The green room is the lounge where performers, guests and presenters wait before going on stage or on air, usually furnished with a sofa, a mirror, a kettle and a fruit bowl nobody dares to touch.
Why green is a genuine mystery. The phrase already appears in Thomas Shadwell’s comedy A True Widow, first staged in London in 1678, and the theories have multiplied ever since: walls painted a calming colour to rest the eyes, green baize used in old theatres, a storeroom for the shrubbery used as scenery, even green in the sense of inexperienced, for understudies waiting for their big break. Word historians find none of them convincing, partly because the name spread across many theatres rather than starting with a single painted room. The London Symphony Orchestra has pointed out that the conductor’s green room at the Barbican is decorated in wood and red. In showbusiness, tradition always outranks the paint chart.