Hi, if you want to read something extremely funny, barbed, arch and observant, please do read Nicola McCauliffe's new novel, A Fanny Full of Soap. It follows an actress involved in a west end musical about salsa....! Sounds familair?Anyone who read her online diaries during Chitty Chitty Bang Bang will enjoy her gloriously convoluted sentences and flights of tangental fancy. This is a great read.

I worked on this show - a show that Macaullife destroyed through her own vanity and ego. Her genuine feelings towards towards her hard-working co-stars are laid bare in this badly written farago.

So the only reason the show failed was McCauliffe's ego? Nothing to do with the myriad changes of director, total lack of positive publicity and the fact it was a completely rubbish idea? Seriously -how did McCauliffe stop people buying tickets?

All that you say and more is true... but more than 40 people were employed and it. Name any other major West End show where the leading actrress briefs the media behind the back of the PR and marketing team, writes articles she was paid 20 pieces of silver for deriding the producer and fellow professionals - then produces a book that further rips into her co-stars and co-workers under the guise of "fiction" but is a thinly veiled, badly written cauldron of self-serving bile... She's one nasty piece of work!

Your claim is that she was personally responsible for the failure of the show. How does writing a book after the event cause the show to fail retrospectively? And do you really think her articles discouraged people from buying tickets? The show simply wasn't around long enough for people to have the opportunity to do so.

And at least she criticised her fellow-workers (if she did - I have only heard her comments on the production team) in public. When calling someone as a 'nasty piece of work' via an anonymous messageboard, you do open yourself up to the charge of hypocrisy, do you not?

I certainly don't claim that she was single-handedly responsible for the failure of the show, but she certainly poured oil on the fires... Sure the book was thin and morec than a bit silly - but she read it before agreeing to star in the show and met the producer she labelled "as mad as a box of frogs", who hired her. Five minutes in his company would convince anyone that he was an eccentric given to flights of ridiculous fancy... I am anonymous on this message board because I am a respected professioal and want to feel free t say what i really think. Believe me when I say that if I bumped into Ms McA tomorrow I would teller he exactly what I think about her book to her face!!

Calm down, Kevster 12, you need to take a few deep breaths to avoid trying to type faster than you can think!

If we "respected professionals" decided we would only work for producers who weren't madder than a box of frogs we'd hardly ever take on a job!