Occasionally we like to inject a little high culture into our lives: move out of our comfort zones and do grown-up things. Like the theatre, for instance: a hard-hitting play, dark and modern, tackling a controversial subject.

And with nudity.

It was Louise's idea to see Equus when the touring version hit the Cambridge Arts Theatre. She, Chris, Chef and I went along to Saturday night's performance, Chris with customary Oasis bottle full of red wine. Chef chose to stay overnight at the University Arms, celebrating his new job and huge pay rise by splurging on a posh room.

We ate before the show at the Fountain, which does a decent range of pies'n'mash these days. Naturally Chris was already giggly on cider before he'd even touched his fake Oasis (mirage?).

The rain was starting to fall as we migrated from pub to theatre and took our seats. An older audience than I was expecting; no Harry Potter, I suppose. But we did have a great cast, led by Simon Callow as the psychiatrist Martin Dysart. The role of Alan Strang, Daniel Radcliffe's in the West End, was taken by Alfie Allen - son of Keith, brother of Lily. I didn't recognise any of the other actors.

Equus is about Alan Strang's, uh, passion for horses and the circumstances that led him to blind six of them. The psychiatrist gradually draws out the story, which we see in flashback (no hand-waving diddly-doo-diddly-doos from the cast, it's all in the dialogue). There are no Rentaghost panto horses, just men (and a woman) in brown skin-tight clothing with silver horse-heads and huge silver horseshod feet adding several inches to their height. It works astonishingly well.

The play is famous, neigh (do you see?) infamous for its nudity. It contains both flavours: Alan Strang plus Jill, a girl from the stables where he worked. In truth it does seem a little gratuitous, an early 70s anti-establishment right-on get-em-off hippy thing, but it was nonetheless not unwelcome. It certainly stopped the seemingly interminable coughing and spluttering from audience members who should have been at home with the Lemsip rather than drowning out the dialogue with their noisy phlegm.

Alfie Allen does well as Alan Strang. I was going to say that I'd like to see more of him, but there's little else left to see, frankly. Simon Callow naturally steals the show, playing Simon Callow as usual (funny how the best thesps are like that). The actors playing Alan's parents Frank and Dora were also excellent.

Enjoyed it tremendously.

Avaragado's rating: four Milky bars

A few weeks ago, you may recall, Chris, Chef and I saw "TV funnyman" Richard Herring perform his stand-up routine. I neglected to mention then that I am a personal friend of Richard. I say personal friend, he's an acquaintance really. Well, sort of acquaintance. OK, we exchanged a few words after the show (me, on spotting him scampering to the bar about a minute after leaving the stage: "That was quick!"; him: "Got to get to the bar"). Anyway, his comedy partner and officially 41st best stand-up Stewart Lee performed for one night only at The Junction on Sunday. Chris and I, minus Chef this time, went along to see him.

Pre-show we downed a swift pint at the Cambridge Blue Kingston Arms and made a speedy visit to the Golden Curry. From there it was a ten-minute adventure along mysterious back streets to C'hinton Road and the chav-haunted concrete box piazza known as the Cambridge Leisure Park. The event took place in Junction 2, AKA The Shed - a venue supposedly designed for small-scale drama and dance, AKA pretentious gurning and flapping about.

Plastic beers in hand we took our seats a few rows from the front. The support act was great but I am forbidden from describing it here by edict from Stewart Lee, and like all good citizens I always do as the 41st best stand-up comedian instructs.

As a few weeks ago, it was odd to hear one half of the double act without the other, but there was always a presence: the occasional line with a whiff of Herring. I've always liked the distinctive Stewart Lee style: articulate, verbose, exaggerated. Or something.

Mostly very funny, though with a weak ending I thought. (The ending would have been stronger but for the sudden distraction of what seemed to be an outrageous violation of the law: a small cloud of cigarette smoke billowing up from an audience member between us and the stage.)

Avaragado's rating: five sardines

Chris and I took the 5.15pm train to King's Cross on Friday - the Cider Express judging by Chris's intake - to meet up with Chef for Richard Herring's show at the Arts Theatre on Great Newport Street. I was also going to squeeze in a drink with someone I've been chatting to on and off online.

Chris's two cans of cider on the train were followed up with two pints in the Duke of York on the platform at King's Cross - his mum was there waiting for a train back to Hull. Chef joined us here.

Then to the evening's second duke, the Duke of Wellington in Soho, where I was meeting my friend. Chris and Chef thankfully made themselves scarce for the duration.

At nine we headed to the Arts Theatre and took our seats in row A - the second row, the first row naturally being row BB. Nobody sat in row BB, though, so row A was effectively the first row. This mattered deeply as we expected Richard Herring's chubby little fingers to point to us during the show, and so it proved (some nonsense about Chef sitting with me and Chris to make himself look good). At least none of us was dragged on stage.

He talked more or less non-stop for over an hour, longer than my Fisher Price bladder could last at any rate. Almost entirely new material, with a recycled Fist of Fun joke clearly identified as such. Good stuff.

Avaragado's rating: one lollipop

After the show, since Chris and I were staying Chez Chef overnight, we wandered around looking for somewhere to eat. We settled on the Alastair Little Restaurant on Frith Street. I think Chef's paydar must have taken us there, since it wasn't cheap. I had what I believe was the world's most expensive lasagne. Very tasty though.

Avaragado's rating: two wild, absolutely livid mushrooms

We scandalously turned down dessert to avoid missing the last tube back to Chef's in Kentish Town, where further wine was taken.

Chris and I returned to Cambridge relatively early on Saturday morning, via tube, train and, sigh, replacement bus service from Royston.

Yesterday Chris, Melanie, Chef, Andy, Louise and I cantered with coconut shells a-clacking to the Palace Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, for the matinee performance of Spamalot.

An opportune 3-for-2 offer meant that wine-drinking began almost as we left Cambridge; on arrival at King's Cross we were on the second bottle. This tongue-loosener helped me heckle an out-of-towner standing on the left on an escalator, who was blissfully unaware that people have gone to the Tower for less.

Disgorged at Leicester Square blinking into a sunny spring day we found our pre-theatre pub, The Cambridge, and sat outside people-watching with a pint until the time came to saunter over the road for curtain up. Chris took a sneaky photo as we waited for the performance to start.

It's a fantastic show. Very, very funny. Everyone in the audience was intimately familiar with the original film, of course, and all is present and correct, but there are still a few surprises (which I won't spoil here). I'm glad to report the absence of anoraks with their weak lemon drinks joining in with the script, but certain lines, and the appearance of certain characters, did cause a round of applause. I found this amusing; it reminded me of the demented hollering of studio audiences when Fonzie gurned onto set, or the applause when a musical artiste starts banging out an old faithful.

No expense is spared in the production; it's very twinkly indeed. The only slip-up I saw involved the gradual separation of a knight from his moustache. The cast is uniformly very good, and Simon Russell Beale made an excellent Arthur. Different from Graham Chapman in (a) height, (b) width and (c) sobriety.

Yes, you could buy coconut shell merchandise and tins of commemorative spam. No, we didn't. However, Chef bought an "I'm not dead yet" t-shirt (not applicable to his car).

Avaragado's rating: one bowl of assorted fruit

Post-Spamalot we boozed at Waxy O'Connors, a pub containing a tree for no adequately explained reason. And then we ate at Mela, an Indian restaurant near to the theatre, before training home.

See Chris's photos of the day, if you haven't already.

Back in Cambridge just before eleven, I all-too-predictably went to the Fleur and met up with Robert and Richard. There was a Shirley Bassey impersonator on stage; very poor, and inexplicably murdering Sinatra songs rather than the traditional Bassey staples. Once she'd finally warbled her last, the three of us set the world to rights until 1am before continuing up the road in the Rose for another couple of hours.

At closing time a bouncer (not Craig) took issue with Robert's reluctance to drink up and his forthright tongue and, how can I put it, slapped his remaining half-pint (in plastic glass) from his hands to the floor via his trousers. Poor show. Robert declared that he'll never go back there again, but he's probably forgotten that.

Despite it being slap-bang in the middle of town, I've never been to the Jinling Noodle Bar before. Pardon me, I keep typing Noddle. I'll try to stop. Noodle. Noodle.

According to the reviews it's popular with Chinese students. I certainly felt very occidental (/me imagines Chris making the obvious pun) as we walked in, although there weren't very many people there at the time.

The wine was drinkable, the spring rolls were juicy, the noodly main course was generous and unfinishable, and the bill wasn't too bad (insert joke about Chef's absence).

Young Mr Heckford had the Ant Climbing Up Tree. Mushy pork, I think.

Avaragado's rating: two soups

A short dawdle along the road to the Corn Exchange, where we joined an audience we all felt privileged to be a part of, mainly because we were younger than them. For it was Acorn Antiques: The Musical.

None of the stars, obviously. The cast - including the woman from the Philadelphia advert who goes "lovely", you know the one - gamely did their best to emulate the original performances, but there was a whiff of the uncanny valley about it all. The actress playing Julie Walters playing Mrs Overall did a very good impression, but she wasn't Julie Walters so it just wasn't as funny. Better than Mike "Look, it's Frank Spencer! Ooh Betty" Yarwood, but lacking the essential Julie-Waltersness of Mrs O; the joie de vim.

We had seats not more than three or four rows from the front. A hindrance, as it happens: the band were close by, and their tootling tended to overwhelm the cast. I'm sure we missed loads of gags in the lyrics.

I'd like to see the show with the original cast. I bet it's much funnier.

Oh, there was a real-life cock-up at the start. A curtain failed to fully retract, which we all thought was part of the act, but it wasn't; the main curtain swished across to an apologetic announcement. Cue a few minutes of Morecambe and Wise-style bustling behind the main curtain (I imagined grizzled old stage hands played by John Junkin lookalikes in long brown jackets and flat caps) before the show continued.

Avaragado's rating: macaroons, obviously

Chris and Melanie then gave me a lift to the Fleur, wherein I dallied for a while with Andrew and Stuart. And then Robert turned up with Richard, and shortly afterwards the pub decamped to the Rose and Crown, where Artie mumbled drunken incoherent things at me, apparently lost the world's orangest man's jacket and wallet, tipped a small amount of drink over my head for no discernible reason, stumbled his way to the dance floor and was very soon escorted from the building. He's from Poland.

Bed at, uh, just after 4am. Early night.

Another Saturday, another West End musical in oppressive heat. This time I and my culturally sophistimacated chums went to see Avenue Q, the Tony award-winning Broadway show still technically in preview here but very polished nonetheless.

I won't spoil it for you (Wikipedia will if you're keen), but in brief, it's muppets for grown-ups. Not true muppets, as those are in the loving embrace of the Muppets Holding Company, but extremely close relatives thereof.

In case you're fretting over the mechanics of the production: the muppet operators are visible, and use the stage exactly as unmuppeted actors do. Each operator owns a couple of characters, performing all their actions and voices (there's no attempt at ventriloquism). When two characters owned by the same operator are on stage simultaneously, another operator does the actions but the owner does the voices. It's very well done, and you quickly focus on the characters and not the operators.

There are some human characters as supporting cast. The stand-out human is gloriously named Christmas Eve, a stereotypical OrientalAsian-American, played by the only cast member to transfer from the Broadway production.

Oh, it's just great. Avaragado commands you to see it immediately.

Avaragado's rating: eight fruit pastilles

I love coincidences. Like booking months in advance to see a 3pm performance of Chicago in the West End only for England's first match at the World Cup finals to be scheduled to start at 2pm on the same day. Yes, coincidences, I love 'em.

Lynda, Louise, Andy and I trained from Cambridge, Chef trained from High Wycombe, and we met outside Covent Garden tube just after 1pm. It felt more like Rome than London due to the heat, but a Rome invaded by England supporters. After an air-conditioned toasted panini we found a pub yards from the Cambridge Theatre so we could watch the first half. I'd predicted 1-1, but the early England goal was a worrying development: early goal for leads to cockiness leads to two goals against. I think it was Yoda who said that.

With ten minutes before curtain up the half-time whistle went and we dashed out to take our seats. Louise's dad was primed to text her any footie developments.

We had an excellent view from the back of the stalls. But the heat was stifling, and Lynda - suffering from an early morning late night - had trouble staying awake during the first act, despite the talent on display. Andy failed to heckle Bonnie Langford, playing Roxie Hart, for her crimes against humanity in Doctor Who. A fat man last seen as one of the cast of the sitnocom Bread played Roxie's husband Amos. Some pseudo-Sacha Distel garlicked up the role of Billy Flynn. Someone ejected from X-Factor by the great British public played Mama. There were lots of jazz hands.

At half-time in the show, Louise confirmed the full-time score in the football. Shame there hadn't been more England goals - we'd speculated that we'd be able to hear cheers from outside, or someone in the theatre audience would find out and gesticulate wildly, or maybe even the cast would insert the news somehow - newspaper headlines feature more than once in the show. Still, 1-0 will do.

I was familiar with the musical numbers, the film having played in my presence (I wasn't paying much attention to it) and having watched the excellent Channel 4 show Musicality (the winners played the major roles in Chicago in the West End, for one night only, and very good they were too). I think there must have been an American sitting not too far away, as someone kept yelling "Yeah!" after each number as us Brits applauded politely.

It was a polished performance: no slip-ups and technically very good (I am, of course, an expert in these matters). Since I find it hard to remember lyrics at all, I'm full of admiration for those who can sing "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes they both/Oh yes, they both/Oh yes, they both reached for/The gun, the gun, the gun, the gun/Oh yes, they both reached for the gun/for the gun" while dancing, in time with everyone else.

Avaragado's rating: peppered ragout

We stayed in Covent Garden for a pint at the Nag's Head, met up with Sarah and Ades who were up from Bath for the day, and went for another pint at The Cove, nicely tucked away above a pasty shop with a view of the alleged entertainment badgering tourists below. Then to Fire and Stone, a posh pizza restaurant. None of yer Margheritas here: you get pizzas named after cities, such as the (may as well follow the theme) Chicago or Byron Bay. Occasionally non-intuitive ingredients, but very tasty.

Avaragado's rating: bombay mix

Months ago Louise organised tickets for Paul Merton's improvised comedy show, at the Corn Exchange for one night only. If you remember Whose Line is it Anyway?, it was like that but with more swearing and without Clive Anderson. Attending were myself, Louise, Chris, Melanie, Andy Heckford and Chef.

Alongside Paul Merton on stage were Steve Steen, Jim Sweeney, Richard Vranch-at-the-piano, Lee Simpson and Suki Webster. Older viewers may remember Steve Steen and Jim Sweeney from CBTV, back before Children's ITV was called Children's ITV. Due to MS Jim's now in a wheelchair; if you think wheelchair-related comedy was thus out-of-bounds you've been in America too long. If you've never heard of Lee Simpson or Suki Webster, welcome to our little club.

We had the usual games: shouting out of theatre styles, inclusion of random objects in the plot, and similar japes. They must hear the same old things every time.

At half-time the audience were invited to scribble scenarios on bits of paper and submit them to the bucket of fate, to be extracted at random for most of the second half. I think we came up with nine or ten ideas. Staggeringly, four of them were picked out (three of mine, one of Chris's). Two ideas became one-gag sketches: Victorian swingers party (Merton: "I've just had a threesome: Isambard, Kingdom and Brunel"), and After the London Olympics (Vranch: "I now declare this stadium... ready" - yeah, too easy, I know). Two were beefier: When octopuses go bad, and the very last one, which you won't be surprised to learn was Chris's suggestion, Lobster with a big cock finds Nemo.

I was pleased with the audience reaction to my suggestions, but when Paul Merton read out Chris's idea it brought the house down.

Our ideas were much better than most of the others - "Star Trek on Mars", I mean, for god's sake. And there's only one possible gag for "Narcoleptic meeting", and that's been done a thousand times already. As an exercise for the reader, guess the sketch resulting from the idea "a toothpick" (it's very short).

Extremely good fun overall.

Avaragado's rating: mushroom biryani

Another busy, busy day yesterday.

Strode purposefully through the rain (under an umbrella) to the Bath House at about 1pm for lunch with Lynda and Andy. We were joined by Chris, Melanie and Louise shortly afterwards. The occasion: proper grown-up entertainment.

The Willy Russell musical Blood Brothers was on at the Corn Exchange all week. We had tickets for the Saturday matinee. Theatrical know-nothing that I am, I had only the vaguest notion. Brothers, yeah, musical, yeah, Educating Rita bloke, yeah.

Apparently Linda "Yes, those Nolans" Nolan is one of the stars, but we got the understudy for her role. Good, actually: she was impressive. Belting set of lungs. Not so keen on the narrator, who was a bit too Vic Reeves Club Singer for me.

I enjoyed it a lot, despite occasional spoonfuls of sugar and slices of cheese. I suspect we'll be mentioning "shoes on the table" and giggling for some time to come. I didn't join in the standing ovation at the end; it felt a little forced, like feeling obliged to buy a raffle ticket when someone accosts you at the beer festival. But lots of clapping, yes.

Unexpected humour (a): the people in the row in front of us who were jumping in fright for the most unfrightening of things, like lighting changes, musical cues and naughty words.

Unexpected humour (b): a kid sitting not too far away from us, possibly a little young for the show, going "Eurgh!" in a romantic bit. I think he was giggling at the swearing too.

Unexpected humour (c): in a scene set in a classroom, the teacher is supposed to slam a desk lid on a student's finger. Sadly the desk was the wrong way round in this performance; he tried to quickly rotate it but the game was up. A few cast members smiled at each other (maybe they did it deliberately to liven things up a little?)

Avaragado's rating: a bag of gobstoppers

We had a post-musical cocktail at The Cow, joined incidentally by some members of the cast. Well, they were on another table. Chris shamefully failed to sing of shoes on the table within their earshot.

Then it was dinner at No. 1 King's Parade. Yeah, not bad. I don't remember the last time I was there - possibly a year or more ago - but I reckon the menu was longer. Food seemed about the same quality though.

Surprisingly, by 9:15 we were done and the others headed for taxis home. But.. but.. 9:15? On a Saturday night? Perhaps it was another caffeine kick from yesterday's Espresso Martini (which kept me up until after 2am) but it seemed wrong to be going home when it was still relatively light.

So I texted RP. Turns out he was just leaving home for the Fleur, so I tagged along. Hadn't been there for ages. Chatted to a few people with RP, had a few more drinks, then went home at a more sensible hour for a Saturday night.