Day 2 at Watch This Space, and we’re flashing our performer passes around like there’s no tomorrow. Infact there is no tomorrow, ‘cos we’ll be jetting back to Coventry this evening – once the trailer has been coupled back up to Land Rover and our Food Vouchers have been redeemed in the luxurious NT canteen.

Spending a career lurking in the shadowy margins of experimentalism, it’s been easy to nurture a cynicism toward the great Theatre Institutions. Easy to forget that the National Theatre is very much a product of our times – a monument to the great achievements of post-war public-sector Arts policy. I concede also that it would be great to work here, as part of what is a substantial artist community; performers, technicians and producers all working towards the running of the glittering NT machine.

Outside, The Whale is faring very well indeed. A mixed audience of Art-hounds and passers-by, many of whom are international tourists with limited English. I’ve found myself attempting versions of the show in French, been sung to in Polish and now know the Spanish for whale….(ballena).