From here, go east down Union Street, and you'll find the miniature Union Theatre with its café in a railway arch - very Fringe both physically and in its staging of new plays - then the new Jerwood Space (much used for rehearsals by the Young Vic among many others) in its cool-modern converted school premises by architects Paxton Locher. A little further on, and you're at another pocket theatre, the critically acclaimed Southwark Playhouse, tucked away in a Victorian warehouse at the end of a narrow alleyway and providing an award-winning mix of classics and new writing.

To get back to the mainstream, go down to the river and there's Shakespeare's Globe, riding high under the direction of Mark Rylance. Carry on east from Borough Market down Tooley Street past the unbelievably popular London Dungeon (today's thrill-a-minute equivalent of the bear-baiting and cockfighting of earlier times), and you finish up at the site of the new Unicorn children's theatre by Keith Williams, where building work is about to start. Return along the riverside towards the National, and you might well find queues outside the London Studios, part of the ITV empire. That's because it is a centre of live television shows such as Graham Norton, Blind Date, Ant and Dec, and Have I Got News for You. The London Studios seat 1330 people at performances. That's popular theatre, new vaudeville.