It’s not just Rosamund Pike who struggles with badly behaved theatre-goers. I was nearly beaten up by a hen party | Polly Hudson

They text, they chat, they throw popcorn: some people would rather do anything than just sit and watch a show. And my friend and I have the mental scars to prove it

Rosamund Pike probably lost a fan last weekend, while simultaneously gaining many more. The secret texter she called out without identifying presumably wasn’t too thrilled to be unnamed but shamed at the end of Pike’s play Inter Alia, but for everybody who has ever had a bad trip to the theatre, it was a good point, well-made and about time, too.

After the final curtain, Pike returned to the stage to explain: “I am trying to tell you a story, and I’m feeling you, and I hope you’re feeling me too ... Maybe it was very important, and maybe you’re a doctor, and you’re saving someone’s life, and I hope you are, but we do see these, we do feel them.”