Chit Chat - Frayling’s wise words on failing friendships

Published Tuesday 12 August 2008 at 12:50 by Tabard

Adverts have gone out for the new chair of Arts Council England, with Christopher Frayling due to hang up his hat early in the New Year.

Tabard has heard a number of names floating about who might make suitable replacements for Frayling - no stranger to the chit chat column himself, of course.

Among the more predictable ones are Genista McIntosh and Brian McMaster, who are both authors of recent well-publicised reports on the arts council and the arts, respectively.

McMaster has served on the arts council’s board, while McIntosh is apparently on the interviewing panel. So both would seem to have head starts, as it were. Or perhaps not.

It would seem odd for the author of an independent report into the arts council’s failings to then take up the position of the person who had to fix them. Of the two, McMaster appears the more likely.

Two other names who keep popping up are Michael Lynch - the Southbank’s affable Aussie supremo - and Helena Kennedy, who currently chairs Arts and Business.

Whoever gets the job though, Tabard notices that Frayling has some parting words of wisdom in his final chair’s report in the ACE Annual Review 2008.

Don’t expect to be popular.

He explains, perhaps a little wistfully, “During the heated debates of January 2008, I said on the radio, ‘You certainly don’t take on a role like this to increase your circle of friends’. That’s true.”