Audiences behaving badly: An epidemic of anti-social behaviour in theatres, concerts and gigs
Riot police called to a performance of The Bodyguard in Manchester; “Rude and abusive” audience members removed from the balcony of a West End performance of Grease by police and a performance of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell at London’s Peacock Theatre brought to a standstill by a man hurling abuse at fellow theatregoers.
With all these incidents occurring this year alone, it’s no surprise that a recent survey of theatre staff showed many feared for their safety, reporting kicking, punching, choking, sexual assault and racial abuse while going about their work. There was even a mass brawl in one venue.
At the start of the year, naked photos of actor James Norton circulated online after audience members defied theatre instructions not to film during the play A Little Life, taking photos regardless.
The violation led some to speculate that West End shows could insist audience members hand in their phones ahead of performances, particularly those featuring well-known celebrities.
Such anti-social behaviour during performances eclipses previous audience misdemeanours of loud talking, rustling sweet packets and late arrivals, once considered the height of poor audience etiquette.
And it’s not just in theatres. Singers on the stage are having to run the gauntlet after a spate of attacks with items hurled from the audience.
Ava Max was slapped in face and scratched in the eye by a stage-invading fan; Bebe Rexha was hit in the face by a phone thrown by an audience member “because it would be funny”; and Harry Styles was hit in the eye by an itinerant Skittle.
So, why have some audience members seemingly lost the plot, and is behaviour getting worse?
Dr Kirsty Sedgman, a specialist in cultural studies and human behaviour and senior theatre lecturer at the University of Bristol told Sky News: “Live performance venues have always been the canary in the coal mine. Big societal frustrations and social changes tend to erupt in the performance venues first.”
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Theatregoers thrown out as crowd boos
‘You’ll be dancing in the aisles’
Unofficially known as Doctor of Audiences, Dr Sedgman has worked with a range of arts organisations across the UK, as well as appearing on panels with arts venue managers, people from various customer facing industries and the police on issues of anti-social behaviour at live events.
She says management of audience expectation is key to improving the situation, with marketeers recently called to account for misleading the public in a bid to boost ticket sales.
“Theatres have started to ban slogans like, ‘It’s the best party in town’ or ‘You’ll be dancing in the aisles,’ because often when audiences get there they are told, ‘You might have been led to expect that, but you’re not allowed to get up and dance and sing’.”
Ava Max. Pic: @Joelr_23/PA
Why might people be people acting up?
A night out at the theatre or at a concert is a fun event, a leisure activity, so it’s understandable that audience members want to let down their hair.
That said, for the performers and front of house staff, it’s a workplace, and as for all workers, employers have legal responsibilities to ensure a safe and healthy workplace.
Some have suggested the sale of alcohol in venues – often allowed to be consumed not just in intervals but throughout the show – could be partly to blame.
Others have pointed to the high-ticket prices giving ticketholders a sense of entitlement, and so paving the way for more challenging audience behaviour.
Or could it just be the case that after months spent in lockdown, and years juggling a worldwide pandemic, some people have forgotten how to behave post COVID?
Harry Styles hit in face in Vienna – reportedly a rose not a Skittle on this occasion
‘Increasingly belligerent and even violent interactions’
Dr Sedgman says it’s not that simple. Her book, On Being Unreasonable, about the erosion of manners, order and respect in recent years, flags that as far back as the Ancient Greeks, some 2,000 years ago, Plato was complaining that while audiences used to be respectful of performers, they had recently found their voices and needed to be controlled with a stick.
While Dr Sedgman says something has shifted recently, she says it’s too simplistic to say that it’s just because we’ve come out of lockdown and have forgotten how to behave.
She believes the change began a few decades ago, intensified by what she calls “the disconnection economy,” by which we have been “gradually, relentlessly incentivised into individualistic modes of thinking rather than communitarian modes of thinking”.
She says the result is: “Social contracts collapsing everywhere and bad behaviour, with often increasingly belligerent and even violent interactions between different people erupting everywhere from theatres into cafes and restaurants and on public transport.”
Bebe Rexha. Pic: Instagram @avamax
‘I’m sick of being told what to do with my body’
Following lockdown she says people were eager to seek out shared experiences: “Coming back from COVID, there was a real hunger by some audiences for what we call ‘collective effervescence’, which is communal experiences of shared, often more exuberant forms of joy in public space.”
However, post lock-down, audiences also appear to be more belligerent when they have their response policed by others.
Dr Sedgman says: “People are more likely now than they’ve ever been before to kick-off in response. I call it, ‘Don’t tell me what to do-itus’. There’s a sense of, ‘I’m sick of being told what to do with my body’.
“In terms of vaccines and mask wearing, we’ve seen that explode all over the social scene. But also, people feel like, ‘I’ve paid for this experience. I’m here to have fun. How dare you tell me I’m not allowed to have fun in my life?'”
Adele warns fans not to throw things. Pic: Screenshot from Mike Snedegar
So, what’s being done about it?
A survey by the Broadcasting Entertainment Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU) earlier this year found that nearly one-third of respondents said they had been involved in or witnessed an incident where a venue had to call the police.
The findings of “disturbing” and “unacceptable” behaviour were drawn from the responses of 1,500 members, who mainly worked in front of house, hospitality, box office, stage door, sound and lighting.
While some smaller venues – including those who rely on volunteers to staff their performances – publish expected codes of conduct when visiting, there is precious little information on how patrons attending larger venues around the UK to watch plays, gigs or films are expected to behave.
The Safer Theatres Charter
BECTU is currently working on a Safer Theatres Charter, calling on theatre management companies to set clear expectations on audience etiquette.
Venues are being asked to commit to five pledges, including a zero-tolerance policy on antisocial behaviour, risk assessments relating to safe alcohol consumption and announcements before shows and on tickets about expected behavioural standards.
It is also calling for theatre management companies to provide staff with necessary training and to ensure “adequate and safe staffing levels”.
Representatives for the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre told Sky News: “All our members take the safety of their staff, audiences, and performers very seriously.
“Incidents of poor behaviour are thankfully rare, but we want to ensure that the shared experience of theatre remains enjoyable for everyone. We continue to monitor reported incidents and work with members to develop toolkits that help venue management deal with a range of health and safety situations.”
Cardi B pictured before throwing her mic in Las Vegas. Pic: @j_blizzyy/TikTok
And what does the talent think?
Stars’ reaction to poor audience etiquette varies.
Renowned Broadway star Patti LuPone has previously stopped performances due to mobile phone use, at one point reportedly confiscating an audience member’s phone mid-performance and not returning it until after the show.
Meanwhile some singers have taken initiative, threatening the audience before they have the chance to misbehave. Adele, armed with a t-shirt cannon, warned her Vegas residency audience: “Stop throwing things at the artist“.
However, she has a more laid-back approach to other audience rule bending, reprimanding security guards for “bothering” an audience member who refused to sit down, telling them to “leave him alone,” because “he’s here to have fun”.
Not great for any fans sat in the rows behind, also there “to have fun,” but finding their view suddenly restricted by a young man wielding a selfie stick.
Cardi B took things to a whole different level, hurling her microphone at a fan in Las Vegas after having drink splashed over her on stage. Some might say it was an overreaction.
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Content is king
Dr Sedgman acknowledges this social media element to the issue, which she says often involves younger audience members, incentivised to create content.
“Part of this is the desire to go to an event and hold your phone up and create a video that you can share on social media or even do something rather cool to get noticed by your favourite celebrity and perhaps have that go into the public sphere too.”
Cue entire wheels of brie, the ashes of loved-ones, jewellery, phones and flowers thrown onto the stage in an attempt to quite literally connect with the celebrity performing on it.
And following the Barbenheimer phenomenon last month (the simultaneous release of tentpole movies Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day resulting in the clever marketing ploy which boosted ticket sales for both) social media was awash with examples of fights and disruption as the result of poor cinema etiquette, including taking photos and filming during the screenings.
It’s all about drawing lines
Dr Sedgman says as with most things, the solution to the problem is far from simple: “Within every aspect of social life, we need mechanisms for drawing lines between appropriate and inappropriate, acceptable and unacceptable, reasonable and unreasonable behaviour.
“But we also need to think really carefully and critically about who gets to draw those lines, who has the power to judge and shame other people when that’s a really good, a positive and pro-social thing to do because it’s discouraging antisocial forms of selfish individual narcissism, but also when that might be causing harm to certain people, particularly marginalised groups, in ways that we don’t necessarily even see.”
So, while agreed audience codes of conduct might not sound like a box office hit, the protection of performers, front of house staff, and fellow audience members is an essential ingredient in making sure everyone involved has a great night out.
In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.
It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.
Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.
Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What happened?
Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.
Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.
Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.
A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.
Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales
On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.
At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.
Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”
Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.
She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.
“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”
She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.
Police guard the entrance to the Hotel de Pourtalès the day after the robbery
Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.
She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.
Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”
According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.
After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.
Kardashian shows off her $4m ring on Instagram
What was stolen?
As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.
In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:
• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry
Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.
It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What will happen in court?
The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.
It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.
The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.
Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Who is being tried?
There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.
Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:
• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer
Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.
Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.
The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:
• Florus Heroui
• Gary Mader
• Christiane Glotin
• François Delaporte
• Marc Boyer
Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.
With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.
If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.
Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Will Kardashian give evidence?
Yes.
Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.
A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.
(R-L) Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner in the front row three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Why has it taken so long to come to court?
There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.
Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.
French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.
It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.
Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What has Kardashian said about the incident?
Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.
In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.
She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.
“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”
Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”
She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.
“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”
West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.
Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”
When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.
“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”
She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.
Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.
She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.
Entertainment
The Magic Circle’s first female member fooled them into believing she was a man – how did she do it?
How did one woman fool the most famous magic society on the planet?
Back in 1991, Sophie Lloyd pulled off the ultimate illusion, tricking the Magic Circle into thinking she was a man.
But over 30 years after being unceremoniously kicked out, the Circle has tracked down the former actress to apologise and reinstate her membership.
She told Sky News how returning feels like the society has “made good on something that was wrong”.
Sophie Lloyd, who tricked the Magic Circle into believing she was a man
How did she infiltrate that exclusive group that nowadays counts the likes of David Copperfield and Dynamo as members?
In March of that year, she took her entry exam posing as a teenage boy, creating an alter-ego called Raymond Lloyd.
“I’d played a boy before,” she explained, but “it took months of preparation” to secretly infiltrate the Circle’s ranks half a year before it would officially vote to let women in.
“Really, going back 30 years, men’s clubs were like, you know, just something you accepted.”
The men-only rule had been in place since the Circle was formed in 1905. The thinking behind it being that women just couldn’t keep secrets.
Aware of the frustration of female magicians at the time, Lloyd felt she was up for the challenge of proving women could be as good at magic as the men.
The idea was, in fact, born out of a double act, thought up by a successful magician called Jenny Winstanley who’d wanted to join herself but wasn’t allowed.
She recognised the hoax would probably only work with a much younger woman posing as a teenage boy, and met Lloyd through an acting class.
Sophie Lloyd as teenage magician Raymond Lloyd. Pic: Sophie Lloyd
Lloyd said: “We had to have a wig made… the main thing was my face, I had plumpers made on a brace to bring his jawline down.”
To hide her feminine hands, she did the magic in gloves, which she says “was so hard to do, especially sleight of hand.”
The biggest test came when she was invited for a drink with her examiner, where she had to fake having laryngitis.
“After the exam, which was 20 minutes, he invited Jenny and I – she played my manager – and I sat there for one hour and three quarters and had to say ‘sorry, I’ve got a bad voice’.”
Raymond Lloyd passed the test, and his membership certificate was sent through to Sophie.
Then, in October of the same year, when whispers started circulating that the society was going to open its membership to both sexes, she and Jenny decided to reveal all. It didn’t go down well.
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Rather than praise her performance, members were incandescent about the deception and, somewhat ironically, Raymond Lloyd was kicked out just before women members were let in.
Lloyd said: “We got a letter… Jenny was hurt… she was snubbed by people she actually knew, that was hurtful. However, things have really changed now…”
Three decades later the Magic Circle put out a nationwide appeal stating they wanted to apologise and Lloyd was recently tracked down in Spain.
While Jenny Winstanley died 20 years ago in a car crash, as well as Sophie receiving her certificate on Thursday, her mentor’s contribution to magic is being recognised at the special show that’s being held in both their honour at the Magic Circle.
Lloyd says: “Jenny was a wonderful, passionate person. She would have loved to be here. It’s for her really.”
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