A song and dance about murder

We like death and destruction - we all do. Sure, not the real thing, when real people get killed by real killers, leaving behind real mourners. But on screen or on stage, it sure makes for a good, grisly story. Oh yes, we make quite a song and dance about murder. Literally. Take Sweeney Todd - Stephen Sondheim's musical about the demon barber of Fleet Street. Imagining the flavour their pies will take on when filled with the meat of their victims, Sweeney and Mrs Lovett sing about the taste that comes with different professions: "It's fop./In the shop./ And we have some shepherd's pie peppered/With actual shepherd/On top./ And I've just begun./Here's a politician - so oily/It's served with a doily./Have one." The real demon barber of Fleet Street was operating in the late 18th and early 19th century. Two hundred years later, the genteel crowds at the Royal Opera House delight in the murderous lyrics and applaud Sweeney's antics.

So how long before we have a musical version of the life of Harold Shipman, Britain's most prolific serial killer? Is a lyricist even now looking for rhymes to go with Shipman and Hyde (hitman and formaldehyde, perhaps)? Are young actors boning up on the details of his victims so that they can do for him what other members of their profession do for Jack the Ripper in the walks round London's East End so popular with tourists?

I suspect a decent amount of time has to elapse before mass killers become entertainment. The last serial killer to be added to the collection at the Madame Tussauds exhibition (if you don't count Saddam Hussein, added in 1993) was Dennis Nilsen, who, convicted of murder in 1983, went on display in 1984. I wonder what the families and friends of Nilsen's victims thought of that? But even Madame Tussauds is adamant that it won't have Shipman. This is partly because the trend is towards interactive displays, with visitors allowed, for example, to try out their singing in front of a model of the Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell.

But sooner or later, I have no doubt that opera audiences will be able to enjoy the story of Harold Shipman, the demon doctor of Hyde, and applaud as it climaxes, which all good operas do, with a suicide.