WELL DONE to Avenue Q for winning the inaugural TheatreRadio award for Best New Musical, as voted by internet radio listeners. It is vindication for Sir Cameron Mackintosh's innovative cyber-driven marketing strategy and cheap midweek ticket pricing structure which is aimed at young people who don't usually go to the West End.

When Avenue Q first opened in June, London critics were sniffy about the generation x puppet fest (Broadway was not impressed with Blighty's scribes). Theatreland was abuzz with rumours that  the Noel Coward theatre would soon be on the lookout for a new production. A rival producer told me that the show would be over by Christmas. When I asked them how they knew this, they replied that they had just bumped into two people involved with the production on Wardour Street and they were looking mighty glum. I was glad I never rushed this unscientific testimony into print. Avenue Q is booking until January 2008 and as well as taking advantage of new communication mediums is heavily reliant on an ancient one (word of mouth).

Apparently a recent midnight charity performance of Avenue Q went down a storm. Someone should have told Society of London Theatre's Michael Cregan about the special performance. He could have skulked outside the theatre releasing details about the Olivier Awards, something he likes doing around midnight. Plenty of people have been asking me about Cregan apropos my previous post. The fact that this incapable technocrat plies his trade in an industry brimming with razmatazz and flamboyance pushes irony to its extreme limits but then I suppose his job is limited to selecting the right brand of sparkling water for the Oliviers. Anyhow I digress.

Sir Cameron is an incredibly astute businessman wrapped inside the body of a precocious, performing arts-loving   teenager. I once asked him if he was at all sad that his musical Les Miserables was overtaking Cats, another Mackintosh production, to become the world's longest running musical. He replied: "When you have the three most successful musicals, you don't really mind what order they come in." Only he  could have made this sound endearing rather than smug. It's also fantastic that Mary Poppins, talked about for so long, has ended up packing playhouses in London and on Broadway.

Most astonishingly of all Les Miserables will soon be running in the West End for longer than the entire duration of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel.  Anyone who has read the Napoleonic  era tome will know just how impressive a feat this will be.