PICTURE CHOICE / A sniff of greasepaint: Benny Green on Walter Sickert's depiction of the music hall

I have always lamented the passing of the music hall. It was the last indiginous form of English mass entertainment. It was escapism; even though a comedian like Max Miller was actually making jokes about the everyday problems of the people he was entertaining. Sickert painted the Old Bedford around 1890, but I remember going to it during the war, when it was still open, and seeing a man called Leon Cortez. He was vulgarity incarnate. His opening double entendre was 'wotcha cocks' - very grubby, but I loved it. The theatre was in Camden High Street. Sickert's painting always reminds me of my father who used to play truant from school to go there. It also gives me the feeling of that communion between the people looking down from the box and what they are watching on the stage. There is a sort of a glow about it which is something to do with the fact that the illumination from the stage has leaked out onto the rapt faces of the audience. You feel that you almost know them. I'm sure that I've passed that man at the back in the bowler hat in the street. You can hear the peanut shells cracking under their feet and imagine them pouring out of the music hall and into the pubs. It just sums it all up.

Benny Green is an author, musician and broadcaster. His book, The Last Empires, is a history of the music hall. He is also the lyricist of Valentine's Day which opens at London's Globe Theatre on 17 Sept.

Sickert's The Gallery of the Old Bedford can be seen at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and will be included in the Sickert exhibition at the Royal Academy from 20 Nov to 14 Feb.

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