who stabbed to death his wife and her lover after watching them having oral sex in his living room was jailed for seven years at the Old Bailey yesterday. Yet how many of us have done anything about it? Not many, I fear I certainly haven’t. Alan could relate to the Indians’ cricket match (even with the novelty of a cow fielding at Square Leg), but he had to avert his gaze as Jaillin cheered along at a cock fight.Both children were excellent (there again, you rarely see a bad child actor these days – even on Grange Hill). Hambros, in the process of floating its insurance operations, improved 11p to 345p.The rest of the market showed signs of shaking off its Budget depression, which has hit blue chips although many second-line and fringe shares have continued to make headway.The FT-SE 100 index achieved its first post-Budget gain, up 20.4 points at 2,900.1.