91Èȱ¬

So, what happened in the arts this week? Well, there were some awards ceremonies, obviously.

.

And boy, did she deserve it. I saw the show and it didn't spark into life until she came on, and then it was good. She's now in at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, where, if anything she's even better: a Maggie Smith for the 21st Century.

A fringe production of La Boheme beat off the mighty ENO and Royal Opera House to win , which everybody seemed to think was a jolly good show.

Except for the production's chorus singers who thought it was a jolly bad show that they didn't get paid. The producers told them to put it down to experience.

The the Design Museum's Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award. Will Self said it was not the dernier cri of light bulb design, which Deyan Sudjic, the director of the Design Museum, suggested had already been arrived at more than 100 years ago. But, Sudjic said, the Plumen design "goes a long way to make up for the loss of the Edison original".

If I was on the panel I may have been more inclined to have .

There were lots of festival announcements this week:

, which looks a lot like its 2009 and 2007 programmes.

And Robert Redford popped over to tell us next year he's going to . A little bit, meaning the American bit. He wants to show us the very best of American Independent cinema. That was last year, which was very good - and on general release here.

The Bolshoi ballet got itself into a fine mess. Just before a major tour to Paris their artistic director has quit because of a photo of someone looking just like him, but without any clothes on, was posted on the internet (who would do a thing like that?)

So, now he's off to the naughty step where he will meet Brian True-May, the producer of ITV's Midsomer Murders.

In a Radio Times interview Mr True-May was asked what's with the lack of ethnic representation in Midsomer. Because it was the "last bastion of Englishness" he said. Cue journalist looking down at their tape recorder to make sure it was switched on.

What else? Oh, yes. There was nearly the "" of America. This is where UK pop acts dominate the US charts. It happened in the 1960s with the Beatles 'n' all. And again in the 1980s with the New Romantics (who had a little help from Led Zep and Pink Floyd). It nearly happened again last week when the top three albums in the Billboard 200 were British acts (Adele, Marsha Ambrosius and Mumford & Sons). That's the first Brit one, two, three since 1985 when the line up was: Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, Sting's The Dream of the Blue Turtles and Tears for Fears 'Songs from the Big Chair (which explains why it's taken them so long to forgive us). But a top three doesn't make an invasion, more dropping round for a chat. In 1985 UK acts had 41 albums in the chart, last week there were 15. Mind you, anybody going to this year's might feel differently, where a record number of British acts have rocked up.

And finally, still on pop music (sort of). Professor Brian Cox, the good-looking chap who used to play the keyboard in D-Ream, has been upsetting people with his music. Just when he thought things could not get better, having won a Royal Television Society award for his science programmes on the 91Èȱ¬, he found himself being criticised for using too much music in his latest series Wonders of the Universe. The 91Èȱ¬ pointed to its audibility report, which reveals that a mumbling presenter can be difficult to understand. Reveals?