Our weekly round-up of the arts world
A corduroy revolution stirs among the veteran comedians manning Radio 4's cracking panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Humphrey Lyttelton, Barry Cryer, Tim Brooke-Taylor et al want to take the show on a lucrative live theatre tour around the country - but the BBC won't let them use the name. "We're thinking of possible alternatives," a panellist tells me. "I'm Sorry the BBC Hasn't a Clue is definitely one. They are being so bloody stingy about this and it may scupper the whole thing for us."
At the Critics Circle drama awards, Trevor Nunn collected the Best Play gong for Rock'n'Roll on behalf of Tom Stoppard, and imagined the writer saying "the risible rock'n'roll references proved risibly intractable". Stoppard has a speech impediment, you see. Nunn, on the other hand, has a cheek.
At the same do, the hot new playwright (and poet Craig's daughter) Nina Raine revealed that Rabbit, her sparky drama about a PR girl's 29th birthday, is destined for Broadway. In other news, the impresario Nica Burns tells me she may succeed in tempting Kathleen Turner back to the West End after her triumphant Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? last year.
The Theatre Museum says it needs £600,000 a year to stay open (which in a better world would be a snip, for an industry that takes receipts of £400m each year). I'm told one commercially minded plan is to make the venue London's "Theatreland HQ", selling tickets and merchandise on a floor below.
After Mohamed Al Fayed and Tourette's syndrome, the subject (target?) of Keith Allen's next television documentary will apparently be . . . Gary Glitter (pictured left). Rather writes itself, doesn't it?
bendowell@btinternet.com
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