Kieran Fagan: Practical jokes can be risky - not least when they are played on a heaving, howling audience of 3,000 teenagers.
The scene was Dublin's Theatre Royal, the years was 1961, and the vandals who were to come in and demolish the place to erect the excrescence which is now the Hawkins House office block were sharpening their pencils.
But for now it was still a theatre, and Terry Nelhams was in town. A good-looking young fellow from West London, with an unusual catch in his voice, he had become Adam Faith, pop idol, with the help of a lot of clever strings arrangement by John Barry.
He was top of the bill at the Theatre Royal, so before he came on there were supporting acts. My recollection is that we, the audience, gave them very short shrift. Adam Faith was the reason we were there and if we couldn't have him we didn't want the house band, the jugglers or even the dancing girls, the Royalettes (though I think by then they had hung up their fishnet stockings).
Another teenager who was there, but on stage, remembers an unfortunate comedian whose act was disrupted by Adam Faith poking his head out from the wings. "There was a different gag each night," Dec Cluskey said last week. "It was madness." The Cluskey brothers from Inchicore, Dec and Con, O'Connells Schools boys who performed then as the Harmonichords, were among the supporting acts. They later had international success as the Bachelors.
Eventually the chants of "We want Adam" - as well as the banging of seats, pouring of sticky soft drinks (minerals in those days) from dress circle to parterre, grand circle to dress circle and from the gods down on top of all and sundry, persuaded the theatre manager to bring the supporting programme to an abrupt halt. The stage curtain closed and we were warned by public address to settle down, and in a way we did. After all, the waiting was nearly over.
The theatre lights went dim. The curtain opened slowly. A pencil-slim spotlight picked out a young man with neat fair hair, dark glasses and a blue suit seated on a stool centre stage. The place erupted. "Adam, Adam, Adam," we shouted.
But something was wrong. He put up his hand. He took off his glasses. It wasn't - how could this be? - it wasn't Adam Faith. The shouts died in our mouths. I can remember the blanket of hush which enveloped the theatre, more shocking than the noise that preceded it. And there was a menace behind it, like a big breaker heading for the shore after a sequence of smaller waves.
The impostor leaned forward and spoke into that withering silence. "You didn't know me from Adam," he said, and ran off the stage.
Then the real Adam Faith came bouncing on, singing "What do you want if you don't want money? . . ."
It was OK then, but it had been a close call. The demolition that was come a year later could have started that night. Today the Department of Health has its headquarters where the finest theatre in Ireland, and also a small cinema, once stood.
The Theatre Royal, remodelled by Leslie Norton from Frank Matcham's original design, is irreplaceable. Look at Belfast's lovely Opera House and think big, big, bigger - so big that we don't have a photograph that does it justice - and you begin to get the idea.
The Cluskey brothers, with John Stokes, soon put aside the harmonicas to concentrate on vocals. The boys from Tyrconnell Park, Inchicore, had been first discovered by Eamonn Andrews's producer, Fred O'Donovan for a Radio Eireann programme called Odd Noises which some readers will remember. A little over a year after supporting Adam Faith, they released Charmaine, which stayed in the best-selling charts for 52 weeks.
More big hits - including Diane and I Believe - followed for what was surely the first Irish boy band. They notched up 18 chart singles, two number ones and recently released their 61st album. Most of those sales were made when Top 20 records actually sold in millions, unlike today.
Forty years later, Dec Cluskey is still in the music business. He still performs; he also advises and produces new pop talent, and invites those interested
to visit his website, www.makehits.co.uk.
But for many of the youngsters who flocked to the Theatre Royal on that night in 1961 it really did begin with Adam Faith.
Later we'd discover that he was perhaps only a pale, Anglicised version of Buddy Holly, who was already dead by then. But none of that mattered to us, only the wonder of so many of together, in a world that we could sense was changing.
The Sixties were beginning and we had no idea where they would take us, but hanging on every word of What do you Want? and Poor Me, and thrilling to the plangent strings of John Barry, gave us the taste of something new and exciting to come.