Chitty gets back on the road

Just two loose wires under the bonnet of West End supercar Chitty Chitty Bang Bang forced the show to be cancelled, it has emerged. Wires now safely reconnected, yesterday's performances went ahead as planned.

Thousands of theatregoers were left disappointed on Wednesday night as technical engineers struggled to find out what had left Chitty - normally able to fly and float as well as drive - immobile.

As he showed off the fixed car, co-producer Michael Rose said. "We re-installed some new parts into the hydraulic system. When we found the computers that normally control its actions could not make any contact, we immediately thought it was the new parts to blame - but they weren't. So we had to check all of the wiring to see if the problem was there and eventually we discovered two connections had been slightly dislodged."

However, with miles of wiring and circuitry linking Chitty, and the hydraulics which control her, to computers below the stage, the exact position of the offending wires was not identified until midnight. Mr Rose said: "It was a terrible scenario to have so many disappointed outside the theatre. We had to take time to find out what was wrong."

Michael Ball, who plays Caractacus Potts, said: "Everyone was in costume, make-up on, waiting - but we knew she had a problem.''