And the gateau? Well, good chocolate cake, and cherries, much kirsch and nicely whipped cream is simply to do with good cooking, wherever you might be.
I used to say that there was not really such a thing as British dishes or good recipes. Steak is cooked better in the States than anywhere else and chips are done better in Belgium. The sauce for prawn cocktail, as we have always known it, now probably owes much more to the American dressing than it ever did to sauce Marie Rose. It is interesting that the first three most definitely sound native, although one of the better tomato soups – maybe more of a slurry – is the Italian pappa pomodoro and an American apple pie might often be much better made than one made here.

And in our latest collaboration, The Prawn Cocktail Years (to be published by Macmillan in October), Lindsey Bareham and I have set out to celebrate this popular trio – and other best-beloved dishes – and restore long overdue recognition. As everyone knows, it is prawn cocktail, steak and chips and Black Forest gateau. Tomato soup, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and apple pie, are not, of course, the traditional three courses that make up the British meal. One said to the other `Oh my Gaad! Her mom and dad were really giving her a hard time’.”. “I used a mixed cast in Houston and there was one quite elderly couple sat there after the show – they didn’t move during the interval. “I love to leave the audience the freedom to interpret.” That said, there is no knowing what an audience is capable of. It would take on a sexual significance which I don’t think would be relevant to what the piece is about.” Reducing Swansong to a mere sex war would be too narrow a reading.

Does Bruce ever feel tempted to introduce an element of sexual politics and have the victim one sex and the policemen another? “I don’t think it would work. With this cast I’ve got a female victim with two interrogators – one male, one female, and there’s a different kind of byplay between the two interrogators’.
Rambert are bringing a mixed bill to the Peacock Theatre on Tuesday with Didy Veldman as the victim and Simon Cooper and Hope Muir as the interrogating double act. “Even though I made it for three men I enjoyed playing with the change of gender because with each different cast, the characters of the performers change the piece With each new cast I’ve seen it differently. Christopher Bruce, now artistic director of Rambert, is excited about the development. They have already experimented with an all-female cast, the latest twist is to have a mixed-gender trio.