• Over lunch, Tessa Jowell and I had a friendly spat about her government wasting zillions on the Olympics while it’s set to squeeze arts funding. Britain excels at the arts, while our current standing in sport, notably cricket, football, rugby and athletics, where cash now sloshes around, is abysmal. Naturally, Jowell defended the money for the games. But here’s the killer. The arts sector, which includes everything from live theatre and music to heritage, has been told to plan for annual financial cuts of 7% from 2008. The culture department does not deny these figures. And this is before even more money has been diverted from the arts and heritage lotteries to the London Olympics — where, if we’re lucky, we might just win a bronze medal in archery or cycling.
  
• London’s Theatre Museum closes in January. But there could be an unlikely saviour, as Blackpool council is in talks with the museum’s owner, the V&A.

Why Blackpool? Well, the explanation is that it has a history of entertainment, with its Glden Mile, pleasure beach, tower and several theatres, so the theatrical displays and costumes from the Theatre Museum would add to the town’s gaiety.

Hmm. Call me a cynic, but could Blackpool actually be showing enthusiasm about the Theatre Museum because it would play well with the Labour government in the town’s bid to get the licence for Britain’s supercasino?

The winning bid will be announced in the new year.

The show’s title, AfterShock, says it all. This sort of art was a bit shocking in the 1990s, but not now. I also hardly think that it will shock the Chinese, some of whose performance artists allegedly eat the flesh of dead babies.

The really sensational news out of China is that it is setting up more than 1,000 new art and design colleges. No wonder Charles Saatchi has decided that Chinese art is the next big thing.

• Back in 1999, Spielberg bought Deborah Moggach’s novel Tulip Fever, set in Amsterdam in the 1630s. Several writers, including Moggach, Christopher Hampton and Tom Stoppard, had a go at screenplays

while money for the project came and went. Now, finally, it’s set to be made, this time in Holland, next spring, as a smaller-budget British movie, with Peter Chelsom writing and directing.

When filming was last cancelled, in 2004, 12,000 tulips had to be given away. Moggach did, though, salvage 500 to plant in her own garden.