stage climax

Were the couple who made love in a theatre really performing in public?

It was only (Brian Conley said later) as he sang the final bars of California Here I Come that the singer realised that the couple in the box nearest the stage were having it away. At first the woman in the London theatre was merely giving the man what Mr Conley called "the Hugh Grant treatment" (pushing her fringe behind her ears, I suppose, and grinning inanely), but then she "hitched up her skirt and was sitting on his lap, facing him. I missed quite a few notes". Mr Conley's revelations have, naturally, caused quite a stir. We are all anxious to know what exactly was going on here.

We may speculate that - perhaps - the woman's name was California (this is not impossible given the US tendency to name girls after places - as in Chelsea Clinton and Piddletrenthyde Perot), and that the show, Jolson, was chosen because this particular song would add lustre to the act. I should also admit that one pleasant aspect of this story is that the man was described as past 40 and tubby, while the woman was a shapely young blonde. This suggests that the public sex was her idea, since his fantasies would have been just as well served by a quickie in a hotel room.

This view is strengthened by the fact that, having originally straddled her partner, facing towards him from the stage, she decided to complete her performance while looking down upon Mr Conley. Male readers will be familiar with such sudden shifts of interest on the part of the women that they love.

It is also just possible that this was a couple trying hard to conceive, and that temperature and time had conjoined in a particular way. If so the couple deserve - at least - a standing ovulation.

A quick flick through the relevant literature, however, reveals that - according to the authoritative Daily Mirror National Sex Survey - the most common sexual fantasy among all Britons, male and female, is making love in a public place. Thirty-three per cent of us, it seems, are gagging to do it over a table in a taverna, on a bus banquette, or in a vet's waiting room. Mind you, the same survey also discovered that 47 per cent of Scottish males had recently had sex out of doors. I find this most unlikely, unless the survey was of farm animals. And even then ...

But is a box in a theatre a public place at all? Is it not rather a way of being private in public? After all, you are permitted to do all kinds of things in it that are prohibited in, say, the stalls. You may eat, you may drink. You may retreat to the back and clip your toenails or adjust your underwear. The Queen even has a loo at the back of her box, saving her from making an embarrassing appearance in the long, fidgety queue for the ladies, and saving Philip from the inevitable curiosity of men in next door urinals, when confronted with a flash of royal pink. She also has a drinks cabinet, so that she does not have to look out for an interval collection of glasses and bottles, bearing the damp legend "HM Queen".

Clearly things may be accomplished in a box in complete privacy, if necessary. The difficulty comes when this privacy fails to be total. So at what point does the private become public? Is it the crunching of crisps, the popping of champagne corks, an occasional soft belch, an over-appreciative smack of the lips, audible gasps of sexual excitement? Do these break box protocol, demanding complaints to the authorities, or admonitory tsking from neighbours? Or do they only count when the person to whom these sounds are attached is in plain view?

Let us extend the scope of this question. If you pass across your own window naked en route for the knicker drawer, is that indecent exposure? Or let us take the example of a urinal in the press gallery at the House of Commons, where the configuration of open window and porcelain means that an unguarded half turn will inevitably expose one to the full view of anyone standing in the courtyard below - should they have the capacity for instantly resolving such a necessarily fleeting image. Is that peeing in public?

If the answer is no, then there is a case for saying that our amatory couple did nothing wrong - and that the real culprit is Mr Conley, who should have averted his eyes and finished his song.