Forget Prozac, buy yourself some tickets to the London revival of Singin' in the Rain

I discovered the prescription to instant happiness in spring of 1984.

It wasn't drugs, alcohol or conspicuous consumption. Thankfully, it was a lot cheaper than all of those. It was simply watching a musical.

I was suffering from some crushing romantic blow at university ... now long forgotten ... when my pledge daughter, Kathy Tilden, offered the answer. (Pledge daughters being pre-initiates in a sorority who choose you as their older mentor in the house, and who usually become especially dear friends for life.) It was a Saturday night and we were both without plans. We claimed the sitting room and its big TV, ordered a pizza, and Kathy slipped her copy of Singin' in the Rain into the VCR.

I had, of course, seen clips of the best bits. Like most little girls in the '70s I'd devoured the That's Entertainment film franchise, which included the iconic title number with Gene Kelly stomping in puddles, Donald O'Connor's romp through Make 'em Laugh, and the trio (adding Debbie Reynolds) dancing around the world and over a couch, in Good Morning. The complete film turned out to be two hours of pure happiness, and in all the years since, I've known that if I wanted a jolt of joy, I only needed to watch it again.

Imagine my anticipation, and speed to box office, when the Chichester Festival's highly acclaimed production transferred to the West End's Palace Theatre. Last night was the big outing, shared with London Northwestern sisters, Hillary and Lisa.

Don't assume, just because I'm a rabid fan of the film, that I'd be an automatic advocate of the stage show. I went in with critical expectations, and a deep fear they'd muck with perfection. Nope. I had a smile on my face from the first strains of the overture to the curtain call and, despite the cramped legroom of our discounted front-row balcony seats, could have taken a short break and watched the whole thing again, immediately.

They've done a great job copying the film onto the stage. Clever adaptation gets around the challenges of the too-complicated-for-stage scenes like the flashbacks during Don Lockwood's opening "dignity" speech, Don's spring over a moving trolley car and into plucky heroine Kathy Seldon's convertible, or the lavish montage of early movie musicals. A screen built into the stage offers us views of the films we're watching our characters make, and is instrumental in the final scene. The book is, for the most part, a line-for-line pick up of the film.

The casting is excellent, given the challenge of meeting the original. Adam Cooper as Don Lockwood was a risk, given that he didn't come from a musical theatre background. A former Royal Ballet principal, he is as strong as you'd expect on the dancing and shares Kelly's long, lean, dark good looks. Surprisingly, he can sing, too; a pleasant if not memorable West End tenor. His acting lacks Kelly's charisma and the chemistry between Cooper and his Kathy Seldon couldn't match the original. Cooper's Don Lockwood was a bit too smug, never evoking the fundamently-nice-guy-with-insecurities that Kelly brought to the part. (The Kelly-Reynolds charisma is a testament to great acting, BTW; evidently the 40-year-old, ruthlessly professional Kelly scared the hell out of the 19-year-old Reynolds and once criticised her so severely she retreated beneath a piano for a good cry.)

Scarlett Strallen doesn't quite nail Reynolds' magnificently innocent, chipper and strong American girl, seeming a bit too old and mature. But her singing and acting are fantastic enough for you to fall for her charms quickly. Daniel Crossley's Cosmo Brown is probably closest to the original, providing solid laughs throughout, mixed with dynamic singing and dance.

Accents can often be the toughest challenge when iconic American musicals come to the London stage. This British cast did a nice job, slipping only occasionally. And if Katherine Kingsley's Lena Lamont went a bit too far into cartoon caricature Bronx-speak, it works with the role.

There are a couple of extra songs, presumably to round up the running time of what was quite a short film. The first has Don professing his attraction to Kathy on first meeting, a bit of song and dance to replace the chase/trolley/car scene that didn't translate to stage. The second was a whole added scene that has us watching Lena go through a bit of self doubt as she wonders why people don't rate her. I could have done without this. We don't need character depth; the show works better without giving us empathy for our villainess.

A great improvement to the film, however, was the Broadway Melody sequence. This 12-minute insert to the original film, where the boys imagine a modern dance number for the film they're making, allowed Kelly showed off more sophisticated dance move with Cyd Charisse. (At the time, Reynolds had no dance experience.) It's a gorgeous number, standing admirably on its own as a mini-musical, but it stopped the film's plot trajectory cold. The director wisely keeps it in the stage show to make the most of the music and dance potential, but trims it down.

Another brilliant addition is the whole cast joining a final reprise of Singin' in the Rain as those water jets come back on, dumping more of the 12,000 litres a night of water onto the stage. A good quantity getting splashed into the first few rows. Every musical must end with a big dance number, of course. This one achieves its intent, sending the occupants of those 1,200 sold out seats tap dancing and singing (badly) down Charing Cross road as they spill out of the theatre.

Sixty years after its film debut, Singin' in the Rain is still injecting pure joy into all those who see it. Perhaps, rather than all their other schemes, the government should just send everyone in Britain to see this. The ensuing bolt of optimism might bump us right out of recession.

How high is your TQ? A critical question, if we're to be neighbours

It was a momentous day. We started house hunting.

Well, not houses, really. Villages. We've been window shopping houses online for ages, but as we all know, it's about location, location, location. We're about to sink our roots (and our life savings), for the next 20 or 30 years. We need to take this seriously. So we climbed in the car, put the top down (it was a spectacular, warm and sunny day), and started meandering through likely areas while developing our shopping list for the perfect village.

Our starting point is simple. No more than 15-20 minutes (five to ten miles) from commuter-friendly Basingstoke train station, but in a rural, village setting. When contemplating Basingstoke's modern offices, big ring road and the American-style mall that dominates the town centre, you'd think this a tough mission. But one of the glories of the area is that town fades to country so quickly. There's a solid handful of proper villages around the outskirts that fit our criteria.

And what, you ask, are those? Let's start with the basics. A good village should have a generous margin of farm fields and woodland around it, ideally cut through with well-marked paths for picturesque dog walking. We'll have to do our research to make sure that none of the thousands of new homes planned for Basingstoke in the next few years cut into the village greenbelt. We award bonus points if a local farm offers views of cows, pigs and sheep from the road; double points if they run a shop that lets us buy the meat when it comes time for the picturesque animals to fulfil their destiny. Deduct points if the farmyard smells overpower the village air. (Although some are perfectly acceptable. It is the country, after all.)

We need a good pub, ideally in the centre of the village but at the minimum within walking distance. It should be filled with locals, allow dogs and be a charming place to grab a pint. Ideally, it's a respectable gastropub, has some exposed beams and working fires, a chatty landlord and an attractive garden, and bans children. (OK, we know the last isn't a viable option, but we can dream.) Points off if any male patrons sport large tattoos, skinhead haircuts

or earrings. Big bonuses for men in tweed accompanied by sporting dogs, especially if carrying any bird or rabbit they've

just shot.

The local church should be Georgian at the youngest, and hopefully have some medieval elements. We're hoping for some high church gravitas, a good choir and a charming, intellectually robust vicar like our own Father David (of St. Mary's Bourne Street, who married us). We would hate a happy-clappy evangelical type and modern lack of ceremony, but in this secular age we'll be content with anything that still performs services, occasionally rings its bells and has an active community.

A village shop would be great, but is unlikely without getting into places big enough to lose their charm. All this should be scattered around a village green which, this being Hampshire, is probably a smallish patch enlivened by a dock pond. The ducks, of course, should have a cute little house perched upon a tiny islet in the pond's centre. Quite possibly paid for by some disgraced MP's fiddled expense account.

Architectural variety is critical. It's not about one house. The whole village needs to look good. That means a variety of styles, from that (hopefully) ancient church to Georgian houses to some half timbering and a smattering of Victoriana. By my third village I'd created the Thatch Quotient, or TQ. This is the proportion of charming, thatched cottages to the rest of the houses in the village. Thatched roofs, once the humble material of peasants and yeoman farmers, are now both trendy and expensive. They also look great. So any village with a high TQ heads to the top of the list.

Modern architecture isn't banned. In fact, we wouldn't mind the conveniences of new construction in a Jane Austen-style setting. As long as the design is sensitive, fits into its surroundings and has a decent garden. The maintenance costs on my current 200-year-old cottage have sold me on that!

Too many semi-detached houses, especially of the boxy and cheap variety, are a bad sign. Terraces (row houses in American) are a red flag. Unless they're gingerbread-cute, originally built by the local lord of the manor to house his estate staff, or Tudor alms houses, which both add historic and architectural bonus points.

And speaking of the lord of the manor, the perfect village has his house ... if not him. Ideally there's a grand pile sitting near the church behind some stately walls and an impressive gate, gracing the horizon with a cluster of towers or an interesting roof line. Not a rambling stately home, but something that might go for £5 million or so in Country Life, and that's now home to some captain of industry or retired rock star. Although Piers is hoping for retired organised crime boss, thinking that would do wonders for the village's security. Whatever his profession, he and his lady should be genial, involved in village affairs and regulars at the local.

Beneath all the old world charm, there are some important modern factors to consider. Decent mobile phone reception. High speed broadband ... if not available now, on the planned roll out in the next couple years. We'll check with our friend on the county police force about crime statistics. Local schools mean little to us, but we'll consider them for resale value.

And that's the fruit of our first day's exploration. Can any village meet these lofty standards? You'd be surprised.

Old Basing has managed to retain a village feel while being surrounded by the new town that took its name. Medium TQ but a lovely church, a good architectural mix and is just 3.5 miles to the station. Mapledurwell has sky-high TQ, a magnificent local gastropub and feels like it's deep in the countryside, despite being just half a mile off the A30. Dummer, just a stone's throw from our current place, also has high TQ plus excellent pub and impressive manor house (Victorian-era Jacobean revival, I'd guess.) North Waltham's TQ is medium, but gets a boost from its village shop and working farm and shop on its outskirts, though the pub is a bit of a hike.

Looks like these four are at the top of our shopping list. And if you think our village requirements are picky ... wait until you see the criteria for the house.

First Newlyn's course yields fabulous squid recipe, shared below

I don't remember the online dating profile asking about food, but it must have. Because our shared delight in cooking, restaurants, great ingredients and MasterChef (and just about any other cooking show on TV) has to rank near the top of that 98% of things we shared. Certainly, from our own kitchen to humble pubs to those Michelin-starred forays to describing the best in this blog, it's a major part of the life we now share.

Thus it was no surprise to our friends when Newlyn's Farm Shop showed up on our wedding gift registry. This fabulous place, just 15 minutes up the motorway from our house, has the best butcher in the area. Not just great meat and game, but helpful butchers who will cut whatever you need, advise you on its cooking, and throw in free bones for the dog. There are local cheeses, home made terrines and pâtés, specialist flours (a boon for our bread machine), a tempting array of gourmet goodies and produce worthy of a photo shoot. See www.newlyns-farmshop.co.uk

To add to the joy, there's a cooking school. A school which earned a big chunk of our wedding vouchers as Piers and I signed up for two classes together: "Fabulous Fish" yesterday, and "Butcher it, Cook it, Carve it" on the 24th.

Cooking schools are big business in the UK, and they're not cheap. Full day courses on the high end are often in the £250 range, so £130 for Newlyn's 5-hour Saturday classes is reasonable ...

as these things go. Still, it's a big expenditure, and you want some pow for your pound.

I'm delighted to say we got it. Head chef Hannah runs all the courses. She has a great personality and a broad base of expertise, answering any question you come up with and diving in to demonstrate anything needed. Two assistants whisk away dishes as you dirty them and all of your ingredients are set out in advance, leaving you to concentrate on the prep and the cooking. We got detailed instruction on filleting both round and flat fish, and got to practice on the latter. (I massacred my sole, but at least now I have the knowledge to practice.)

Like most cooking classes, this one featured sitting down with your classmates to eat what you'd prepared. Unlike others, you also prepped two more meals to take home with you, making this particularly good value for money. Hannah demonstrated two dishes and we prepared four. In addition to that valuable filleting instruction, we learned how to clean and score a squid (top tip: hold knife almost flat against the fish and cut at the slightest of angles), made our own aioli and tartar sauce, discovered the perfect shape to cut paper for en papillote cooking (a heart), learned how to got tips on crisping skin and spent a lot of time talking about how not to over cook fish.

The best recipe of the day, by far, was the chermoula (a north African spice mix) squid with tomato salsa. This was one of the take-away dishes. We took it to a dinner party after class, to much acclaim. Here's the recipe. It serves two as a main course, four as a starter.

For the chermoula:

2 cloves crushed garlic

1 juiced lemon

1 bunch flat leaved parsley

1 bunch coriander

sea salt, to season

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp tumeric powder

2 tbs olive oil

Ingredients for the salsa:

2 tomatoes, de-seeded and chopped into a small dice

1 clove crushed garlic

3 tbs lemon olive oil

1 tbs white wine vinegar

1 tsp sugar

salt & pepper

1 large, 2 medium or 4 small squid

To prepare:

1. Make the chermoula by whizzing all the ingredients together in a food processor, leave to one side.

2. Make the tomato salsa by mixing all the ingredients and seasoning well, adding sugar if needed.

3. Leave at room temperature

4. Prepare the squid by laying the body flat, scoring and cutting into strips. Use or discard the tentacles as you wish. Then rub the marinade into the flesh. Leave to marinade for at least half an hour, but no longer than two.

5. Heat oil in pan until very hot, then add squid and fry for just ONE minute.

6. Serve with salsa