Is the culture parliamentary select committee a joke?

The culture select committee, which has been gathering evidence these past weeks, is a curious beast. Supposedly inquiring into arts and heritage funding, it seems rather to have pursued a wayward agenda of its own, via some peculiar – and often very biased – questioning of witnesses by MPs. Louise Bagshawe has accused Sir Nicholas Serota of "dramatics for the sake of it" (she's obviously never met the king of sang-froid); Philip Davies made the undignified boast that the committee had "wiped the floor with the chief executive of the Arts Council"; and there was a rather surreal moment in which John Whittingdale, the chair of the committee, opined that Mahler "shouldn't have written works that require so many musicians" (makes it harder to cut the orchestras, you see). Some of the witnesses have been gamely battling against the philistine tide; some of them have been promulgating views that are plain batty. David Lee, who edits a publication called the Jackdaw (which describes itself as "nasty and critical of many things, and especially of the art establishment which stinks like the rotting carcase it is"), has been merrily suggesting that Arts Council England's money would be wisely used in mounting exhibitions of the works of Beryl Cook and Jack Vettriano. All this may have a certain kind of gloomy comedy to it, but I can't see a serious report being produced as a result.