LOU REED, the drug-abusing 1970s glam rock icon and father figure to a thousand teenage punk bands, is becoming respectable in his old age.

Reed, 63, is the star turn at a gala concert billed as Scotland’s answer to Glyndebourne.

The musical legend is to perform alongside the Orchestra of Scottish Opera at Culzean Castle, which has superb views across the sea to the mountains of the Isle of Arran.

Reed will appear at the Burns An’ A’ That! open-air festival in May, which is dedicated to the life and works of Rabbie Burns.

This is the same Reed who used to pretend to shoot up on stage, whose career has spanned almost 40 years in which time he has seen off heroin and alcohol, outlived his mentor Andy Warhol, and created many of the greatest albums and songs of all time, including Walk on the Wild Side and Perfect Day.

Previous performers at the festival have included the percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the teenage violinist prodigy Nicola Benedetti. “It’s an honour to be invited” to such a festival, Reed said.

Then he added: “ ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ is a line of timeless history and pertinence reflecting the timeless optimism and reflection of the modern constriction of the working man.”

Whatever that means.

• After the snubbing of Gerry Adams in Washington, it is interesting to see what questions his political opponent, David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, is raising at Westminster. Surely he is not blaming Sinn Fein because “Unionists are likely to bear a disproportionately greater burden of the domestic and sewerage bill under government reform.”

  Notable absentee
  
  CAMILLA PARKER BOWLES was not the only absentee from the state banquet for President Ciampi of Italy at Buckingham Palace. Gordon Brown again managed to miss it. He may claim that he was busy preparing for yesterday’s Budget, but the more likely explanation — bearing in mind that it is the fifth successive one he has missed — is that he cannot stand the Palace and anything associated with it.
  
  Fiction prize
  
  THERE is nothing so “ex” as an ex-redtop editor. Which may explain why Piers Morgan was a conspicuous absentee from the Press Gazette’s British Press Awards. He was there in spirit, however. At 9pm a text arrived from the former Mirror Editor declaring that, thanks to the publicity given to him in this column, his book The Insider had topped the bestseller lists. To which I reply: “The fiction section?”
  
  Ps
  
  Beyoncé’s performance of Vois Sur Ton Chemin, from The Chorus, at the Oscars did not go down well with Julie Delpy. “Beyoncé singing in French — she sounds like she’s singing in Chinese,” the Before Sunset star said at the Empire Awards. “I swear to God, to French people it was like being stabbed in the heart.”

• Paul Greengrass, director of The Bourne Supremacy, has no time for comparisons between the chilly assassin played by Matt Damon and Britain’s most famous spy. “James Bond is a cruel misogynist,” he says, “an imperialist right-wing f***face who worships at the altar of technology.”
  
  people@thetimes.co.uk

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