The Gaiety Lane is a gauntlet to the stage-door, an experience of Dublin in the Rare Auld Times. Last night, as I made my way to the stage door, it was as it always is: putrid. Here is a place where the celtic tiger hasn't stopped for a piddle, but everyone else has. You know you've made it in the business when the prostrate and wet wino greets you by your first name as you drop a euro into his freshly emptied paper cup.

In the old days the winding backstage corridors brought you past the Green Room, the strength of the stale smell an indication of how successful last night's Art-termites were at changing the world, swearing undying love and obtaining the phone number of the guy giving out the next gig.

Next a humble genuflection at dressing room one, home of the current diva du jour, then the descent into the underworld, the lair of the pit musician. For 20 years now one would swear the same aluminium tray of rat-poison on the last step has been waiting like an old friend. The orchestra pit is a maelstrom of swirling music and occasional madness, a sauna and icebox depending on where you sit and what time of year it is, inside always at variance with outside. For one hot summer season performance a viola player in the orchestra brought in a small battery-operated fan to cool him during the performance. The jealousy of his colleagues quickly changed to uncontrollable laughter when he accidentally kicked the fan during a quiet atmospheric bit in the music, sending it scuttling along the floor, landing under the nose of the conductor. The culprit's name was Tommy; he instantly became "Fan-Tom of the Opera".

During another season's performance of an Offenbach opera, the musicians were highly amused to see the soloist get her dress caught on a nail in the set.

She became "Orpheus in her Underpants" as shesang her entire aria undaunted. A Tosca has to jump to her death over battlements at the end of the opera of the same name.

One landed on the director's bulldog who wandered backstage for somewhere comfortable to sleep and found Tosca's mattress. She may be still being chased by the same dog.

An eternal favourite story concerns a little fur-coated old lady arriving late in the dress box, the big one directly over the orchestra pit. She placed her doublelayered box of chocolates on the ledge in front of her.

As it was too hot she removed her coat and placed it on the back of her seat. A further 10 minutes into the performance and she realised her sweets had disappeared. Peering over the edge she could barely make out the mischievous grins on the faces of the ladies of the violin section. By the time her husband had remonstrated with the house manager and sent him backstage at the interval, he returned to the seats with only two hazelnut whirls and a coffee creme with a bite taken out of it. A white-collar bow-tied crime or reward for slaving over thousands of quavers and semiquavers?

What stories await us this year? Curtain up.