Let me be clear. When I purchase a hospitality package at the Utilita Arena Birmingham, I expect to watch Peter Kay uninterrupted by the whims of West Midlands Police. The recent evacuation over a 19-year-old's bomb hoax represents a complete collapse of our national resilience.
I was just telling the chief executive of a major Midlands property firm over lunch that the modern public has lost its nerve. Last Friday evening, halfway through a perfectly robust performance by Mr. Kay, the authorities saw fit to clear the entire Utilita Arena simply because someone reported a potentially suspicious bag. In my day, we simply cordoned off the suspect rucksack with a velvet rope and let the comedian finish his set. Instead, thousands of paying customers were thrust out into the Birmingham night, fundamentally disrespecting the economic engine of the stadium touring circuit.
We must ask ourselves who the real victims are. It is certainly not the 19-year-old man currently in police custody, nor the emergency services deployed for the sweep. The true casualties are those of us who were denied the final hour of our premium seating experience.
It costs upwards of fifty thousand pounds a minute to keep an arena operating, and frankly, the theoretical risk of high explosives must be weighed against our sacred duty to deliver observational comedy to the corporate boxes.
If we allow every unsubstantiated bomb threat to halt our cultural institutions, the bored local teenagers have already won. I, for one, will not let them dictate when I am allowed to comfortably consume arena-scale light entertainment.