Where else can you get in the same evening amazing opera and, as advertised, ‘a devastating and debilitating dose of the squits’? Fear not, the dodgy bowel movements didn’t afflict the audience – they formed the finale to Croquefer, one of two Offenbach operettas in a double bill at Stowe’s Roxburgh Theatre. Croquefer and L’Ile de Tulipatan are not two of Offenbach’s most famous works, but they’re nonetheless stuffed full of the French composer’s delightful bawdiness, and annoyingly catchy tunes (some of which I’m still humming a good two weeks after the last performance).

After a couple of weeks off, the show continues at Wilton’s Music Hall on 18 and 19 August. The oldest surviving music hall in the world, its Victorian panelling and intimate stage will be the perfect setting for Jeff Clarke’s rowdy stagings of deception, duelling, and diarr..well, you get the idea.