On TV

CELEBRITIES are, more often than not, only required to make themselves look silly when the Children In Need campaign comes round each year.

But chart-topper Will Young was wearing his serious face for this documentary marking the 25th anniversary of the TV fund-raiser.

He was finding out more about the 100,000 children who run away from home every year and was surprised to learn - so shocked that he told us several times - there is only one six-bed refuge for runaways in the whole of the UK. "How have we managed to fail our children so badly?" he asked.

The statistics make grim reading. One in five runaways are aged under 11. One in four ends up sleeping rough if not found within 48 hours of going missing. The longer they're on the streets, the greater the chance of them being targeted by individuals or gangs who use them for sexual exploitation and in the drugs business.

These are clearly children in need of protection from pimps and paedophiles, although Young was shocked to hear of the horrible things that had been done to runaways by adults. "I can't believe these people are out there," he said.

He spoke both to parents who had lost children and runaways themselves. A year ago, 13-year-old Lucy got up, got dressed, took the dog out for a walk and never came back. She's still missing. Lucy, her mother said, wasn't happy with the rules she'd imposed on her. Family conflict is one reason youngsters run away from home. Physical, sexual and emotional abuse are others. They need someone outside the home to talk to about their problems.

The only refuge in the country has had children as young as eight turn up on its doorstep. They can stay only 14 days, leaving social workers and families a short time to work through the problems.

This year, some 300 runaways will end up at the refuge, with the number increasing every year.

The refuge is under threat, with no financial guarantee beyond 2006. Yet Penny Dean, of The Children's Society, was advocating the importance of establishing a national network of refuges.

Home is the last place runaways want to be. Accommodation is needed while they're helped with their problems. It's all very well having a helpline, but follow-up temporary accommodation is a must too.

Young made a concerned guide and presumably many of the runaways were happier talking to him than to a more conventional presenter.

One runaway even turned the tables, asking if he'd ever taken off when he was young. He admitted to running away from boarding school when he was nine, although he fled only as far as his grandmother's house.

Macbeth, RSC,

Newcastle Theatre Royal

THE second of the three Shakespearean tragedies the RSC is presenting at the Theatre Royal this season, Macbeth is perhaps the most popular. Certainly the house was packed and although the youngsters in the audience were excitedly noisy when the lights went down, during the performance you could have heard a pin drop.

The play opens with the three witches, chanting in electronically distorted voices which made them quite hard to follow. They meet two generals, fresh from success in battle and on their way back to the king's palace.

Greg Hicks as Macbeth and Louis Hilyer as Banquo started off delivering their lines in the clipped manner reminiscent of the late Lord Olivier's Richard III. I found this distracting but as the play developed, either I got used to it or they used it less.

Sian Thomas was powerful as Lady Macbeth, passionately in love with her ambitious husband and determined to help him succeed. Her nerve and her sanity crack, however, and her sleepwalking scene made me shiver.

Clive Wood's Macduff, the 'good guy', secured our sympathy with tearful disbelief when told of his murdered family, and was a strong presence throughout.

Greg Hicks was superb as Macbeth, confident of victory thanks to the witches' prophecies, watching incredulously as it all started to unravel. It just goes to show, it's bad luck to be superstitious.

* Runs until Saturday. Box office: 0870 905 5060

Sue Heath

Nobody's Fool, Darlington Civic Theatre

EVEN at 6ft 3in plus heels, the sight of writer-actor Simon Williams dressed as a woman draws little more than polite amusement. The "man forced to adopt women's garb" comedy plot is a familiar one - in this case, Williams is a stiff-shirted, lovelorn statistician with a stutter called Leonard, who has found fame as Myrtle the romantic novelist.

All is fine until reality TV host Letitia (Joanna van Gyseghem, who takes the role originally destined for Sylvia Sims) decides to track down Myrtle for inclusion in the programme Mind Your Own Business.

Where Williams scores highest is the constant barrage of puns, quips and badinage with which he imbues his performance, aided by our understanding of today's electronic aids and their glitches. Mobile phones, cam-links, fly-on-the-wall filming and computer programs which mix up Myrtle's recorded voice with Nicholas Parsons' are neatly punched into the comedy mix. This is assisted by equipping Leonard with a decorous runaway wife, Fran, (Louise Jameson) who doesn't know Myrtle's true identity, an old rogue father Gus (Bernard Kay) and a feisty and secretly pregnant daughter Dee Dee (Chloe Newsome) who do.

Even in today's liberated times, Leonard worries about being a "gender bender offender", although you do fear for a "woman of the world" who thinks the G-spot is a piece of furniture. However, Myrtle's most valued piece of advice earned applause in its own right: "You can spice up a dull man, but you can't housetrain a bastard". Pity so few think it's true.

l Runs until Saturday.

Box Office: (01325) 486555

Viv Hardwick