• Just what is going on at the Old Vic? Having pulled Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues early, Kevin Spacey’s company then said it would stage no production of its own until September, though other plays might come in to stop the theatre going dark over the summer.

Even that now looks unlikely. A revival of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell was poised to run from late May, but has been called off. The play ran successfully at the Vic in 1999. I also hear that Pete Postlethwaite’s one-man show, Scaramouche Jones, which has been a big hit touring the regional theatres recently, has been cold-shouldered.

I would have thought either or both would have filled the Old Vic over the summer, but the theatre has spoken of the difficulty of keeping on staff to run the bars and so on. But of all the plays to fill a bar, surely it’s the drink-themed Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell?

I trust Spacey isn’t worried about these plays being a hit, thus reflecting none too well on his own choices.

• On Thursday, the Art Fund, which helps raise money for works of art, will produce some alarming figures about acquisitions from a survey of 300 galleries and museums.

Over the past decade, government money for the big five (British Museum, Tate, National, National Portrait and V&A) to spend on buying has fallen by 90%. Instead, more cash has been diverted to politically correct access and social inclusion.

The government-funded National Heritage Memorial Fund, set up as a last resort to save art works and great houses, has also seen its funding drop by 35% over the past decade. But the most startling statistic is that the heritage lottery last year spent just 1% of its £320m budget on art acquisitions. And by 2008, that budget itself will be slashed to £200m.

• Good time, then, for Dame Liz Forgan to retire, as she does later this year, as chair of the heritage lottery. Though she already heads the Scott Trust, which keeps The Guardian and The Observer afloat, her name is seriously being mentioned as chair of the chairless ENO. I’m told by the board

I should now stop calling it “troubled”. We’ll see.

• I’m a bit concerned about Huw Edwards, particularly after my colleague Bryan Appleyard wrote a couple of weeks ago about how he was bored by BBC News and reckoned the anchors lacked any charisma or clout.

I’ve now noticed that Edwards, he of the Ten O’Clock News, has taken to turning up his left lip in what looks like a little snarl. I’m not sure if this is an Elvis impersonation or whether he has taken advice from Michael Buerk, who used to sign off from the late evening news with his trademark wink.