Culture

I have waited several years for this moment — in fact, ever since the late 1990s upsurge in interest in gardening began to fade, the press stopped talking about it as the new sex, and the jeunesse d’orée turned their fickle gaze elsewhere. Now, as partygoers shade their hungover eyes from the glare of financial reality, and householders look in horror at their sky-rocketing bills, the talk is all of letting the holiday home, missing out on the cruise, keeping the old car going for another year, and ...and ...even growing some vegetables. I am sorry that it has taken an economic downturn to turn some people back to the preoccupations of their parents, but you can see why this might give me a quiet satisfaction.

Tom Hollander’s first meeting with a theatrical agent didn’t turn out quite how he expected It was the late Eighties and it paid to be brash. But I wasn’t brash I was green. Just down from university and wearing a second-hand double-breasted suit I had a meeting with London’s Most Powerful Agent. On Wall Street, Gordon Gekko. In Soho, Michael Foster. A man whose legendary temper had caused him, telephone in hand, to break his own finger while dialling. The extent of his rages were matched only by the size of the deals he got for his actors — deals rumoured to be so huge that other actors binge-drank at the thought of them.

Things that make you despair: young journalists who have never read Scoop. In a better world that would be a sacking offence. Clive publishes a reminder of the novel's glories as part of his excellent Notebook feature: "Come to think of it," he added moodily, "there's no point in answering anyway. Look at mine." CABLE  FULLIER  OFTENER  PROMPTLIER  STOP  YOUR  SERVICE   BADLY  BEATEN  ALROUND   LACKING   HUMAN  INTEREST  COLOUR  DRAMA PERSONALITY  HUMOUR  INFORMATION  ROMANCE  VITALITY "Can't say that's not frank, can you?" said Corker. "God rot 'em." Well, yes, exactly.

James MacMillan explains why he hates the assumption that he is a liberal left-winger In my travels I see myself frequently described in foreign media as a ‘left-wing and Scottish nationalist’ composer. The latter label is ludicrous, and I just put it down to a foreigner’s ignorance and justifiable disinterest in the parish-pump tedium of devolved Scotland. It doesn’t bother me too much. The first, however, disturbs me much more. I used to be on the Left — I joined the Young Communist League in 1974, when I was just 14. Part of the motivation behind this was no doubt to annoy my devoutly Catholic relatives, who were all Labour supporters, but anxious, to the point of distraction, about insiduous Marxist manoeuvrings in the unions and in the workplace.

A Decade of Discovery Esoterick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, London, N1, until 6 April This year, as the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art celebrates its tenth anniversary, garlanded with plaudits for the loan exhibitions it has mounted, it is time to focus once again on its greatest asset: its permanent collection. This new display, occupying all six galleries, shows the collection to fine advantage, enabling a group of works by Massimo Campigli to be viewed for the first time, along with a couple of new acquisitions, and further enhanced by works loaned from British and Italian collections, mostly private individuals whose generosity must be applauded. The exhibition starts on the ground floor with a room of the Estorick’s big names — the Futurists.

Switch off your radios: I shall be on BBC Radio 4's PM programme at around 5.45pm talking about, of all things, state-sponsored Gaelic TV. It may not surprise readers that I consider this a perfectly senseless boondoggle. by the standards of government waste it is, for sure, trivial and harmless stuff. To the extent that it perpetuates the nonsense that we should all be speaking Gaelic and have bilingual signs all over Scotland it's further evidence that the national capacity for self-delusion and fatheaded history endures. You can listen online here.

‘Mr Hallé’s Band’ began giving concerts 150 years ago. Michael Kennedy on the great orchestra On the wet evening of 30 January 1858 in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, which had been opened only two years previously, the 38-year-old Charles Hallé launched his privately funded series of orchestral concerts. On the same date next week, 150 years later, the orchestra still bearing its founder’s name will celebrate the anniversary with a programme introduced by Dame Janet Baker. In a century and a half it has had only ten chief conductors. The tenth, Mark Elder, will be on the rostrum. Carl Halle, as he was born, with no acute accent, was German and trained as a pianist although he conducted several operas in his home town of Hagen when he was 11.