Bad News for Actors.

The weather is hot and the room has no air flow. There is something stinking in my office, and for once it isn't me. Theatre, the mighty majestic master of manipulative mimesis has passed over to paradise, and I am left with the rotting corpse and a rental agreement that forbids the use of incense sticks.

The post-modern detective has been called in - he is always on the last case before his retirement. He surveys the scene, lights a cigarette and is reminded of Health and Safety regulations.

'It's gonna be a tough one,' he drawls in a voice so deep that would make a DJ kick a hole in a dub-plate. 'The last time I saw a case this big, it was when we hauled Nietzsche in for killing God. He denied it - blamed all of us - and we could never find the body.'

Theatre had been playing about with a bad crowd for a while. The dead-end absurdists of the Post-War Era, wild-eyed kids with nothing to lose except their nuclear paranoia. There was that period when theatre when underground, got dragged into the drug scene, had a few links with revolutionary organisations.

'Hey, that was the 1960s,' said theatre in a later interview. 'We were all at it: novels, poems got beat: we all wanted to copy rock'n'roll. It was the cool new thing.'

When I found the corpse, it was under my desk. I didn't mind that theatre was dead. I just wish I hadn't been the first to notice.

'Right,' coughed the PoMo Dick. 'Time to call in the usual suspects. Get Criticulous on the line.'