THIS SHOULDN'T HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT! WE HAVE TO GET ORGANISED!

The Metro newspaper reports what is, by anyone's reckoning, a potentially brilliant idea:

Going down a storm

IT'S NOT OFTEN that a band brings the house down. But one group did just that at the weekend.

Minutes after rock group Cord took to the stage at a gig, the ceiling collapsed and fell in on them.

The concert, at the Cooperage, in Plymouth, had to be cancelled as piles of polystyrene tiles and foam insulation covered the group.

One unnamed fan said: 'They started playing and everything seemed fine. It happened in seconds.

All this stuff came down and the drummer was hit. People were amazed. You'd just never expect it to happen.'

Management at the Cooperage said a wire holding up a soundproofing inner roof had snapped, causing the ceiling to cave in.

'The ceiling is suspended throughout this particular room in the venue; it's extremely lightweight,' they said. Firefighters were called in as a precaution.

I don't think we can leave this in the hands of some kind of higher-power-with-impeccable-taste (you can't argue, it even went for the drummer). It ought to be compulsory that every venue in the country should install a collapsing ceiling right above the stage. I shall also require a universal key to power the mechanism of all of them, thankyou very much. Then we'll see which bands REALLY want it.

For the rest of the week you'll find me seeing what I can rig up on the first floor of The Victoria Inn. Mind you, I'm still waiting clearance to be helicoptered in under cover of darkness.