- Imagine this. Damien Hirst is asked by the Arts Council to go around the South Bank Centre’s Hayward Gallery and report back on how good or bad its exhibitions are. Don’t think much of that Warhol show, responds Hirst. Or Nicholas Hytner, head honcho of the National Theatre, tours regional theatres to assess if they are doing too many Noël Coward revivals.

Called “peer review”, it’s a system that exists in more and more companies, where workers assess other workers. It’s now the “big idea” of the Arts Council’s new(ish) chief executive, Alan Davey, who seems a great improvement on his predecessors. He is responding to valid criticism that too many low-level and ignorant bureaucrats have been making dodgy decisions about the quality of arts organisations.

Ah, but will the artistic community use it as a means to improve output, or to score points off the opposition? Personally, I think it’s worth a whirl.

The artists can’t do any worse than some of the Arts Council jobsworths.

- How’s this for an odd couple? The comedian Jo Brand and Baroness Shirley Williams appear together tonight in a BBC1 documentary about Williams’s mother, Vera Brittain, whose Testament of Youth, a poignant elegy for a lost generation, became the most famous book by a woman about the first world war.

Brand seems an unlikely choice of presenter, as Williams found out when the comedian asked the Lib Dem peeress, who obviously had a reasonably privileged background, if she still has servants.

Testament of Youth itself was adapted by the BBC in the 1970s in what I thought was a wonderful drama series, with Cheryl Campbell as Vera. Thirty years later, BBC Films plans a remake with Mark Bostridge, Brittain’s biographer, doing the treatment.

Talking of the first world war, do try to purchase Tommy’s War, a book of the recently found diaries of a Glaswegian clerk, with entries from 1914 to 1918 and his delightful drawings alongside. They may not have the raw emotion of a Sassoon and Owen poem, but they are spendidly evocative.

- I wonder how many watched the excellent John Adams drama series on More4, which ended yesterday afternoon? Probably about 750. What madness to put this multi-Emmy-award-winning drama, directed by the talented young Brit Tom Hooper, on More4. Even madder to have scheduled it for 5.30pm on Saturdays. The sensible news is that it will be repeated on Channel 4 on Saturdays from December 20, at the more sensible time of 7.30pm.

- I’m glad to hear that some honour still exists in British public life. Gillian Reynolds, the doyenne of radio critics and a doughty Liverpudlian, has handed in her notice as a trustee of the National Museums Liverpool. She was due to step down in 2010, but has written to Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, to say she felt uneasy about Phil Redmond, better known as the TV creator of Brookside and Hollyoaks, being appointed chairman of the Merseyside museums, where his wife, Alexis, is also a trustee. Nothing personal against the Redmonds, argues Reynolds. It is simply that she, rightly, thinks this family affair is too snug.

- Manchester United have a new signing, who for once is not costing a fortune. Simon Trewin, who works for the appropriately named United Agents, has been taken on by the club to seek book deals. With 140m fans worldwide, MU is a huge brand. Everything is up for grabs bookwise, from the heritage of the club, annuals, the story of the ground, the kit and so on. But Trewin’s contract does not include player memoirs. This may be a good thing — the first of the five-part Wayne Rooney story was hardly a success. The one United book that has fared well recently was yet another memoir from Bobby Charlton, who showed his own brand loyalty to United by not, like so many overpaid players today, flitting from club to club.

- Opening on December 26 in America is Valkyrie, a movie about an assassination attempt on Hitler. It has been part-funded by Tom Cruise, who stars in the film as a good Nazi and whose project this really is. Clips of Cruise’s German accent, seen and heard on the net, have brought howls of derisive laughter. It is finally getting a release after a year of doubts and remakes. If you really must see it, Valkyrie opens in Britain in late January.

richard.brooks@sunday-times.co.uk

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