They’re dropping like flies at the Royal Opera House. The British baritone Simon Keenlyside has pulled out of playing Figaro in The Barber of Seville, which starts on Saturday. Poor chap needs some vocal rest. And the Peruvian Juan Diego Florez, regarded as one of the world’s top tenors, has withdrawn as Count Almaviva for the performance of July 13 — one of six scheduled in this latest production. Again, it’s that pesky voice that needs a rest.

Keenlyside will be substituted by the Italian Pietro Spagnoli, while the South African Colin Lee will take over from Florez. Not surprisingly, those who have bought tickets (at up to £189.90) are complaining vigorously to Covent Garden. I don’t blame them.

The Culture Show is returning to BBC2 on Wednesday evenings, from next week. It’s the fifth time in less than five years that its scheduled day and time of transmission have been changed. And on each occasion, this has come with spin that this is the perfect time and day.

Shame about this moving around, as the contents have improved. Its problem still is the presenters, in particular the DJ Lauren Laverne.

She is regarded as the trendy voice of yoof, but she strikes me as ill at ease discussing anything except pop. Good to hear that the show is trying out new presenters such as Mishal Husain and Tim Marlow. I also expect Clemency Burton-Hill, actress, musician, writer and Cambridge double first, to be auditioned. Alan Yentob, the BBC creative director, is her No 1 fan.

Live from Sky Arts come six new plays from Wednesday, July 8. It’s an innovative bit of TV, with six well-known authors, including Kate Mosse, Jackie Kay, Michael Dobbs and Morag Joss, writing their first plays — all at 30 minutes. These will be the first live dramas on British television for 25 years. Joss’s play has John Alderton directing his wife, Pauline Collins, for the first time, while Dobbs’s drama recounts the true story of a meeting in 1938 between Guy Burgess and Winston Churchill. Sky is already sounding out other authors, including Ian Rankin and Margaret Atwood, for a mooted second series. Live drama means risk-taking — a shot in the arm television needs.

The great financial crisis is to be fictionalised. David Hare is writing a play for the National Theatre, The Power of Yes, to be staged in late autumn, while, in September, Sebastian Faulks brings out his next novel, A Week in December. “It’s set in December 2007, when Northern Rock was belly-up,” Faulks tells me. There’s a numerical symmetry to the book, too. The year 2007; seven days; seven main characters; and a book of seven chapters. Sadly, seven different attempts have also so far been made to get a movie version of his best book, Birdsong, under way, but there’s still no real sign of the filming starting.

Lynn Barber’s readable memoir, An Education, has a chapter about the influence of her mother, who trained her in elocution by getting her to recite poems. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street writes: “How well I knew them all, and, if a gun was held to my head now, I’d recite Cargoes.” But somehow her version of John Masefield’s poem, whose most famous last stanza she quotes in her book, is not quite what I recall from my own childhood. “Dirty British steamer”, Lynn? Actually, it was “coaster”. And “Butting through the Channel in a mad March haze”? But Masefield wrote “in the mad March days”. Hazy memory, Lynn.

The Virgin 1 channel is to relaunch its documentary strand with what it describes as “journalistic vigour”. Included is The Naked Office, an experiment where staff in an ad agency strip to break down hierarchies; Why Men Watch Porn, looking at the effect of five hours of viewing sex films; and Jim Davidson’s So You Think I’m an Arsehole? Yes.

Saw Joseph Losey’s film Accident the other day in a retrospective of the director’s movies at BFI Southbank. When the credits came up I noticed that the young girl Clarissa had been played by Carole Caplin. Surely not the Carole Caplin who became the lifestyle guru of the Blairs? Yes, the very same. Did the sweet little five-year-old Carole then take a wrong career path?

richard.brooks@sunday-times.co.uk

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