Parents all over the place will spend uncomfortable hours sitting in over or under-heated schools coming up to Christmas while their little cherubs do their take on the Christmas story. Children everywhere will be putting tea towels on their heads, calling themselves Mary, Joseph or one of the Wise men, and parents will sit wearing idiotic smiles as they pretend to be enjoying themselves.

Even more theatrical was the programme broadcast last night on SKY TV, where a man with Motor Neuron disease went through the theatricality of a real life assisted suicide in a Swiss clinic. More fixed expressions I’m sure.

But what about that piece of theatre that went down last week on stage in Vienna? The audience certainly didn’t see that one coming – or maybe someone in the auditorium did.

Daniel Hoevels, a 30 year old Austrian actor, grabbed a fake knife on cue to feign suicide by slicing through his jugular. The only flaw in the acting was that he grabbed a real knife and ended up slumped on the stage with blood spurting from the wound he had unwittingly inflicted upon himself.

It took a while for the audience to realise that the blood was real. A doctor was called, then an ambulance, and poor Daniel was carted off to hospital. He survives, but it could have been much worse if the wound had been deeper or a little to the left.

But who swapped the knives?

A rival, maybe an understudy who wanted a shot at going on?

Maybe he did it himself, wanting to take attention away from the real suicide that was to be televised just south of the border in Switzerland.

Who knows?

The play Hoevels was acting in was one of Schiller’s and perhaps it’s a wonder that many another actor or spectator hasn’t tried that little stunt before – dreary old stuff about Mary Queen of Scots. The “suicide” was enacted so effectively that there was a burst of spontaneous applause from the audience who now must feel terrible, or perhaps duped!

The Austrian Police force in now investigating and the papers report that they have not ruled out foul play! The knife had been recently bought from a local shop and still carried its price tag.

Not to be upstaged by some anonymous prankster, Mr Hoevels took to the boards the very next night, his neck suitably, and most theatrically, wrapped in a bandage. No doubt he inspected the knife more carefully next time.