It’s the season of hype and hope for showbiz memoirs. The good news is they are not faring well this year. Good because, with a bit of luck, the huge amounts wasted by publishers on their advances might in future go to more deserving writers.

Nothing against the comic Peter Kay, but the second volume of his memoirs — him as a toddler, I think — has so far sold only 80,000 copies this autumn. Yet the first volume (I seem to recall this was him as a baby, in a shoebox somewhere Oop North) sold 800,000 copies in autumn 2007. Also out now are memoirs by Ant and Dec, the likely lads from the northeast; Jo Brand and her early career as a stand-up comic (or is that her early career trying to stand up?); Frankie Boyle, who, as a publicity stunt for his book, slagged off the Olympic swimming champion Rebecca Adlington; the reformed Chris Evans; and the infuriating Ozzy Osbourne, who is failing to emulate the sales of his wife Sharon’s memoirs.

Encouragingly, Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel’s Booker winner, has sold more than 100,000 in hardback, while other serious fiction writers such as Robert Harris are doing pretty well, even if, hardly surprisingly, Martina Cole, Dan Brown, Marian Keyes and Terry Pratchett monopolise the top of the hardback fiction charts.

In its first week, Martine McCutcheon’s debut novel, The Mistress, out only in paperback, sold 7,000 copies. The former EastEnder is taking the Katie Price (aka Jordan) route of memoirs, then a novel. Yet McCutcheon says she wrote her novel in the hope that it would be snapped up for the screen. And who might be the star? I think we can guess.

The row over a new chairman of the Arts Council London is now beyond parody. The capital’s Tory mayor, Boris Johnson, wanted his pal Veronica Wadley, the former Evening Standard editor, but this was vetoed by the culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw. Now Bradshaw has said that under a “patsy” Tory-appointed chairman, a play such as Enron, which attacks the financial system, would not be staged. But guess who has just been to see Enron, and really admired it? The shadow culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who then wrote to congratulate the Royal Court.

Now I hear that the appointments panel actually wanted Patrick McKenna, head of the entertainment investment company Ingenious and a former Andrew Lloyd Webber executive. McKenna, who is hardly a Labour “patsy”, should appeal to Boris.

Nearly one millennium on, there is a new battle of Hastings — this time over a planned art gallery on the seafront. The Jerwood Foundation, a private charity that gives money to the arts, wants to put its fine collection of modern art in a new building, which it would primarily fund. Yet some short-sighted locals object, as do the coach drivers who regularly park their vehicles on the proposed site. If there must be a gallery in Hastings, the objectors want it in the western part. While I can see some logic in improving this tawdry bit of Hastings, it makes far more sense to have the new space in what is already the artistic (eastern) area, next to the fishing museum, buzzy shops, cafes and antiques stalls.

Tomorrow, the arts minister, Margaret Hodge, visits Hastings, as well as Margate, Folkestone, Bexhill and Eastbourne, to see how the arts can boost seaside towns that, outside of summer, have been about as exciting as a “kiss me quick” hat.

Alan Bennett’s new play, The Habit of Art, relates the friendship between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten, and their collaboration in the 1930s before a falling-out after the war. A third character in the play, which opens at the National on Tuesday, is Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote biographies of both men. Bennett has used the device of Carpenter to flesh out the story. One of the plot lines is that Carpenter is mistaken for a rent boy. A larky calumny, of course.

Mari, Carpenter’s widow (her husband died five years ago, in his late fifties), will be seeing the play this week. “It's a fiction, so Alan Bennett can do what he likes,” she says. “But he’s been very courteous in letting me know what’s in it.”

Courtesy is a Bennett trait. When I used to attempt to phone him occasionally about some story, he would always say: “Don’t take offence, but I’m going to put the receiver down very politely, now.”

richard.brooks@sunday-times.co.uk

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy