Edinburgh Festival / Day 9: Apparently . . .

Further to yesterday's story about Eamon Morrissey and his on-stage drinking comes an ad hoc survey on alcohol in the theatre. Dr David Birks, a statistician at the University of Bath, is conducting research into the subliminal effects of actors drinking on stage on the audience's own drinking behaviour. Initial findings from interval consumption at Hancock's Last Half Hour (Hill Street Theatre), where Birks is a stage manager, indicate that after Hancock sinks into a vodka-fuelled stupor, audiences not only drink less but do not even enter the bar . . .