The play's the thing

Breaking news: I got the wrong play.

Whilst Chris Patten did adapt The Frogs, he actually played the part of Queen Victoria in the Balliol Players version of Aristophanes' The Women at the Thesmophoria, subtitled "We are not amused".   The record suggests only a short tour - one performance at Charterhouse.

In a huge cast, Christopher Moxon, who went on to a career in theatre administration, played Prime Minister Harold Wilson; John Adams, now a theatre director, played Mrs Wilson.

Richard Lambert, ex FT and CBI, now "Sir" and Chancellor of Warwick University, played Sir George Ponsonby-Trollope.

Stephen Jessel, former BBC correspondent, played Lord Franks, at that time conducting one of his many commissions, into the structure of Oxford University.

Co-author Edward Mortimer played Sherlock Holmes.

John Hamwee, then a law student, now a specialist in acupuncture and "zero-balancing", played David Frost. John Nicholl, later to run the UK end of the Yale University Press, played 'Hindu' Stan Carruthers. Roger Silverstone, later first Professor of Media and Communications at the LSE, played Disraeli.

Hamilton MacMillan, later to run MI6's counter-terrorism operations, played Euripides.