Three gents called Jungle Leaders may seem unlikely propaganda agents for the tax man, but that’s what they became this week. They are a leading popular music combo from Sierra Leone who are not unknown here – last year they toured London and Manchester as well as Berlin and Eindhoven – and the subject of their expected latest hit is entitled, um, the Goods and Services Tax. Back home in Freetown, SL’s capital, the government has introduced this new tax, with the help of our own Crown Agents, but the problem was how to get the message across. There’s a high degree of illiteracy in the country struggling to recover from civil war, but also a devotion to music of the kind Messrs Leaders (Handel Metzer, Sahr Josiah and Alfred Mansaray) purvey. So what the National Revenue Authority has done is to commission a song about GST from the lads but with the lyrics in the Creole argot, and this week they pushed it out to the nightclubs, radio stations, DJs and discotheques that proliferate in the former Portuguese colony, with every expectation that it would hit the top of the charts, if SL had charts. Alfred Akibo, Sierra Leone’s assistant commissioner for the scheme, says it’s efficient, reducing admin costs for businesses but raising vital revenue for the government. “During training sessions in preparation for GST we asked members of our staff to think about phrases that would highlight the advantages of the new system over the old. They came up with almost 100 slogans, and we gave this list to the Jungle Leaders who composed a song incorporating these messages”. And the shoe-in hit has the catchy title and chorus of “Pay de tax, pay de tax”, with no hint of embarrassment.

I gather the Arts Council was as surprised as the rest of us at the rapid turn-round of the news of how the arts had fared in the Budget, and if what I suspect is true it says a lot for the power of the arts lobby. There was relief all round that the cut which might have been as much as £14m was actually only £4m, less than 1%, and that ACE will not be passing it on to its clients. We all expected that the DCMS would have to absorb its own £20m cut and then work out where the damage would be most felt, a process which, experience tells us, can take a week. But the explanation seems to be that culture secretary Andy Burnham knew that speculation would become rumour would become outrage, and whatever he said then would either be a confirmation of worst fears or a climb-down in the face of a barrage of accusation, so he persuaded the Treasury to let him get this rare piece of good Budget news out to this so-powerful sector before that corrosive process could get started. There was an easier way. He could have just left it on a train.

The Tories are more than a little peeved with Michael Lynch, the recent Southbank chief, after his comments about the parentage of bankers who chose not to contribute to the cost of restoring the Festival Hall, and have effectively told him not to bother coming back to the Old Country. ‘We would very much like to foster increased levels of philanthropy here, but we’re not sure that referring to your potential donors as a bunch of b***ards, as Mr Lynch did, is a winning approach’ blogs arts shadow Ed Vaizey with all the hauteur of a government presumptive (to be pedantic, I think the object of Lynch’s fury only became a bunch of bastards after they had ceased to be potential donors, but I digress). Lynch is an avowed supporter of Australia’s Labor Party and liked to tell people that he managed to time his arrival here with the election of John Howard’s conservative Liberal administration. ‘Just to make sure he completely burned his boats before returning to Australia, he also added that for him “The prospect of being here under a Conservative government was not enticing”’ Vaizey adds to his complaint. He’s particularly miffed, it seems, because he even sent Lynch an email congratulating him on his CBE. So biting the hand that emails you to add to your sins, you’d better make yourself at home in Melbourne, Michael.

St Martin in the Fields was packed on Wednesday for Ewen Balfour’s memorial service where there wasn’t a dry eye for the loss of this happy man. He was one of those people who you think is your own personal best friend and when they’ve gone you discover there are thousands like you. There were contributions from the organisations he helped, often without anyone else knowing – he cycled round India and Vietnam to raise money for deaf children – and the music from The Sixteen and English Touring Opera singers was another kind of testament. His boss, Alan Parker, the creator of Brunswick Communications, said Ewen had been sent along by his father, Sir Peter Parker, as “a good man, a great contributor”, which sums him up nicely. But there was so much more to him, as Alan said: his contacts book was compendious and anarchic, ‘with “Pie Shop” next to “Prime Minister”’, and he was ‘ruthlessly uncommercial – his contribution was much more complex than that’. Working with Ewen was clearly like living with him – ‘he was a lot of fun, a lot of life’.

I gather the Arts Council was as surprised as the rest of us at the rapid turn-round of the news of how the arts had fared in the Budget, and if what I suspect is true it says a lot for the power of the arts lobby. There was relief all round that the cut which might have been as much as £14m was actually only £4m, less than 1%, and that ACE will not be passing it on to its clients. We all expected that the DCMS would have to absorb its own £20m cut and then work out where the damage would be most felt, a process which, experience tells us, can take a week. But the explanation seems to be that culture secretary Andy Burnham knew that speculation would become rumour would become outrage, and whatever he said then would either be a confirmation of worst fears or a climb-down in the face of a barrage of accusation, so he persuaded the Treasury to let him get this rare piece of good Budget news out to this so-powerful sector before that corrosive process could get started. There was an easier way. He could have just left it on a train.

So because of all that going on downstairs with the Bolivarmania, it was almost impossible to get to the lifts to take me to the Lynch party. It was crowded and warm in the eighth floor pavilion as the speeches started, with Lynch’s nervous successor Alan Bishop finding himself having to ’stand on a giant’s shoulders’, and ‘with great humidity’ take over from him. Alan Davey, now head of ACE but back in 2002 doing his first duty as the new DCMS head of culture in interviewing Lynch, said he knew ‘he was the one’ because of the way he’d noticed him walking along the street swinging the cane he has to carry, and even dropping it a couple of times. And then Michael himself relating how he had been warned by the lady he was staying with as he left for the interview that demonstrators were threatening to attack anyone wearing a tie, and having visions of himself, as he crossed Blackfriars Bridge, being found hanging under it by his neckwear as ‘God’s banker’ Roberto Calvi had done. He had words of praise for colleagues, but none more glowing than for Kenelm Robert, the head of customer relations at the RFH, who got an MBE at New Year but whose much greater accolade was to be dubbed ‘a really nice bloke’ by the boss. Not a good bloke was the Standard’s Norman Lebrecht who had been offended by the number of Australians getting top arts jobs here, and called for them to be sent back. ‘I see he’s not here’ said Lynch peering over our heads. ‘That’ll because I didn’t ask him’.

So because of all that going downstairs with the Bolivarmania, it was almost impossible to get to the lifts to take me to the Lynch party. It was crowded and warm in the eighth floor pavilion as the speeches started, with Lynch’s nervous successor Alan Bishop finding himself having to ’stand on a giant’s shoulders’, and ‘with great humidity’ take over from him. Alan Davey, now head of ACE but back in 2002 doing his first duty as the new DCMS head of culture in interviewing Lynch, said he knew ‘he was the one’ because of the way he’d noticed him walking along the street swinging the cane he has to carry, and even dropping it a couple of times. And then Michael himself relating how he had been warned by the lady he was staying with as he left for the interview that demonstrators were threatening to attack anyone wearing a tie, and having visions of himself, as he crossed Blackfriars Bridge, being found hanging under it by his neckwear as ‘God’s banker’ Roberto Calvi had done. He had words of praise for colleagues, but none more glowing than for Kenelm Robert, the head of customer relations at the RFH, who got an MBE at New Year but whose much greater accolade was to be dubbed ‘a really nice bloke’ by the boss. Not a good bloke was the Standard’s Norman Lebrecht who had been offended by the number of Australians getting top arts jobs here, and called for them to be sent back. ‘I see he’s not here’ said Lynch peering over our heads. ‘That’ll because I didn’t ask him’.

And his words follow him. His interview for AI last time has been picked up by all the national press, the BBC and even the Australian media. For his trials in achieving the impossible and getting the RFH done? For his tribulations dealing with English Heritage who wouldn’t have the lift he insisted on, or for coping with the asbestos, or for the sudden £18m hike in the bill? For his lessons in governance? Of course not, it was for calling bankers ‘a bunch of bastards’ for not contributing to the RFH development fund. And he reports back that as he got on the plane on Thursday he was cheered by the cabin staff, most of them ex-bank employees.

Pitmen profit
The hit play Pitmen Painters, currently delighting sell-out houses at the Lyttelton, features one of the character doing a lightning sketch of another, in full view of the audience. The actor is Ian Kelly, a bit of a polymath who is a graduate of Cambridge and the UCLA Film School as well as a biographer of the likes of Beau Brummel and Casanova. But if you’re wondering what happens to the drawings after the curtain comes down, you need only saunter past the National theatre ship on your way out. They are for sale at £40 a go.

Working La Sistema
At long last British audiences are gong to be treated once more by the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, which wowed the Proms three years ago. They and their director Gustavo Dudamel, products of Venezuela’s much envied La Sistema which gives money and years to training poor kids to become accomplished musicians, are to take up residence at the South Bank Centre. Watch out for them in April.

Hughes’s lost story
An interesting discovery comes to light at the Orange Tree Theatre later in the month when Georges Schehadé’s The Story of Vasso opens. It is the lost adaptation of the late Ted Hughes who had been commissioned to write an opera libretto of the piece, written by the French playwright in the 1950s and loosely based on the Algerian war. It was discovered by the production’s director, Adam Barnard, in a batch of Hughes’s papers which were being archived by the Emory University of Atlanta. ‘There was page after page of material, much of it written in Hughes’s own hand, that no-one had seen for years. Hughes’s imagination was clearly sparked by the source material, but his is a very free adaptation” he says. ‘While the original is in prose, his is in verse, and while he roughly follows Schehadé’s story, the dialogue is substantially different.’

French leaving
Sadly, Adam Gatehouse’s adventure with Festival de Valloires has come to an end. After three years, Gatehouse – the subject of a 20 Minute profile here two year ago – has had to call it a day for the summer event in the gorgeous medieval Picardy abbey because of the recession and the decision of French authorities to discontinue grants. He won’t be idle, though: he is also also editor of Live Music at BBC Radio 3 and executive producer of the BBC’s Wigmore Hall lunchtime concerts.

The governance conference organised by the Cultural Leadership Programme sounds like one of those worthy but seriously dull events enjoyed by nobody but the organisers, but this was different: it’s thrown up fundamental faults in the running of the arts in this country, and specifically about the relationship between board chairs and chief executives. The idea is, of course, that the two enter into a blessed marriage of the kind, we’re told, enjoyed by Wylie Longmore and John McGrath at Contact Theatre in Manchester. But that’s a rare good one, it seems. In national museums, particularly, if you think about it, the fall-out has been spectacular, with the last three directors of the V&A, the last director of the Natural History Museum, of the Science Museum, of the National Gallery and the National Maritime all unexpectedly resigning or not being reappointed by chairs brought in from outside, mostly from business, with little or no knowledge of the cultural sector. The only place where it seems to have worked the other way was at National Museums Liverpool where David Fleming got the better of Loyd Grossman last year. The natural question is, where is DCMS in all of this mayhem? Aside, as ever, even though appointments to nationally subsidised cultural organisations are normally by the government. But if you thought that common sense was beginning to prevail, the madness is spreading into the foundations sector, apparently, with the sudden firing of David Barrie. He staunchly will say nothing, beyond the party line that ‘17 years is long enough, time to find new challenges’, but the word is that he has not been as one with his chair, the old Etonian banker David Verey, since he took over in 2004. The conference story about Verey is that he was asked whether headhunters should be called in to find Barrie’s successor and responded ‘Why? We know everybody, don’t we?’ Meanwhile, the awarding of the Art Fund Prize for museums, always a May presentation, which Barrie championed, is to be held on June 16 - a fortnight after Barrie has left.