The Week in Arts

The Week in Arts

It may or may not have been a case of "Nice to see you, to see you nice" when the Queen knighted Bruce Forsyth this week. But it was certainly a case of "Significant to see you, to see you significant." Here was a comedian being knighted; and comedians don't get knighted. There was no Sir Eric Morecambe, no Sir Benny Hill, no Sir Kenneth Williams, no Sir Max Wall.

The Week in Arts

The Week in Arts

I feel a little queasy about writing an anniversary piece, as I was in the room in August 1986 – two months before the launch of The Independent – when the founding editor Andreas Whittam Smith declared that one of the many ways in which we should break the mould was by avoiding anniversary journalism. Twenty-five years on and I'm still disobeying his instructions, although that particular pledge, to be fair, didn't last terribly long.

The Week in Arts

In my visits to the Cannes film festival I have been as entertained by the daily press conferences as by the films. Film writers from across the world manage to put on a display of sycophancy like you have never seen. The rush to the platform for autographs by the world's film press is so frantic as to make any baying crowd at a Leicester Square premiere look downright sedate. And then there are the "questions". My favourite moment was when a film writer from Lebanon asked Charlton Heston the "question": "Mr Heston, are you aware that you are my father, my mother, my sister and my brother?"

I have often – OK, occasionally – wondered why film is the only art form to have "buffs". You never hear of theatre or dance or world music buffs. Television has its couch potatoes, but never anything as intellectually enticing as a buff. Yet anyone who visits their multiplex a couple of times a month expects to be referred to as a film buff.