Spotted: Christopher Eccleston

When: last night
Where: the Old Vic, upstairs bar.

Yes, there was more than one doctor at the Old Vic last night :-)

Thankfully, unlike the one on stage in A Flea In Her Ear, Christopher Eccleston was keeping his trousers on...

I'd headed for the upstairs bar, knowing it'd be easier to get served up there, and more likely to score something hot to soothe my sore throat. Parking next to a scruffy individual who was being much quieter than the braying theatrephiles around me, I asked the barman for a cup of tea. In the mirrors behind the bar, I saw a familiar, drawn, expressive face; checking the profile of the guy next to me, I was thrilled. It was Christopher Eccleston, actor extraordinare, being fantastically, err, ordinare.

Dressed in an ordinary black top and jeans, he was being distinctly unshowy, talking in a low murmur, gently moving the lady he was with (his mum? an aunt?) out of the way of other people in a way that totally betrayed him as different from the rest of the Old Vic crowd. They push rather than say excuse me, are loud and obnoxious, and have that strange theatregoer trait of extreme self-absorbtion with a completely misplaced sense of entitlement. Urgh.

JC was gutted to miss him. Having sat, tense, through Accused the other night, and reminisced with me about shows like Our Friends in the North, and Hearts and Minds (which blew me away as a teenager), he was anxious to know if "he was alright." Because usually, when you're watching Christopher Eccleston in some heartwrenching drama, he's not alright. Usually, his world's being torn apart; he's suffering. And tormented. And demonised. And horrified. And powerless. And, and...

But he looked alright enough in the lovely Old Vic bar.

Hope he enjoyed the show as much as we did. I'll post a review later today...