Aplomb

We don't give our actors an easy ride in the Uncertainty Division, and the rigorous training programme we have prepared for the cast of Impromime this year is already well underway. Yesterday we sent one of them, Amelia, to a BBC People's War event, with the task of pretending to be Vera Lynn. A valuable exercise indeed.

Combined with the game of "exploding tag" we played a few weeks ago (which involved spontaneously combusting when you are tagged) we'll be laughing if we ever need to stage the final reel of Dr Strangelove.

Anyway, Amelia will no doubt share her own thoughts about her experience, but from a director's point of view it's worth saying that several old people did in fact spot that Amelia was not actually the forces' sweetheart, and since the BBC spent a lot of money on a costume for her it's fair to assume that it was her performance that let her down. Old people are naturally experts at spotting fake Vera Lynns, so I'm not saying it was an easy task, but we believe that unless you can be genuinely accepted as Vera Lynn by society you have not totally mastered the skills of status and character which are so central to improvisation.

Andrew Ormerod is set to complete a similar task next week - we'll see how he gets on. I imagine he'd pull off Vera with great aplomb, but I'm not sure that's what the BBC have in mind.