TV Today: So the newspaper websites are cock-a-hoop with the news that Jonathan Ross’s Radio 2 shows are to be pre-recorded in future. Leading the charge, naturally enough given its part in exposing the Brand/Sachs controversy, the Daily Mail says: Yesterday the BBC confirmed that the controversial...

TV Today: R.E.S.P.E.C.T: The Art of Backing Vocals Radio 4, Saturday 10.30am Backing vocals can make or break a song. Nick Barraclough looks at the craft involved. The Saturday Play: The Complete Smiley - Call for the Dead Radio 4, Saturday 2.30pm After the success of their...

Shenton's View: I’ve written before about the onward proliferation of star ratings here, and the fact that every national paper now offers them, except The Observer and Independent on Sunday (who offer confusing pictorial representations instead of an audience member caught in various states of enthusiasm, or lack thereof - an idea stolen, I’m sure, from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook supplement). Nearly everyone, too, uses a five-star table (though Time Out bizarrely introduced the possibility of a sixth star, which is hardly ever used); but since there’s no agreed universal standard...

TV Today: Given Monday’s bank holiday, this weekend’s Square Eyes is an extended affair, covering the best of telly drama, comedy and other bits over the next four days. Hay-on-Sky Sky Arts, Friday 7pm As the UK’s foremost literary festival gets underway, Sky Arts casts its gaze...

Shenton's View: Back in March, I was heralding the welcome return of a full-time cabaret club at last to London, with the establishment of a permanent residency of the American Songbook in London at Pizza on the Park. But last night, sitting amongst a meagre audience of just 19 spectators including myself and partner (plus four more who arrived later) for the long overdue return of Maureen McGovern to these shores, I started wondering if we actually deserved such a club - or artists of such calibre - if they can’t be...

TV Today: TV and radio presenter Tim Lovejoy has just posted up a new interview with Pulling creator Sharon Horgan on his internet TV venture, Channel Bee. As well as discussing the vital issue of whether tinned kippers are just posh sardines, Horgan talks about the...

Education and Training: Never accuse me of not covering the entire range of performing arts education and training — even the bits that had never occurred to you (or me). According to that informative organ, the Liverpool Echo, Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) student and vocal coach Charlie Adams, 24, is leading a twelve week course to teach prostitutes to sing. All twelve class members are current or former sex workers. The singing lessons, part of The Social Partnership’s Routes Out of Sex Work (ROOSW) project, have been so successful that participants...

Shenton's View: While blogs and even “tweets” are increasingly the way for theatre news, discussion and opinions to be disseminated by, the reviews are still the major channel of theatrical communication, since they offer something else: a judgement on quality that is also, hopefully, a quality judgement from an expert who is paid to offer it. It’s a recurring theme of this blog that there’s no such thing as a “right” or “wrong” review, and that differences of opinion are not only inevitable, but also valuable. Hence the interesting spread of reviews...

Shenton's View: Theatre is typically something you can’t do at home alone; it’s an event you usually have to go out for (though it can occasionally come to you, as I recently reported here when Kathryn Hunter brought Rockabye to Blanche Marvin’s living room, for one performance only, when she was ill last year - a testament to the high regard that Blanche is held in by nearly everyone in the theatre, from Peter Brook down). Masturbation, on the other hand, is usually conducted in private (though earlier this month, a charity...

Podcasts: Best known to TV audiences around the world as Jin-Soo Kwon in US TV show Lost, Daniel Dae Kim takes to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall next month to play the King of Siam in The King And I opposite Maria Friedman’s Anna Leonowens. As he prepared...

TV Today: In the end it wasn’t even close. Alexander Rybak, winning Saturday night’s Eurovision Song Contest, gave Norway the pleasure of working out how to follow Russia’s €36 million extravaganza. But that’s a discussion for another time (preferably after watching the Eurovision episode of Father...

Shenton's View: It happens in all walks of life that children regularly follow their parents into the family business, hence the ubiquity of shops that have names like “John Smith and Sons” outside of them (though you seldom see the “Joan Smith and daughters” alternative, for some reason). Whenever I interview an actor and find out they have children, I inevitably ask the prying question: are they going into the business, too? Last year I interviewed Lesley Manville for The Stage, and she told me about her son, Alfie, from her first...

TV Today: Moving On (Monday-Friday 2.15pm, BBC1) A week of connected dramas dealing with issues of moving on and changes in life. Sheila Hancock stars in this first episode as widow Liz, who comes home from holiday with a former Ghurkha in tow to live with her...

Education and Training: Drama School showcases continue to puzzle me. We all know they are not a bundle of fun. They are nerve racking for students to take part in, arguably a bore for the staff who have to organise and direct them and, as for the agents and casting directors who attend, well, it’s not that often they see or hear anything which sets their predatory teeth rattling. Nonetheless, until a better method turns up, showcases remain the prime way of presenting new graduate talent to the industry to take its pick....

Grads' Club: This last week has been a good week in the wonderful land of April. The company I’m working for offered me the rest of the tour, which obviously I am thrilled about, since I am enjoying the performance and, of course, being in work and...