News reaches me today that the Custard Factory theatre is going to be renamed The VAAD Theatre, taking the same name as the gallery on the other side of the lake, as part of a move to get some proper co-ordinated programming of events in there. Which is good, but what the hell does VAAD mean anyway?

Wikipedia tells us that a vaad is “a Hebrew term for a council of rabbis” but a little bird tells me the name is taken from 60’s gay slang. Strangely it didn’t come up in any searches but Hugh Young’s Lexicon of Polari has “varda” which other Polari guides also spell “vada” and which means to see or look. That makes sense for a gallery and theatre. Except we’re spelling it “vaad”. I guess the rest of the world is wrong then.