Snow’s storm over P-word

People has been in St Petersburg this past weekend, eating bortsch, drinking vodka and repeatedly reminding ourselves that our wife really wouldn’t want a hat made of fur, even if it was from Russia and really, really cheap. Mainly, we have been at the Liberatum Jewel of Russia cultural festival where, on Saturday, an almighty row erupted over a new Saatchi Gallery exhibition at the Hermitage.

Exact details are sketchy, thanks to simultaneous Russian/English translation and because (oh hell, let’s be honest) your correspondent had nipped out 20 minutes earlier to mull over the ethics of the hat thing. Nonetheless, we gather it starred Sir Norman Rosenthal, of the Royal Academy, who was discussing the cultural exchange of art at a panel talk with Charles Saumarez Smith, also of the Royal Academy, Jon Snow, of Channel 4, and a host of local art figures including Mikhail Piotrovsky, the Hermitage director.

In a nutshell, the average Russian artist in the street feels it shocking that such an honour is being paid to Saatchi’s USA Today exhibition when local young artists struggle for recognition. This led Snow to praise Tate Modern back in London, which in turn led Rosenthal, in strident tones, to brand him “shockingly populist”. Much bilingual shouting, apparently.

“You’d think it would be all for the people, of the people, by the people,” pondered Snow, afterwards. “My mistake was to mention the people.”

A talk at the Galitzine Library, and the panel was asked whether musical ability necessarily made one good at maths. “Certainly not,” chortled Matthew Scott, the director of music at the National Theatre. “Have you ever seen a great composer trying to catch a train?”

At a dinner for festival speakers, Alex James, former bassist with Blur, now a writer and cheese-making farmer, was told by a fan that she had liked Blur but really loved Gorillaz, a project by his old bandmate Damon Albarn. “You should taste my cheese, love,” said James, airily.

At the Russian Museum of Ethnography, a bilingual audience quizzed the director Stephen Frears on his career and, most passionately, his film The Queen. “If you are British, the Queen is part of your conscience,” declared Frears. “Whenever you lick a stamp, you lick the Queen.” Mikhail Trofimenkov, the Russian critic, was asked to shed some light on the kind of films preferred by Russian audiences. “The audience loves the movies they are shown,” he shrugged. “I should come and live here,” said Frears.

Seriously, though. This simultaneous Russian-English translation. Nightmare. Take the purported words of Alla Mitrofanova, philosopher and artist, in conversation with Matthew Scott (of the National Theatre) about multiculturalism and the arts. “The certain moth leaves to become come his own hermit. He does lies to his bodies and becomes a certainty, in a move towards godification.” A nearby Russian explained helpfully: “To be fairthis probably is exactly what she said.”

Another lively exchange at the Galitzine Library, as Edward Docx (Booker-nominated writer of Self Help) and Hanif Kureishi (author of The Buddha of Suburbia and, most recently, the play Venus) led an Anglo-Russian discussion about the difference between books and literature. People felt this all to be rampant elitism, but also that such an accusation might be a compliment. “V. S. Naipaul is always saying that literature is dying,” yawned Kureishi. “It seems to me that V. S. Naipaul is dying and that’s a rather stupid viewpoint.”

Postscript

— “You are a bit of a king actor,” suggests Clive James to Jeremy Irons in an interview to be aired tomorrow on Sky Arts. “I am a much dirtier, seedier, more twisted person than that,” avers Irons. “I suppose kings are dirty, seedy and twisted,” he adds, “but I am more interested in enigma, in people who are apparently outside the pale.” “If you drop a catch, blame the sun in your eyes,” the cricket legend Sir Ian Botham tells Saga Magazine. “I would never admit a mistake.”

— Returning to play Bianca in EastEnders next year, Patsy Palmer's star has risen once again. Less, it appears, can be said of Sid Owen, who played Ricky Butcher, her on-screen Romeo. Owen’s latest gig is a starring role in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, “a truly wicked pantomime,” at the Beck Theatre, in glamorous Hayes, Middlesex.

— So good was the performance of Billy Bragg’s lyrics for Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall this month that the Queen requested a signed copy of the piece after the show. A coup for Bragg, no? Well, lots of people turn up after gigs asking me to sign things," the punk rocker tells the Washington freesheet Express, “so it's not that big a deal. I don't know what it'll do for my reputation,” he adds. I shook hands with the Queen. Is that OK? Am I now lost in America?"

— What is Oprah’s secret? “She has a spell in her eyeballs that, when she looks at you, you are like, ‘Yes’,” Heidi Klum told guests at a Victoria’s Secret party in LA on Friday. Eyeballs? Scary.

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