A constituent emailed me yesterday asking me if I had heard about a new play in London by Richard Bean. It’s apparently a farce with the central character a Labour MEP.

My interest piqued, I googled away to discover that it had received a bit of a savaging in the press, mainly because it was so absurdly Europhobic!

And which bastion of liberal, pro-European England was it that criticised the play most fiercely? Why, it’s the Evening Standard whose reviewer was “repelled by the loutish simplicities of its Europhobic politics”!

Nicholas de Jonhg’s review also reveals the play includes “the odd vibrator, handcuffs and a prosthetic hand”, the line “Your wanking hand is on fire" and the sight of an MEP with a vibrator in his mouth, which suggests the play isn’t set in Constitutional Affairs Committee, Working Group E.

The Times review concludes with “Yuk”.

One vaguely positive review I found is the Telegraph’s, which enjoyed the gags about the EU and, incredibly, managed to shoe-horn a dig about the Reform Treaty in, which is obsessive even by my standards!

I was very amused to read the one performance that came close to salvaging the show was Richard Moore’s, who played a “boorish”, "curmudgeonly", “no-nonsense Yorkshireman”, UKIP MEP. I wonder who their inspiration was?