A recurring figure in the world of Alan Ayckbourn is the utterly well-meaning interloper who, by his cheerful immunity from the woes of the others, wreaks emotional havoc amongst the depressed, fragile people on whom he descends.

New Year Honours: Entertainment

Miranda Hart is set to consolidate her position as one of the biggest comedy stars in Britain after scooping four nominations at the British Comedy Awards.

Whale of a time with the monster bunch

As has been noted endlessly over the past decade or so since the BMW Minis bounced the old brand back to solid commercial viability, the “new Mini”– now actually well into its second generation – doesn’t have much in common with the “classic”Mini, an example of which I ran for many years. New Mini is, in truth, still too big, too heavy and too expensive to be a true successor to the older, but revolutionary, machine.

As claims to fame go, it's not a bad one: Wilhelmina, pet rabbit of Professor Robert Winston, was one of the first living beings to be photographed by MRA scan. Winston had been down the pub with some friends who had, he explained, rushed in bearing news of a machine they'd built. An old TV, a few bits of wire, and there you have it: one of the first MRA scanners in the history of the universe. Understandably, they wanted to try it out right away. And so off they went to collect Winston and his rabbit.

In 1984, I slept on the floor of the ladies toilet in venue 333 with my university theatre group. We were performing a kind of cross between Stanley Baxton and Ipsum and existing on deep-fried Curly Wurlys and pints of bitter. This year I'm in Heriot Row, very posh, eating sushi and doing a one-woman show. On every corner I meet ghosts of Edinburgh past. Heartbreak in the colonies, loneliness and despair in Dundas Street, love and exaltation in Macbeth Street. This year I'm here with my three children and have sat through seven early-morning children's shows. My 15-year old girl now wants to take up boxing after seeing Bryony Lavery's superb Beautiful Burnout. Result.

The Budget apart, when did you last splutter at someone you heard on radio? How often does a politician cause you to choke on your coffee at anything, apart from saying "less" instead of "fewer"? It matters, according to Rory Bremner, because we are entering the Land of the Bland. A time when big characters are ironed out of public life and eccentricity disappears with them. Politics post-Prescott is not just boring, it might even be bad for democracy.

What with austerity, apocalypse and triple-A downgrades forecast (and that's just the beginning of the alphabet) it may be that everyone's going to need a bit of cheering up. And, unlikely as it seems, when the country is engulfed in financial crisis, the person you really want beside you is the sanguine Paul Lewis from Money Box Live. There are some who cite Money Box Live as a textbook example of oxymoron, but I feel its calming approach may be just what's needed in the months ahead. There is a feeling with Lewis that everything is going to be OK. Debating the debt crisis in the southern Eurozone, he might just as well have been discussing if it's worth changing your contents insurance. When an expert explained how credit ratings can nosedive from triple A to triple B he remarked, "sounds like my essay marks". Asking Vince Cable, "Do you think we might go the way of Greece in another 10 years time?" he might have been wondering which building society offers a half percentage higher interest rate. And this is adamantly not a criticism. There is a serious point to be made about the approach and tone of financial journalists. Back in the meltdown of 2008, the urgent thrill and the note of doom in Robert Peston's voice were said to move markets. Lewis, by contrast, has a polite tenacity and a genius for under-egging the pudding. Besides, how can you not admire a man who on his website proclaims, "My head capitalist; my heart socialist; my soul anarchist"? And it must work, because he's just won three journalism awards.