Solid potato salad

Mr Gnome celebrates the sheer, mind-boggling bizarrerie of that long-gone entertainment genre known as 'variety'.

Here are the Ross Sisters who start off not unlike the celebrated Andrews Sisters - and then, whoosh, they go into their, er, 'speciality'....

Thanks to kind Mr Robert Lindsay for drawing my attention to this remarkable trio.

Hit and myth

Today, a semi-accidental visit to the ballet, a kulcha classification to which I've come late.

This afternoon's performance by the tip-top Birmingham Royal Ballet was Sylvia, a three-act confection of soft-boiled mythological mayhem, featuring nymphs, a goddess, a middle-aged cupid and a shipload of pirates (cue solo for one-legged pirate chief).

Deep, it isn't.

But dance theatre has grown on me in recent years. I find myself increasingly willing to surrender to the possibilities that open up when you leave those pesky words behind.

At one level, the conventions of classical dance are downright daft - prance, pose, pirouette.

But then along come those moments when the 'ballet thing' happens, when I can't tell if the dancers are expressing the music, or if the music is expressing the dance.

And I forget to breathe.