I enjoyed another treat last night. John and I went to watch Operation Mincemeat at the Fortune Theatre. Truth be told it was his idea, and it had been years since I last went to a theatre, but what we saw last night was stunning: a well-oiled, well-choreographed piece of musical entertainment. I saw the film three years ago, but the stage adaptation was something new to me. The story being told is now a fairly well known one: the plot to deceive Hitler towards the end of the war using fake documents planted on a dead body, for the Germans to find when it washed up in southern Spain. Yet the way the story was told, with all the verve and razamatazz you would expect from a West End Show, really took my breath away. There was humour, great songs, moments of pathos, and – best of all for me – three or four Bond references.

Mind you, I don’t think the irony of the evening can be overlooked. Historically, Operation Mincemeat was deadly serious: millions of lives depended on the Germans falling for the deception. It would have been thought up in the war rooms, not that far from where we watched the show. Had it failed the consequences would have been truly dire. Yet last night, just eighty years after it was actually carried out, it was depicted as a lighthearted musical comedy, full of gags and dance routines. Does anyone else see that as slightly odd? How strange that something so inherently dark can become something so light and jovial so quickly.