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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud, where each week we choose some of our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Patrick Gibbons and from The First Spectator of 26, we'll hear from Cosmo Landisman, who argues that life is too short to sit through boring shows.

Alex Diggins, who wonders if he's a useful idiot visiting the art biennial taking place in Baccarra.

Lucy Dunn, who reads her notes on buzz balls, which featured at the Spectator's Christmas Party.

And finally, Richard Bratby, who reviews operas taking place at the Royal Northern College of Music

and the Royal Opera House. Up first, Cosmo Landiseman. To walk out of a public performance before the end,

be it the theatre, a concert, or a lecture is not the done thing. It's considered an antisocial

act that disrupts the performance and thus other people's pleasure.

To walk out provokes tuts of disapproval and scowls of indignation.

And yet, while it's something we all disapprove of, at least in theory,

it's all something we all secretly longed to do.

Who hasn't sat and squirmed in their seat at some tedious piece of

theatre and wondered, how much more of this must I suffer? And who hasn't been subjected to one of those

long, sycophantic interviews with some self-adoring author flogging their latest book, and not

prayed for the courage to make a run for it.

The other night, I was at a public talk where a man with a background in British cinema was

...