I went to Wycombe Swan last week. I last appeared there myself in HMS Pinafore for the Carl Rosa Opera Company.

They were back there this week with their popular and fresh production of The Mikado, which I hadn't seen before and which was described in the Daily Telegraph as "marvellous", the reviewer adding "we laughed we cheered, we came out happy."

Well I laughed and cheered but did not quite come out in the same state as the Telegraph reviewer. Well to be fair I didn't actually cheer until the end, but I did laugh. It was a production that blew away all memories of productions over the years that have attempted to make the production "funny" at the expense of the story and Gilbert's wonderful witty script and lyrics.

Whilst Ko-Ko's little list was skilfully updated to include reference to the Ashes and other topical events, the production was otherwise scrupulously truthful and all the funnier for that truth.

I laughed therefore, spontaneously and happily. A lady sitting in front of me turned around every time I laughed and glared at me in much the way one would glare at someone who answered his mobile phone in the middle of the quiet movement in a Beethoven symphony at the Albert Hall (and, yes, that has happened).

My companion and I were initially perplexed and then uncomfortable as the looks became increasingly venomous and malevolent. At the end of the play I decided that I could not allow this tyranny to go unchallenged and leaned forward and asked the owner of the basilisk stare to explain her repeated accusatory glares.

I don't know what I expected. What I got was an instant and forthright tirade. My laughter had ruined her evening, as whenever I laughed she could not hear the next line. I enquired, as politely as I could in my amazed condition, whether she had ever been to a comedy in the theatre before, as in my experience the performers in comedies rather expected and hoped for such a reaction from the paying customer.

This implied slight on her theatre-going credentials enraged my own personal critic to such an extent that she shouted for security to come and deal with a rude and aggressive man.

I just hope that no one whose sense of humour is greater than mine ever sits behind her if she goes to see Noises Off or Billy Connolly. They may not survive the experience.