By CHRISTINA PATTERSON Sir Alan Ayckbourn, our most popular playwright, is famed for comedies.

By Marion McMullen Absurd Person Singular Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, until Saturday. Running time: 2hrs 30mins. IT'S bottoms up as the booze flows and audiences are invited to take a peek into the dysfunctional lives ... and kitchens ...

By Lee, Veronica Alan Ayckbourn, so theatre lore has it, is the second-most performed British playwright after Shakespeare. So why has he become so unfashionable among theatre cognoscenti? Partly, it's his own doing.

Bath's Next Stage Theatre Company has been offered a four-week run in the heart of London's theatreland. The invitation to perform at The Jermyn Street Theatre, just off Haymarket and Piccadilly, has come as a result of the company's recent hugely successful off Broadway run in New York.

I've actually gone on a pop-culture fast. The TV shows and gossip magazines seem so polluting and toxic now. It's exhausting just looking at a news-stand these days Julia Roberts.