The Palladium in south-east London is the setting for David Lodge’s astutely observed first novel, set in the late 1950s. Once the grandest music-hall south of the river, it is now a seedy cinema, home to stale popcorn, surly attendants and a cast of disparate picturegoers. These include Father Kipling who wants to see The Song of Bernadette (1943) but goes on the wrong day and ends up stuck in the middle of a row watching When the Cat’s Away starring a voluptuous Amber Lush. (He delivers a sermon the next day decrying the ‘scandalous presentation that deliberately exploited the basest passions of man’). Later Mr Berkley, the cinema-manager, introduces foreign film classics such as Bicycle Thieves (Dir: Vittoria De Sica. Italy 1948) but his plan misfires and box office receipts slump alarmingly.

Towards the end of the novel, the Palladium is packed out as Rock Around the Clock (Dir: Fred F. Sears. US 1956) gets the audience up on their feet, singing and dancing.