PRESCRIPTION FOR MURDER, Stage-Door Theatre Company at the Windmill Theatre, Littleghampton

And there we were, down in Devon in the doctor's house (a good, realistic set from Mike Gearing and company) '“ and back in those jolly old days when the local GP could be phoned to make house-calls, even in the middle of a sociable Saturday evening... and when cleaning ladies spoke in pure Loamshire after elocution lessons from Pam Ayres (well done Maureen, of the same surname, as it happens!)

This was a world in which suspect cups of tea and poisoned cakes were part of a meal including lashings and lashings of scarlet-red herrings : Just who was trying to kill who and why ? The doctor ? His seemingly hypochondriac wife ? The mysterious computer rep who seemed to be investigating a case of mistaken identity ? The doctor’s would-be third wife ?

The only people we never suspected were the neighbours , very amusingly played by John Storey and Brenda Hargraves , he as a bowls-obsessed , henpecked husband and she as a wife whose bossiness was reserved exclusively for her charmingly boring husband . These two could have stepped straight out of an early Ayckbourn play and there was real comic chemistry between them .