His ability to transform water into wine is well known, but the Bible tells us less about his coffee-making abilities. Which is perhaps why Jesus Christ will endorse the Magnifica bean-to-cup cappuccino coffee maker as ITV offers brands the chance to embed their products in its new search to find a West End star.

His ability to transform water into wine is well known. But now Jesus Christ will endorse the Magnifica bean-to-cup cappuccino coffee maker as ITV offers brands the chance to embed their products in its new search to find a West End star.

The Dutch-born entertainer Johannes Heesters, who made his name performing in Germany and was dogged later by controversy over his Nazi-era past, died on 24 December at the age of 108. Born in the Netherlands on 5 December 1903, Heesters made his stage debut on the big stage at the Volksoper in Vienna in 1934. His career took off in Berlin where, he became a crowd favourite at the Komische Oper and Admiralspalast. He gained fame appearing in films such as Die Leuchter des Kaisers [The Emperor's Candlesticks] and Das Hofkonzert [The Court Concert].

Original performers told that the curtain's coming down on their payments for recording sales

What is it about the familiarity of old movies that makes them impossible to turn off

Two years after it was dropped by ITV, The South Bank Show is staging a comeback.

She won over viewers with her impressive voice that spanned several octaves. Now Connie Fisher, the winner of BBC 1's How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?, has pulled out of Andrew Lloyd Webber's touring production of The Sound of Music, saying a throat condition has changed her vocal range and she cannot cope with the part.

Andrew Lloyd Webber doesn't wring his hands when things go wrong. Well, maybe he does, but he takes action as well. Some years ago he closed down his show Sunset Boulevard, had the direction spiced up and then reopened a slicker version. He's now performed the same trick with his latest, the Phantom of the Opera sequel Love Never Dies. Deciding after several months that he was unhappy with parts of the (and possibly with the number of bums on seats) he invited the canny West End impresario Bill Kenwright to tweak Jack O'Brien's original direction.

Michael Grade, the broadcast executive known for his red braces and cigars, has at last made his West End debut – not by treading the capital's boards but by taking ownership of them.

You can see why Sebastian Faulks's great 600-page First World War novel Birdsong would make a good film: horrendous scenes of trench warfare, literally book-ended by a lost, idyllic world of rivers and fields and a new dawn rooted in the modern-day honour paid by the hero's investigative granddaughter.