Ben's weekly round-up of what's happening in the arts world
It could be all change at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport when Gordon Brown takes over. Word is that both Tessa Jowell (pictured below) and the arts minister, David Lammy, may well go under the new regime, and that the broadcasting minister, Shaun Woodward, will definitely get the chop. Apparently Lammy's civil servants don't think he's up to the job, while Tainted Tessa is thought to have "had her day". As for Woodward, it seems Brown can't bear him. The favourite to take over from Jowell is the former DCMS minister and arch-Blairite James Purnell. And Chris Bryant could be asked to shake off his blue-Y-fronts website shame for an altogether different set of briefs as arts minister.
The 2012 Olympics may be eating all their funding, but it's not all doom and gloom for arts folk. Ofcom wants to set up a Public Service Publishing fund of roughly £100m to help arts organisations with new tedia - sorry, new media initiatives in the next three years. So we can expect more, and maybe even better, virtual tours of places such as the National Gallery and the Tate. Don't all log on at once.
What have children ever done to Michael Grade? The creator of Teletubbies and 1999 Businesswoman of the Year, Anne Wood, tells me that when he was at Channel 4 he banned children's TV from the network - and now he is gearing up for a blanket ban at ITV.
John Major has said he will probably soon write a novel to follow up his book about cricket. Sadly, he seems to have no plans to publish the poetry he wrote during his premiership - which was about political events of the day. What does rhyme with "ERM" or "not inconsiderably", I wonder?
bendowell@ btinternet.com
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