Harry Potter is not enough for an arts policy

On these grounds, I needed little persuasion to go and hear the Mayor talk earlier this week about Cultural Metropolis, his new cultural strategy for the capital.

Whether pretending to freestyle his way through a carefully thought-out speech or Have I Got News For You, Boris Johnson can always be relied upon to act as though pleasantly divorced from reality.

But as far as the arts are concerned, acting divorced from that soul-deadening expression, "the current climate", couldn't be more welcome.

The Cultural Metropolis is certainly a departure from the slash-and-burn tactics being employed by the Mayor's colleagues in the Coalition.

Short-sightedness about the long-term impact of cuts on creative industries that generate vast amounts of income is one of the Government's stupider moves. The arts seem consigned to the category of fluffy and expendable.

So the Mayor was deliciously off message in pledging to keep the cultural life of London at the top of the political agenda, both through public funding as well as trying to encourage more rich people to give money away to the arts.

Boris's strategy is thin on detail but philosophically sound. If the creative industries can't get the Government on side, they must reach out to the professionally more daring gamblers: the bankers, hedgies and other pariahs. Tax breaks, not just asking nicely, are his mooted strategy.

It was good, if surprising, to see Ed Vaizey in attendance as the blond one struck out in his defence of the cultural life of the capital.

Vaizey heckled his way through the Mayor's speech: moaning that he didn't get to go to Harry Potter, chastising Boris for giving away the film's ending and generally employing gallows humour. Yet he too seems to be trying to protect the cultural life of London — be it museums, the film industry or libraries — and he has a big ally in the Mayor.

There was a depressing moment when Boris vouchsafed "this is why the arts matter" on the grounds that one woman's book about a wizard is now a bigger franchise than James Bond and Star Wars combined. That said, given the Government is determined to punish even those creative industries that generate most income, Boris is right to focus on the cash.

If the Treasury had looked at the economics of the UK Film Council before they decided to get rid of it, it would still be functioning now. Boris says he plans to save Film London.

There will be some for whom Boris's mad professor act grates. But I still wear my Boris-done-as-an-Andy-Warhol campaign T-shirt with pride: if only there were more gaffe-prone intellectuals in power.

Carey's great Gatsby break

So Carey Mulligan is the "beautiful little fool" for our time.

Fighting off competition from most of Hollywood, Mulligan reportedly cried on learning that she had won the part of Daisy Buchanan, the doe-eyed pragmatist who pronounces that "rich girls don't marry poor boys, Jay Gatsby", in Baz Luhrmann's new movie of The Great Gatsby.

Mulligan's were tears of joy but some purists will weep to think of F Scott Fitzgerald getting the Moulin Rouge treatment at the hands of Luhrmann. The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night, though, are impossible to ruin. Hemingway said of Tender is the Night that once finished, the book made you want to go back to the start. The same is true of Gatsby.

In New York, the six-hour stage adaptation, Gatz, is a sell-out. And Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, replacing Verona with Venice Beach, is still unforgettable. Cue green lights, green lawns, bobs and jazz. Baz, do your worst!

Sign of a true comedian

The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year award is always lively so for its 25th anniversary they went a bit crazy with a dinner in the Royal Hospital Gardens in Chelsea.

Miriam González Durántez was properly sexy in the flesh. And who knew David Cameron was so funny. "I came into power saying it's time for a change'," he quipped. "Sorry I missed dinner. Little did I know that would become a nightly instruction."

Best was his line on the "spectacular" coupling. "I can't believe," he said, "that someone middle class, from the Home Counties, could get together with someone so wealthy whose family own a string of mansions."

Not Kate ... he was talking about his beautiful relationship with Nick Clegg. Touché.

*The BBC has helpfully pointed out in its comments on the royal engagement that Kate Middleton is "mature for a royal bride" clearly missing the days when teenage virgins were a monarch's divine right. The average age of British women getting married is now 33 ... Do keep up. Countryfile chicks, God help you.