Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Christmas card this year broke with his tradition of sending a beautiful reproduction of one of his own Pre-Raphaelite paintings to provide a chummy photo of his recent interview with President Putin.

That interview was the centrepiece of his new audition show on BBC TV– the fourth, following the searches for Maria, Joseph and Nancy — Your Country Needs You, which aired last night, hosted once again by Graham Norton and pitched this time as a bid to save the Eurovision Song Contest from its own tacky reputation, not a cause that readily strikes one as either worthy or indeed necessary. 

ALW and Graham went to Moscow to secure Putin’s promise of a vote for the British entry to be written by “his lordship” (as Graham keeps mock-fawningly calling him; get a grip, Gra, and let’s have some critically witty bullshit for a change) and performed by the winner of his latest talent contest.

Up to a point, this was fairly amusing, but when the jocund tunesmith entertained a bunch of foreign ambassadors to a reception in his own Drury Lane theatre in order to twist their arms, too, the whole enterprise took on a bad news feel in the light of the rigged voting scandals on other  BBC programmes.  

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With Pinter passing and Alan Ayckbourn labouring with ill health, it’s a little unsettling to discover that Alan Bennett — who has had his own struggle with cancer — has undergone another serious operation to deal with a rare form of stomach aneurysm; this happened last April and he’s all clear now.

Maybe we knew about this last April, but I don’t recall anything in the papers. And why should I, when you come to think about it. Alan Bennett makes little fuss about his everyday life until he publishes a selection from his diary each New Year’s day in the London Review of Books. Which is where we now learn about the seven-hour operation in University College Hospital.

If Bennett’s treatment and after-care was anything like as good as mine following a mere five-hour op two years ago in the same hospital, he’ll be hunky dory. Bennett describes the ordeal with typical diffidence and goes home in time for the Mayor of London elections on 1 May: “My first outing is to the local community centre to vote against the dreadful Boris.”

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