The Diary: A new look at Dusty

Ever since Dusty Springfield burst onto the music scene with her "blue-eyed soul", her sexuality has been much questioned and commented upon. Was she definitively gay, bisexual or straight (-ish) in her 1960s musical heyday? Now, the open question will be treated head-on in a major new biopic penned by Enda Walsh, fresh from his success at the National Theatre with his play "The Walworth Farce". Walsh has enlisted the help of her former band, among others, to research every aspect of her life, and he suggested that he wouldn't be shying away from the grey area of Springfield's lesbian leanings during her musical high point, from 1962 to 1967, when she was very buttoned-up about which way she swung, if any. Many have argued that, for these years, she kept her lesbianism under wraps and claimed men were just too daunted by her success to wed her. It was only years later she admitted to liking both men and women by saying: "Am I gay?... If you want to know the truth, ask the people who go to bed with me."

Angel of mercy

The sculptor Antony Gormley has been talking to the national press about toilets, he told me at the Turner Prize private reception this week. He was commenting on planning permission sought for "facilities" to be built near Gateshead's "Angel of the North", which he created in 1998. Reports had suggested that Gormley feared the loos would ruin the visual effect of the "Angel", but he was keen to put he record straight: "These plans have got them 200 metres away, so I don't think it's an intrusion."

Alien resurrection

Film director Ridley Scott may return to his South Shields roots to tell the tale of Geoff Docherty, an eccentric music promoter who was responsible for bringing some of the world's biggest bands to Wearside. Scott has expressed an interest in directing a film based on Docherty's autobiography, "A Promoter's Tale", which reveals how he convinced big acts of the 1960s and 1970s, including Pink Floyd, Rod Stewart, The Who, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin, to stage gigs in the region, sometimes for the meagre sum of £35.

All about Amy

The British artist Gerald Laing once grappled with the subject of the Iraq war. Now he appears to be gripped by a disaster far closer: Amy Winehouse. Laing told me he had created a series of paintings devoted to her "modern mythology". "The events of her life are extraordinary, mythic, hypnotic", he said. The paintings include one of Amy kissing Blake while he is handcuffed, which is apparently reminiscent of Gethsemane and the "Judas kiss", says Laing.

Milton gets a mini-me

A picture of a hitherto unnamed man has turned out to be a portrait commissioned by the literary giant, John Milton. The miniature was commissioned to give to his soon-to-be (second) wife Katherine Woodcock, as a romantic keepsake, after he'd gone blind at the age of 48, says Declan Kiely, a specialist at the Morgan Library in New York, which is exhibiting it from 7 October. He very likely instructed the artist to capture his best side and make him appear more beautiful, added Kiely. Milton, he continued, was famously vain even after his blindness (he was known as "the lady of Christ's" in his long-haired heyday).