First things first Blackadder, for the uninitiated, was a British period-piece comedy series which starred Rowan Atkinson and was written in the 1980s by Atkinson and Richard Curtis. If you ask me, it left Mr Bean for dead. Baldrick, who uttered the antitheatre quote above, was Edmund, Blackadder's faithful manservant and while he may have been described as having the intelligence of a coliban potato, the point is that not everybody loves going to the theatre. There, I said it.

Now this "theatre is boring" attitude is fine if you're a theatre-hating type of person and you've filled your world up with other theatre-hating types. But it's not so great if you secretly dream of going to see a live performance and the people around you would rather put fire ants on their tongue than go see a Berkoff play or (worse still) a musical.

Help, dear closet theatre-lover is at hand. Thanks to the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

I trialled the Admit One concept last September with the Ben Elton musical We Will Rock You. Attendees not only received premium reserved seating to the popular Queen extravaganza, but also pre- and post-show drinks and canapés in the Roof Top Function Room. Smart thinking, QPAC. Keep us juiced up and even the shyest person has an opinion on Freddy Mercury's moustache.

Of course, theatres are doing a lot more these days to attract audiences and get bums on seats. After all, it takes more than just singles nights or Marcus Graham pulling down his pants to draw the crowds.

In postscript to an earlier blog entry on Movieoke, here's some news from Chicago. One of the most popular "theatre" outings in the Windy City right now is The One Man Star Wars Trilogy. You guessed it. One man, Canadian Charles Ross, gets up on stage and does what has been described as a dazzlingly detailed one-man homage to the first three Star Wars films.

Ross appears on stage with no props or costumes - it's just this crazy Canadian with some elbow and kneepads as he condenses three cult films into an hour-long performance. While Ross has clearly spent a significant amount of time at home pressing the pause button on his VCR, he is proof positive that memorising movie lines is a worthwhile pastime.