Stage and screen
Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap has notched up its 60th anniversary and its 25,000th performance, by far the longest run of a stage show. Yet for all its longevity, relatively few people have seen it compared with some television dramas.
— The Mousetrap played at the 440-seat New Ambassadors Theatre until 1974. It then transferred to the 550-seat St Martins Theatre, where it still runs. If every seat had been sold in that time, it would have been seen by 12.7 million people.
— That is far short of the record audience for a British TV drama (30.15 million, for the 1986 EastEnders Christmas special), and only three times the average Saturday evening audience for ITV’s Poirot.
The Brussels bonus
Who are the biggest net beneficiaries, and losers, of EU spending?
Net benefit per head of EU spending, 2009
| BIGGEST WINNERS | |
| Luxembourg | €2,365* |
| Lithuania | €438 |
| Estonia | €416 |
| Greece | €267 |
| BIGGEST LOSERS | |
| Denmark | -€211 |
| Finland | -€114 |
| Germany | -€107 |
| Italy | -€101 |
| UK (in seventh place) | -€62. |
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