SPECTATOR was reassured, yet somehow dispirited in the same breath, to find about 50 people of a similarly mature age around him when he saw Ladies in Lavender, starring Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, at the Teesside Showcase cinema on Sunday.

He concluded that acting and production qualities of the highest order are not enough to guarantee a big audience at such a fiercely competitive venue.

To be honest, he doubted whether the worthy directorial debut of actor Charles Dance would survive for very long in the crushing, dumbed down atmosphere of a typical urban multiplex. Next stop, perhaps, the Elite at Leyburn or the Ritz at Thirsk?

Which leads Spectator on to one of his perennial beefs, the alleged starting times of cinema programmes. He wondered how many of his fellow viewers, probably new to this game after their friendly neighbourhood picture houses of yore, shared his irritation that before they got to the film they had to endure almost 20 minutes of trailers and needlessly bloated commercials.

One advert by Orange, warning against the use of mobile phones during performances, drags on to pointless length when a simple message flashed on the screen would do.

The invisible managers who run the Showcase and other multiplexes would probably argue that the system eliminates the chances of latecomers stumbling to find their seats before their eyes have become accustomed to the half light.

But then what happened to the guides who used to show cinemagoers to their seats with torche in the old cinemas? It's a personal touch that seems to have been lost in the cold modern quest for lower overheads and as high a profit margin as possible. Ladies in Lavender truly belongs to a lost age.

Folk memories

NEWS of the reopening this week of the refurbished Golden Cock public house in the centre of Darlington led some middle-aged residents of the town to remember the upstairs room, long gone in a previous upgrade, which, in the Sixties and Seventies, housed a weekly folk club.

The club session was even featured one week on the (then) BBC Light Programme and regularly presented top-notch guests - Barbara Dickson before she veered from folk to greater fame; fiddler Aly Bain, and Christy Moore, to name just three.

That upstairs room can't have housed much other than the folk club as its walls and ceiling were hung with old ceilidh and concert posters and a wide variety of what is best described as "found objects", including a large and floral Victorian bedroom item. Then, pubs had atmosphere. Now they have refurbishment and, worse, they sometimes have themes.