Sincerest apologies, dear putative readers, for having been so tardy in my blogging.

In my defence, it’s been a bonkers fortnight in the arts what with Frieze, the comprehensive spending review settlement, the Man Booker Prize and the Turner Prize show and the opening of the London Film Festival.

So lots of idle thoughts that might have come your way are now long gone. (Howard Davies’ Man Booker Prize speech – if you’re going to have a business brain in charge of the judging, couldn’t he at least make it sound as if he’s doing more than beancounting? Alex the cartoon hits the stage – it will get lots of City bums on seats but will it convert them to theatre? And so on.)

But do you want the serious ponderings or the idle gossip? I am so not a 3am Girl so we’re not talking sex, drugs and rock’n’roll here.

But snippets like these. That Alan Yentob, the BBC exec, was incandescent with rate at the latest Sunday Times allegations in the noddy-gate affair. That Dustin Hoffman, who arrived just as I did at the Royal Academy’s opening night party for Georg Baselitz, really is astonishingly short in a way that would undoubtedly preclude him from being a British political leader.

Anyway you see my problem. I'm not a natural blogger, (evidence - this was nearly filed as the words of my colleague, Amar Singh) I'm a hack with a fascinating job. But tell me what you want, what you really really want. And I'll give it a shot.

Who has the knowledge required to tell you, the public, what you should go and see?

I thought about it tonight as I watched a dance collaboration between the former Turner Prize nominee Isaac Julien and the choreographer Russell Maliphant at Sadler’s Wells.

Most of the critics I spotted were, understandably, dance reviewers. There was the occasional art critic as was right. The chance to watch Julien’s films in such a forum was to be relished.

But it’s interesting. As an arts correspondent, I try hard to have a working knowledge of all the arts I cover – across film, theatre, visual arts, dance, music, books, heritage, cultural policy (it’s late and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something).  But I also know what I don't know as well as what I do.

But, oddly, that isn't a talent valued by the world at large. I always know who will be reviewing on shows such as Newsnight Review because many of its reviewers I see only at the specific events they have been asked to cover. Few people are genuinely informed and entertaining across the (arts) board.

There are genres where I might just take a shot at reviewing. Theatre, perhaps. Visual arts or books, possibly. Experience makes me think I would not be a disaster but there are others, I know, who would be better.

But it raises an interesting point about the increasing number of cross-genre artistic collaborations. Is it right to send a dance critic to an event where, like tonight, there is no live performance, simply (fantastic) film incorporating dance for the first half hour? It is an issue because in Julien/Maliphant's  Cast No Shadow, the visuals are as intrinsic as the movement.

I am certainly not questioning any dance critic’s credentials. And many are, I’m sure, at least as adept as I at crossing boundaries. But whether Mr Maliphant and Mr Julien will emerge from the process with the appropriate amount of informed analysis in reviews in the next few days, I will be curious to see.

ends 

I have been immortalised in art and I am inordinately chuffed.

Wandering through the Turner Prize retrospective at Tate Britain yesterday I discovered my name inscribed on a Grayson Perry pot.

The work concerned was not only dedicated to me, obviously. What Grayson Perry did was create a pot immortalising the night he won the prize in 2003. So the entire seating plan for the dinner is recorded in clay – and although it was not one of the works displayed for his Turner Prize show, in the circumstances the gallery decided to include it now.

As a journalist, you can have a Forrest Gump-like capacity to be there at great moments in (art) history. Look closely and I can be spotted in one of the photographs always dug out of the archives showing Tracey Emin’s famously unmade bed.

But it’s not quite like being Ossie Clark for David Hockney or Kate Moss for Lucian Freud.

Whatever your own claims to fame, as an artist's subject you survive for future generations, which is evidently why families still get painted for posterity even though photographs are quicker.

If Lucian Freud ever asks, I'd be more than willing to grab my chance. He's a fabulous artist but even Jerry Hall looks fleshy in his hands so I could blame the artist for my natural flaws.

In the meantime, I do now have a small cultural afterlife, albeit it as a name on a pot. Thank you Grayson!