It’s a pity that a really good venue can put on a dazzling variety of events only to be let down by unhelpful staff. If I owned a restaurant I would consider it bad form if we had a chef that didn’t like cooking, or a waiter that considered carrying the food from the kitchen to the table a waste of everybody’s time. I would sack them and hire someone else to do the things that help out the punter.

While wearing the hat of freelance reviewer for The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it) I have encountered this sort of shitty attitude from only two venues. The first is a music venue in Nottingham, it’s quite famous so I won’t name it, but let’s call it Rock Town. Interestingly I have never encountered any problems at the venue next door, let’s call it The Room of Recues, even though it’s owned by the same company. I no longer review gigs for the paper at Rock Town (you’ll never guess who I’m talking about) because of their attitude towards guest list for reviewers; asking for a ‘donation to charity’ of anything between a quid and five pounds for reviewers. They have never given me a problem when I have been on someone else’s guest list, The Wonder Stuff, The Beat and The Selector all invited me to their shows and I’ve been waved straight in. My one precaution is that I print out the confirmation email to take with me ever since we missed out on Gary Numan due to my name not being down, I also email the band or management a day or two beforehand to double check. It’s as if they don’t want the venue’s name to be written down and seen by newspaper readers just in case they inconvenience the staff by turning up to watch a gig. Rock Town have also dropped more than one bollock when it comes to backstage access (which I sort out independently of the paper), which is why there are so many holes in my ‘That’s Me With…’ photo album on my Facebook page. It’s one thing to piss off a newspaper reviewer, but pissing off a reviewer who also happens to have somehow managed to become an influential broadcaster is another.

This unhelpfulness disease has spread over the road and down a bit and has infected the staff at the Royal Concert Hall (not Theatre Royal, I’ve encountered no problems there). I’d given up a while ago on backstage access due to the ‘I hate my job and I’m taking it out on you’ man on the stage door reception area, and once again the message hadn’t made the full journey from artist management to the venue. I wasn’t going to let it spoil our evening though as the tickets were waiting for me at the box office, so Mandi and I took our seats to enjoy Frank Skinner.

We were in our seats when I realised that I had come out without my phone, this was a bit of a bollock as I use it as a torch so I can make notes for the review. Mandi hadn’t brought hers along either (it is a wonderfully liberating thing to not be connected, more people should try it), so I found myself in a bit of a pickle. There was some time to spare so I popped out to ask about borrowing a small torch from the usher. This seemingly easy request involved being ferried about between five people with ascending levels of apathy, until being told why I couldn’t borrow a torch.

Incidentally, the lighting was good enough to be able to take notes without assistance, so the time I spent looking for a torch was pointless anyway.

Eventually I was informed that I couldn’t borrow a torch because there wasn’t a spare one available. Each usher needs a torch for, those three little words that have ruined this country, health and safety. As there was no spare torch, I drew the conclusion that either nobody has a night off ever, or the ushers take their torch home with them, which is surely against their precious health and safety. I also assume from this bizarre torch legislation that the ushers carry batteries. If they don’t carry spare batteries, and the electricity at the theatre goes off and everybody needs to be evacuated but the usher’s torch batteries also went out, then they are in contravention of health and safety.

My other theory is that the staff were deliberately being arseholes. How different the treatment between the Royal Concert Hall and the Theatre Royal, who were brilliant last time I was there.

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