Willy Russell's scabrous Scousers, Shirley Valentine (Saint Joan of the fitted kitchen units, with all her nosy-neighbour voices) and hairdresser Rita of the Open University, are still going strong after a quarter of a century. They are now as engraved in the national consciousness as Maggie May, resilient streetwalker of the Liverpool docks, or the battling socialist MP Bessie Braddock. This Menier Chocolate Factory transfer, for a summer season at the Trafalgar Studios, presents Russell's two plays in all their wit and vivacity.

When spy author Len Deighton wrote his first cookery book, in 1965, it caused quite a stink – literally.

As a floating voter, I have traditionally based my decision on whom to vote for on purely negative and, it has to be said, extremely trivial issues.

Pensioner Harry Brown (Michael Caine) spends his time between caring for his dying wife and drowning his sorrows with best friend Leonard down his local. His life is torn apart when first his wife passes away and then Len, who had been terrorised by the kids who hang out on his estate, is found brutally murdered. As the police fail to respond, Harry, a former marine, decided to take on the killers himself and embarks on a journey into London's dark underbelly.