Forgive an outbreak of immodesty but I think I may have spotted a joke that as far as I know has not been noticed so far, although Noel Coward created it in 1941.

Please also forgive the fact that it is possibly not in the best possible taste, but Coward did have a notably naughty sense of humour.

In any case, if it is part of the Noel Coward story I can’t help feeling that it ought to be recorded. If it is not already in the Coward compendium, it ought to be.

To start at the beginning: I saw the film Blythe Spirit as a schoolboy during the Second World War.

In more recent years, I have seen various productions of the play – and have consistently been intrigued by the surname of the couple who have to put up with the arrival of the mischief-making ghost of the husband’s first wife.

It’s Condomine, a name I have never met outside the theatre and one that has no bearing on anything that happens in the play.

It could just have easily have been about Mr and Mrs Smith, Brown or Pennyfeather. So why did Coward choose it? How did he come to create t?

It is here, I am afraid, that I shall have to ask you to bear with me.

If we break Condomine down into its component parts, what we get is Condom in E – and it is here that I suspect that Coward was at his most mischievous, because E stands for Elvira, which is the other unlikely name in Blithe Spirit and is the name of Charles Condomine’s late first wife, who has come back to haunt him.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that Coward was laughing his socks off while posting his hidden account of what had been going on in the Condomine bedroom.

It is not difficult to imagine the bored and superior snigger with which he explained to his live-in lover how clever he had been and fell to wondering, behind that supercilious cigarette-holder, how long it would be before anybody noticed.

Well, I am open to correction, but as I have never thus far seen it pointed out before, I suspect the answer may be 67 years.

Three times a lady

Television’s Sarah Manners, who comes from Barnt Green and became well-recognised with Doctors and Casualty, will be returning close to home next week when 3-1-6 Sex Lies and Retribution has a three-night run at Bromsgrove’s Artrix.

It is a three-hander written by Euan Rose, the man who came up with the Brummie musical Wallop Mrs Cox for its baptismal run at Birmingham’s Crescent Theatre in 2000. Sarah starred in 3-1-6 at the Haymarket, Basingstoke.

That was when 3-1-6 was its complete title and the reference to Sex Lies and Retribution was added descriptively on its posters.

But when people seeking tickets insisted on calling it Sex, Lies and Retribution, it was time for a Rose re-think.

He realised that the enigmatic all-figures title – which refers to three people, one tragedy and a period of six days – was not exactly registering with potential patrons, so he added the four-word description.

He has also done a lot of re-working on the plot, responding to Sarah Manners’ anxiety to be in another run of the play.

One of the main changes is to turn one of the characters into what he calls “the ultimate bitch” instead of just a partial one” – and to give the play a happy ending.

The production also stars Gail Graye, who played the title role in the Rose musical about Charlotte Badger, Bromsgrove’s woman pirate, and Stephen Downing, who is quite often seen by patrons of the Crescent Theatre and the Barlow Theatre, Langley.

Jack of all trades

My colleague Roger Clarke is a disarmingly droll citizen who is always worth listening to.

He’s been telling me about the difficulties he is experiencing with a revue that he is working on, called Love Is A Four-Letter War.

“It has a director who works so closely with the writer you might believe they were one and the same,” he said.

“Well, alright, they are one and the same, because it saves on heating and food.”

When he boasts that it also has a musical director who has his own keyboard and can even play songs that have black notes in them, which he points out is posh indeed, there is even cause to suspect that the twosome is in fact a threesome.

Unfortunately, the result of all this space-saving collaboration has yet to find a home – which is a shame, because Clarkey is the man who in the past has applied his operational economics to pantomime writing.

He has to his name two surprising seasonal shows in which Aladdin is a principal character.

One was Cinderella and the other was Jack And The Beanstalk.

Flipper flapper clappers

I could not help noticing that the Wimbledon crowds were applauding in the seal-like, feed-me, flipper-flapper fashion to which I referred recently as the latest fashion among theatregoers.

Often, it was to applaud an ace, it could just have easily have been a plaice.

* Johnslim47@aol.com

* WHAT’S ON

BLOOD BROTHERS, Oldbury Repertory Players, Barlow Theatre, Langley (to Saturday).

HENRY V, MDCC Theatre Company, Stowe House, Lichfield (July 12).

THE LIVE BED SHOW, Hall Green Little Theatre (July 14-19).

THE JOY OF TEXT & LIKE IN THE MOVIES, Mayhem Theatre Company, Leasowes Theatre, Halesowen (July 17-19).

A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM, Crescent Players, Harvington Hall, Near Kidderminster (July 18-20).

HIGHBURY LITTLE THEATRE OPEN DAY, Sutton Coldfield (July 19).