But Miss Marple is sitting in the audience

To my way of thinking, outdoor cinema with its drive-in audience has a USA culture running straight through it. Teenagers, dodgy films, late night passion and shabby shadiness. (Where do I get that from? I don't know, must be the movies.)

But as an idea, outdoor cinema is brilliant, isn't it? Egalitarian, accessible, social. So I love how the English have adopted it, left the American behind, and moulded it for their own.

Here in Milton Keynes, centre of England, as far from the sea as you can get, families and friends unfold their deckchairs, shake out their tartan picnic blankets, wrap warm rugs around their knees, open up a selection of bottles and flasks from beer to cocoa, and prepare their umbrellas.

But of course we don't drop everything American. Not at all. This weekend we're watching E.T., Back to the Future, and South Pacific.