While films frequently spawn sequels and prequels, theatre — with the spectacular exception of the Bard’s history plays — tends to go for one-offs. In Peter Nichols’s new play, which opened at the tiny Finborough fringe theatre last night, the main character is called Steven Flowers — and yes, those of you who are paying attention have by now correctly guessed that is a follow-up to Privates on Parade, Nichols’s hit play of 1977 (last revived at the Donmar in 2001). But as well as being a follow-up, how does this new play stand up on its own?

Ten years after Justin Fashanu - not only the first openly gay footballer, but the first black player to command a £1 million transfer fee - committed suicide in a lock-up garage in the East End, his former agent, Eric Hall, breezily informed the BBC that football was “not a world that attracts gay people". Has anyone told Elton John, Watford FC’s most famous fan? Yet however implausible Hall’s comment may seem, the evidence is stacked solidly in his favour: no other professional footballer apart from Fashanu has ever come out.

Within the space of a single year - 1979 - Barrie Keeffe  wrote two scripts which together summed up the very essence of the East End on the eve of Thatcherism. The first, which barely needs introduction, was the now-classic The Long Good Friday. The other was Sus, an explosive play about a black man detained by two racist police officers on the night of the General Election.

A fool of my acquaintance told me, “This is the most racist movie I’ve ever seen.” The Blind Side patently isn’t racist, but anyone of a PC, liberal or atheist bent will feel a little uneasy at times during the film, dealing as it does with a black teenager being “rescued” from a life of financial and emotional poverty by a Southern Christian woman, Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock giving a towering performance, which won her the Oscar for Best Actress).A fool of my acquaintance told me, “This is the most racist movie I’ve ever seen.” The Blind Side patently isn’t racist, but anyone of a PC, liberal or atheist bent will feel a little uneasy at times during the film, dealing as it does with a black teenager being “rescued” from a life of financial and emotional poverty by a Southern Christian woman, Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock giving a towering performance, which won her the Oscar for Best Actress).

Chances are that you have never heard of Roy “Chubby” Brown. He never performs on television, or is invited to be a guest on chat-shows or panel games, and hell would freeze over before Comic Relief would invite him to be one of their ambassadors in the developing world. And yet he constantly tours, sells DVDs by the bucketload and is one of the UK’s most successful comics.