The Producers made us feel clubbily Jewish, very grown up, very cool and very hip

I was in my last year at Lamda, my drama school, when I was introduced to the film by an American friend. We were galvanised by it. The US reviews for it were very mixed: “Some of it is shoddy and gross and cruel; the rest is funny in an entirely unexpected way.”

Around the globe, anyone under 30 with a love of showbiz was inducted into a secret cult.

It was a bit like listening to Lenny Bruce or knowing about Danny La Rue’s club or what the Polari meant in the radio show Round the Horne. It made us feel clubbily Jewish, very grown up, very cool and very hip, which, incidentally, we were not. We knew every line, every reference and what’s more, we could bring them into the conversation at the drop of a Hollywood name: “Poor? I’m so poor I’m wearing a cardboard belt”;  “Actors? Animals. You ever eat with one?”;  “Keep it light, keep it bright, keep it gay” – note this was long before the word “gay” was, in common parlance, anything other than jolly.

These were the days when my mother swore: “Give over… Liberace isn’t… you know… (whisper) homosexual, he just puts it on for show.”

The years rolled on, as years will do, and Mel Brooks went from chancer to necromancer as film after film garnered more and more plaudits and awards. Blazing Saddles will never be topped for exquisite bad taste. Young Frankenstein was sublime. His posse of performers became our regular, celluloid friends. Even knowing every line just made the ritual of hearing them again more soothing.

Then 40 years after The Producers first shocked a nation, Mr. Brooks went back to the stage from whence he sprang (as a “tummeler”, a sort of redcoat, in the Catskills Borsht Belt) rewrote the whole shebang into a musical, and with the partnership of the great choreographer Susan Stroman, brought it half way up to date and knocked ‘em from the aisles to the Tonys on the great white way that is Broadway.

I can never forget seeing a poster on the wall of Bialystock’s theatrical office reading “She Shtupps to Conquer” and nudging the person next to me in glee, forgetting completely that Jack was no longer there to share it.

I have to confess that, this time, the Nazi sequences made me shift in my seat with slight discomfort, for the first time ever. Not to discredit the pinpoint direction or performers. It is me who has changed. And the times we live in. Similarly, the divine music and lyrics of Lerner and Loewe’s Gigi would give me the same cultural pang. Can you sing “Thank heaven for little girls” anymore? I suppose it is the sad loss of innocence that I am bemoaning. Or is life so horribly satirical in itself that over delineating it for comic effect feels extraneous?

The next day I found myself in the darkest clothes I possess, at Westminster Cathedral for the funeral of the beautiful woman who called herself Katharine Kent. I was touched by the invitation. We met, years ago, at the Woman of the Year lunch and talked about our favourite topic – Hull. She taught music in a state school in east Hull and was a fountain of funny stories about her pupils, whom she adored. “You can’t tell me off. My mam pays your salary,” was a favourite line from a seven-year- old .

We never discussed the Family or anything much about my work but we never drew breath. She was a beautiful, Yorkshire-woman, down-to-earth and full of dry humour and mischief, all of which was reflected in the solemn, but not heavy mass that my friend Rula Lenska and I watched, appreciating the ritual.

It was quite enervating to watch the Royals walk in, because one simply forgets that one is ageing with them. I’m happy to tell you that the King had more energy than most and bounded down the aisle with vigour.

The organ, not my favourite instrument but one which the duchess actually played, called us to attention like a massive shofar, a message was read out from the Pope and the Right Reverend James Curry conjured her spirit back with words of admiration and true friendship.

Music was her passion and the choir did her proud. The building is a mass of differing styles but the acoustics are sensational. As Donald Trump might say: “It’s a lotta history.”

Afterwards around four, walking in Westminster, desperately in need of lunch, I remembered one conversation Katharine and I had, when she shared a favourite Hull exchange. At the start of her class a lad came in and was hurriedly taking off his coat.

“That’s a nice anorak Jimmy,” the Duchess said, helping him, “Is it new?”

“Yeah,” he replied proudly, “Me mam nicked it for me.”