Here is a surprising triumph. In its infinite sagacity, the European Union, has banned misleading quotations from theatre critics. You know the sort of daft puff. You can observe it in screaming type outside every West End Theatre. “Tell all your friends that this (pathetic) farce is as (un)funny as Little Britain(’s most infantile scatology). It deserves to run and run (for less long even than their lady urinating gag.)”

Such puffery comes in as many shades as (meretriciously) colourful as Joseph’s Magic Dreamcoat. They range from the blurb (inexact); the (selective) quotation; the (qualified with faint) praise; the (cherry-picked) astonishing plot; the (quote-whore’s travesty of) appreciation; to (the lie) circumstantial and (the lie) direct.

As the poet Horace, a puffer of the first Treaty of Rome, observed: “Advertisers have an obligation to inform (educate) as well as a right to influence (persuade).” (That was an example of a misleading quotation.) The EU must know by now that there is no statement so transparent that sub-editing cannot translate it into its opposite. The puffers are already getting around the disbelief in their absurd glorification. They are employing their own house “critics” on the internet to write glowing reviews. And printing the name of their tame reviewer in tiny print beneath.

The theatre is a kind of marketplace. And the EU, which is (ought to be) a market, should recognise this. It may issue as many protocols banning commercial(practices likely to deceive) the consumer, (even if) the information is correct. The Law of the Market is still Caveat Emptor – Enjoy the play on the boards (but for Truth’s sake don’t buy the puff on the billboards).