He loathes himself, he judges himself, he finds himself in constant conflicts, real or imaginary, with colleagues and pupils.The second school offers the same daily back-stabbery, confrontation, sense and insensibility. Humbard's is a doddle after Tower Hamlets, as Gilbert admits. What is wonderful about his account - offered to us in short bursts of anecdote - is its honesty about how success goes to his head. In no time, surviving on savvy and hard work, he is suckered into going for promotion, and the need to speak the language of action planning and SMART targets. "I've missed dancing with him!"The couple came to Britain from Estonia in 1990 as newlyweds.
They met as students at the Estonian State Ballet School, and Oaks also studied at the Bolshoi Ballet School, receiving what she describes as "proper classical Russian training". By the time she was 19, Oaks was dancing the principal roles with the Estonian Opera Ballet.This European premiere of the Kenneth MacMillan version of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty was originally created for American Ballet Theatre. The set, by Peter Farmer, is lavish, and almost all of ENB's 64 dancers will appear. "For a ballerina, Sleeping Beauty is one of the hardest ballets, because it is pure classical steps," says Oaks. "If you can do this, you can do anything."Does she get sick of classical roles? " I would still like to do a more creative role, such as MacMillan's Manon But I don't dream. If it happens, it is a bonus."Tomorrow to 21 January (020-7581 1245; www.ballet .uk). Whatever skeletons are uncovered in the first-ever staged version of Steptoe and Son, co-writer Ray Galton doesn't think that the new play will feature Hercules, the rag-and-bone men's horse.
"The National Trust has, in the story, lovingly preserved the Steptoes' decrepit house and stable, but not Hercules Sadly, he really doesn't figure here," he says. When Steptoe and Son finally bowed out in 1974, after 55 television episodes and two Christmas specials, the original concept of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, among Britain's most successful comedy writing partnerships, had come a long way. The father-and-son firm of totters was first featured in 1962 on the BBC's "Comedy Playhouse" in a one-off show called The Offer. Its potential was quickly spotted and, under the name Steptoe and Son it became - thanks to the peerless performances of the late Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett - one of comedy's greatest hits. Now, after an absence of 30 years, the characters are about to be reborn on stage in Murder at Oil Drum Lane with new dialogue by Galton, partnered this time by the playwright John Antrobus. Here again are the leering, mittened "dirty old man" Albert and his son, Harold, whose dream of being sophisticated in the swinging Sixties was constantly shattered by his cunning, dependent dad. Had the pair been niggling away at each other in Galton's head since the 1970s?"No, but from time to time I would wonder what they'd be doing now that we weren't writing the programme," confesses Galton.
