David Lister: BBC prefers showbiz over substance

When it was reported that the showbiz star John Barrowman exposed himself on BBC radio at the start of the week, it looked like an appalling time for the corporation, if quite a promising one for stand-up comedians, who must have been updating the time-honoured line "a good face for radio".

But I'm beginning to wonder if Barrowman's simply prattish behaviour, and the rather more serious stuff previously by Brand and Ross, are in a perverse way a help to the BBC. The regular supply of outrages means that attention is deflected from more minor but more pernicious abuses.

This week I turned on the BBC News and watched one item where the full 10-person shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year was read out. Only a few days earlier a "story" about the first £1m item on the Antiques Roadshow was the third item on the BBC News. Yesterday BBC News reported that Graham Norton was taking over from Terry Wogan as host of the Eurovision Song Contest. BBC News reports that BBC staffer replaces BBC staffer on BBC show. There's a media studies module in there somewhere.

From news to drama, and this paper devoted leader space on Tuesday to how absurdly quickly the credits rolled in the new detective drama Wallander. I wanted to know who played Wallander's father. The name that rushed by was David Warner, one of the great actors of the past 50 years. The BBC should give such an important veteran due mention.

But then drama ranks high at the BBC when it comes to cavalier treatment. Plays are an extinct species. As I have said more than once on this page, the BBC has not only given up entirely on classic playwrights, but it has also ensured that viewers have no chance either to see contemporary heavyweights such as Stoppard and Pinter.

Classical music gets a great run in the summer with the Proms, but literature fares less well. For the nation's only programme devoted to books, we have to tune in to the Sky Arts channels, which now also lead the way on visual arts, dance, jazz and opera. BBC4, where the corporation ghettoises most of its arts coverage, looks thin by comparison.

Here's tonight's schedule for BBC4. At 8pm there's a repeat of BBC1's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. A couple of hours after that is a showing of the next Wallander just a day before it is on BBC1. I guess someone gets paid for cutting-edge arts programming like that. To be fair, it is cutting edge compared with tomorrow evening, where at 8pm there is a profile of Nana Mouskouri followed at 9pm by a concert by Nana Mouskouri, climaxing at 10pm with another concert by Nana Mouskouri.

The BBC makes much of its breezy arts magazine programme The Culture Show, and this week's was enjoyable enough, even if presenters Lauren Laverne (pictured), Mark Kermode and Andrew Graham-Dixon can occasionally be a little too pleased with each other in their constant chats. Are there no other experts that can occasionally be found for the interviewee's chair? Is Nana Mouskouri not in town?

It's a disparate bunch of niggles I've had with the BBC this week, the self-regarding redefinition of what is news, the lack of imagination in BBC4, the arts genres simply ignored. It's not headline-making stuff in the way that lewd behaviour is. But it's no less improper.

Sealed lips over at ITV

Much has been written this week on the subject of leaks and leakers. But if ever there was a bastion of secrecy, a model of confidentiality, it must be The X Factor. I refer to the debate that has gone on for some days over whether Britney Spears (right) was singing or miming in her performance on the show last Saturday. The tenor of the debate might lead one to believe that this is a question that only Ms Spears, her closest advisers and ex-husbands can answer.

But, come on. Quite a few others have a tale to tell. Sound engineers, cameramen, directors and producers must be in the know. One has to salute their integrity in keeping quiet. Either they take their oath of confidentiality seriously, or they feel protective of Spears. Either way it's touching, if slightly bizarre.

Alas poor David – upstaged by Yorick's skull

For the entire run of Hamlet at Stratford-upon-Avon, David Tennant used a real person's skull in the "Alas poor Yorick" scene. This was recently revealed by Tennant. The skull belonged to a pianist and fan of the company, Andre Tchaikovsky, who thought the use of plastic skulls in productions was second rate, and bequeathed his own skull to the RSC for the scene.

But this week the RSC said it would not be using the skull during the London run of the production, as it "would be too distracting for the audience" now that the secret was out. Let's think for a minute what that statement means. It means that the RSC fears that audiences would be so transfixed by the skull that they would be distracted from Hamlet's words. It means that the RSC fears that David Tennant would be upstaged by a skull. For such a brilliant Hamlet to have that said about him by his own employers really is the unkindest cut of all.

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