Box office poison

It is a fact long established and widely known (and did you see, did you approve how I avoided saying it was a truth universally acknowledged? Aren't you grateful?) that I am fatal to any commercial endeavour, that everything I touch turns to dust and ashes in the till.

I should, perhaps, have warned my play's producer.

As of yesterday morning, the theatre had sold precisely six tickets for the opening night, in eight days' time. Six. There must surely be more than six people on Tyneside - no, one of those six is flying in from France: five on Tyneside, then - who are willing to risk a new play?

If so, we've clearly not found them yet. At this rate, the cast will outnumber the audience. Again...