Like you I’m sure, I had hoped the Ben and Boris Show, or Wadleygate as it has inevitably become known, would be fading away, at least until an ACE London chair is appointed. Fat chance. I’m talking about Boris Johnson’s attempt to get his cheerleader, erstwhile Standard editrix Veronica Wadley, into the job, culture secretary Ben Bradshaw’s resistance and the collateral involvement of Liz Forgan, ACE’s national chair. First, a stream of emails has mysteriously appeared which point to a complex strategy – conspiracy? Of course not! – to get Wadley appointed. Now the lady herself has waddled on stage in this developing pantomime, showing through a column in the Spectator what we would be missing if she failed to get the job. ‘A waspish Hampstead shrink recently diagnosed Bradshaw as suffering from “malignant narcissist syndrome”’ she writes in the latest Spectator. ‘I think that’s far too grand’ she opines. In her view Bradshaw ‘doesn’t deserve serious analysis’. So instead she treats her readers to her unreconstructed Thatcherite view that arts organisations need to ‘monetise assets’ and warns, ‘Subsidy junkies take note’. Well, the job has been advertised again and she’s had a letter from someone, she doesn’t say who, ‘inviting me to re-apply for the chair’. Will she? Buoyed by having been ‘overwhelmed by support from London’s cultural leaders’, she lets on: ‘You bet’.