A lunch with Lord Bragg and others to flag up the new Sky Arts collaboration with the former South Bank Show awards team – who will now bring the annual gala night to the screens of satellite subscribers later this month – threw up some good titbits, as well as some justified tub-thumping about the fortune of the arts in this country.
It seems that the refreshed and slightly more "elaborate" awards show that's being planned, to be called the South Bank Sky Arts awards, will have a souped-up version of the famous Variations on Paganini theme tune, newly concocted especially for the programme by Andrew Lloyd Webber and played by his brother Julian.
Also, courtesy of Anish Kapoor, it will have new awards statuettes or sculptures. At the last awards ceremony Kapoor commented jokingly on the quality of the gongs being handed out, and suggested he could redesign them. Lord Bragg, the host for the awards, has taken him up on the offer for the Sky Arts event, but did not think the architect Lord Rogers, who had designed the old awards, would take it too badly.
It seems too that Sky Arts has been in talks, at some time and at some level, with the organisers of both the Man Booker prize and the Turner prize, about televising their annual events. No deal was done though, and there was no strong hint that viewers should be watching this space. Interesting, though, that these two high-profile arts ceremonies are unhappy with the airtime they currently get on network television.
