I’m beginning to think my drama school might have diddled me. One (unofficial) lesson involved strolling along tube platforms pretending there was a bomb in our rucksack. We’d discreetly monitor the other passengers and deduce who might notice the casual disposal of an incendiary device. Pretty twisted, when you think about it. That said, this was 1999 — the tube seemed a less threatening place. Not a London Lite in sight.

It was Laurence Olivier who first suggested sitting on the Circle Line and just observing. Following his lead, I witnessed this couplet of brief encounters:

A man bustles his elderly parents along the platform. They’re clearly moving at a pace he regards as sub-evolutionary. He bounds onto the carriage, motioning incredulously for them to hurry up, and starts shouting at them as the doors close. He is whisked away. His parents chuckle as if this had been the plan all along.

A young couple appear, clearly furious with one another. Although they do not speak to nor look at each other, their hands clasp fervently. Suddenly the boy turns and whispers

‘Milwaukee shadow puppets.’

They slowly smile, she laughs, and they kiss.

I don’t know why more plays aren’t set in tube stations. The best dalliances happen there: illicit trysts, drug deals, espionage, or all three at once. The problem is that no production can afford a stream of carriages rattling past every four minutes (delays pending). Right?

Wrong. Peer through the window whilst zipping between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn and you’ll see a station where no passenger has alighted since 1932 — the ‘British Museum’ stop. There are forty of these abandoned or relocated ‘ghost’ stations on the Underground. Try using your Oyster card there, Boris.

So here’s this week’s wooing of a potential new venue — the ghost station. From the strange brick tower of ‘City Street’ to the low white construct of ‘Bull & Bush’ station, they’re just begging to be commandeered for artistic mischiefery. Or at least for The Ghost Train by Arthur Ridley. ‘Down Street’, with its ox-blood red bricks, wasn’t even included in the original 1932 prototype. Winston Churchill and his cabinet used it as a secret base during the war. Churchill said Down Street was ‘one of the only places where it was possible to sleep without the sounds and worries of the bombing above’ (interesting how that never made it into anthologies of bravado-riffic quotes).

My boundless attention to detail has just flagged up that there has been a precedent to this idea: a production of Still Life in ‘Aldwych’ station, which failed to rock the reviewers’ carriages. Well, that was then and this is now. If these stations really are lying vacant, it’s time to descend on them like swarms of script-gnawing track-rats. Even if they’re still being put to clandestine political use. Accidentally bursting in on Gordon Brown getting a bit of peace and quiet from the latest Labour scandal could surely only add to the drama.

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