Kits for Kids campaign: Robbie Savage on the passion across Greater Manchester for grassroots football Every professional player should never forget that no matter how successful they ve become, we all started at the same grassroots level, whether it s in the park, the street or the school team
Updated
Don t miss a thing by getting the day s biggest stories sent
direct to your inboxInvalid EmailSomething went wrong, please try again later.
Click here
When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Your information will be used in accordance with ourPrivacy Notice.
Thank you for subscribingWe have more newslettersShow meSee ourprivacy notice
Verdict: A delicious nut roast
Rating:
The first of this year’s cornucopia of Christmas Carols opened this week with the revered Simon Russell Beale as Ebenezer Scrooge at London’s Bridge Theatre.
And, wholesome and nourishing though Sir Nicholas Hytner’s adaptation of Dickens’s festive tale is, it is, in all honesty, more nut roast than turkey with all the trimmings.
I suspect the story’s appeal is that like Scrooge, we’re all hoping to awake from the nightmares we’re enduring, feeling rejuvenated.
But SRB is not the usual lean, mean stick of a Scrooge tormented by the ghosts of his past, present and future. A naturally warm actor, he’s more melancholic miser than full-on curmudgeon. In fact, with his plump figure and beard, he looks a lot like . . . Santa.