MIF is one of the newest festivals on the calender - and there's been quite a buzz about this year's programme, the second staged.

First stop is Manchester Town Hall, where the historic committee rooms are a riot of noise and colour.

The whole building has been handed over to the festival for The Great Indoors - a series of free events for children.

There are huge queues and Event Full notices everywhere but we sneak in at the back of a cake decorating workshop - minature chocolate versions of Manchester Town Hall abound - and peek into another room where the air is thick with paper and feathers, ripped up and thrown into the air.

A long hallway is full of sculpture made from recycled objects - plastic bottles and boxes, and other rubbish made into towering works of art from which the marble busts of the great and good of Manchester now peek out.

Over the top

After that, it's off to the Palace Theatre and Rufus Wainwright's first opera.

Prima Donna - like the singer itself - is flamboyant, colourful and over the top.

A sort of Sunset Boulevard with arias, it tells the tale of reclusive opera star Madame Saint Laurent who hasn't sung in public since a disastrous premiere many years before

It's essentially an opera about opera - and as such it ticks all the classic opera boxes - outrageous villains, lavish costumes, unlikely plot twists and a dramatic death.

Perhaps the only thing missing is a memorable tune - it's lavish and lush and beautifully performed by the orchestra of Opera North but i'm not sure anyone will be humming the score for years to come.

The purists may sniff but it's enormous fun, and touching too.

Impromptu concert

And when did you last go to the opera and sit two seats away from a man in a blue satin figure-hugging dress?

Or spot the composer being mobbed as he left the stage door?

After that, it's off to Manchester Art Gallery where French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras is performing Bach beneath the swirls of a stunning white art installation made by architect Zaha Hadid.

The concert brings it all full circle - quite literally - as the music which inspired the art is performed inside the artwork.

Then it's back to the festival tent for more Rufus Wainwright, this time in an impromptu concert with his mum - the folk singer Kate McGarrigle - a thank you note which is relayed across the festival on big screens.

I'm not the only Scot in town.

There are a few Scottish organisations represented, informally perhaps but no doubt quietly checking out the competition.

Wooing audiences

Most are impressed that the festival has acquired such a buzz in just two short years.

On top of that, its director Alex Poots is an Edinburgh boy, who cut his teeth on the Edinburgh International Festival.

He insists Manchester isn't in competition with Edinburgh, despite the fears expressed in the Thundering Hooves reports and he hopes there's scope for working more closely to avoid clashes.

But now that they've noticed, I suspect many organisations north of the border will be keeping a close eye on its progress.

And for all that it's the new kid on the block, festivals could learn a lot from the MIF experience - about wooing newer and younger audiences, on thinking outside the box and on understanding that less is sometimes more when it comes to a festival.

And to that end, if you miss this year's Manchester International festival (which ends on Sunday), you'll have to wait till 2011 for the next one.

I've been covering T in the Park for more than a decade. I've been backstage, frontstage, on the stage. I've been there when they've been building the stage, and in the days when you didn't need a road map to find the staff car park. But I've never experienced what many people regard as the central experience of T in the Park - camping.

This week, I took matters - and my sleeping bag - into my own hands and joined the 20,000 people who set up camp there more than 24 hours before a band even takes to the stage.

By half past five, the campsite is heaving, mostly young people, lugging crates of lager up the hill behind them, but there's a good scattering of veteran concert goers. The atmosphere is high spirited, and noisy but not intimidating. Many of the groups know each other and have already set up camps within camps.

There's an obviously increased security presence, following last year's stabbing of a fan in the campsite. Fans seem pragmatic.

"It could have happened in any city on a Saturday night," says Dave, who's here with his daughter and her boyfriend.

"But because there are so many paramedics on hand, they were able to react very quickly. I think that's what makes the difference."

Chief Supt Craig Suttie of Tayside Police agrees. "Compared to a lot of Scottish towns on a Saturday night, this has a low crime rate. Last year's incident was a terrible one, but hopefully an isolated one. This year, it's about reassuring people, letting them know we're all around."

Police officers patrolling the site are part of a 2,500 strong team which includes everyone from stewards to welfare officers. Above them, the area is monitored by cameras - including the infra-red ones on the hot air balloon "blimp".

The strategy seems to be to avert problems before they happen.
A drunken boy, roaming the site isn't arrested. He's escorted back to his tent, given water and urged to sleep it off.

It's a relatively quiet start - the real challenge comes when the remaining 45,000 campers arrive, augmented on the day by a further 20,000 non campers.

Speaking of non campers - my night under canvas at T was noisy, cold but uneventful. The cameraderie of the campsite began to wear off around 2am, as did my usual love of the music of Johnny Cash - just not played in the wee small hours.

And reader, I cheated. My tent - a teepee large enough to accomodate a family of five - was already up when i got there, the air bed full of air, and a proper shower and toilet block just a hundred yards away.

After 10 years of waiting, some experiences just can't be rushed.

Sad that he'll be remembered by a whole generation for his increasingly bizarre behaviour and not for the thrill of Thriller. (I can still recall the excitement of catching the full 14-minute video on television in the days before video recorders, DVD or YouTube, when you had to be tuned in at just the right moment.)

It's hard to align the Jackson of those groundbreaking video performances with the shambolic masked figure of latter years - although even I'm struggling to understand why his death merited both Newsnight and Newsnight Review.

Like a lot of Scots of a certain age, I saw him at Glasgow Green when he performed there in 1992.

Last performance

Again, a spectacularly theatrical show in the days when everyone else was still plodding through stadium rock gigs, it began with Jackson springing from a trapdoor onto stage in a storm of fireworks and ended with a stuntman wearing a jetpack flying over the crowd.

It was his first Scottish concert in almost two decades - he'd last appeared in Glasgow as part of the Jackson Five in 1977 and, though we didn't realise at the time, also his last performance in Scotland.

Coming just two years after Glasgow 1990, you'd think people would be used to cultural extravaganza but as one of the first gigs on the green, it also sparked a rash of complaints from locals about the noise and disruption who urged the city council not to allow him to return.

His last musical performance, perhaps, but not his last appearance.

Bizarre expedition

He did come back in 1997 for a bizarre househunting expedition which involved a heavily disguised Jackson and his entourage driving across Scotland, hotly pursued by the press.

Now the waiting begins for thousands of fans who bought tickets for the 50 gigs due to take place this summer at the 02 arena in London.

The promoters - AEG Live - say they'll make an announcement shortly about the refunds, but with millions already spent on staging the show, and the complications of fans buying tickets from many different sources, it could take some time to resolve.

Not just because the show might confuse my four-year-old with eyes like saucers that dinosaurs do still roam the earth, but because the ticket prices are almost as huge as the dinosaurs in the show.

But even in the midst of a recession, it seems like we're all still prepared to shell out for a show.

Perhaps there's a performance equivalent of the "lipstick index" - a sign that even in the most difficult financial times, we'll stretch to a ticket for something that cheers us up, helps us escape all those financial fears - or I suppose, now and again, gives us a better understanding of why we're all going to hell in a handcart.

Hate to mention Take That in the same blog as dinosaurs - but it's all about the same thing. Sheer unadulterated entertainment.

That's why 50,000 fans a night packed into Hampden last weekend for three nights on the trot; it's why my brothers are off headbanging to ACDC next week and yes, I give in, I'm off to see the Boss the following week.

It's hopefully a good sign, not just for the stadium shows and the outdoor performances but for the scores of festivals, big and small, which will take place across the country over the summer.

And the four-year-old got his share - with a trip to the Scooby Doo stage show. Well and truly aimed at his age group.

Think panto - "it's behind you" - and you'll get the drift. The grown-ups might grimace at some of the cornier lines - they flew right over the little ones' heads - but there's some nostalgic moments which will raise a laugh among those who remember the original series.

The cast are brilliant - particularly in the wake of all those quick-fire costume changes, and first night technical problems on the radio microphones.

And there's a lesson too for other arts organisations who're wary about tampering with traditional start times.

Most of the evening shows begin at 1830 BST - meaning tiny theatre-goers don't have to stay out too long past their bedtimes.

And going by the contented little faces packed into a sticky Kings Theatre in Glasgow on Wednesday, it seemed to pay off.

Or tidy house rules, since these involved sweeping our desks of all belongings at the end of each day.

He was even known to take a can of Mr Sheen round the newsroom himself - and give the desks a final polish.

Journalists are not the tidiest of creatures - I have a colleague who claims to be cultivating a collection of rotting oranges on his desk for scientific reasons - but one day that old newspaper cutting/theatre programme/council agenda will provide a vital piece of information for a story you've been working on.

On a personal level, it's also a chance to bring a little individuality to your workspace whether that's a family photo, a bunch of flowers or those aforementioned rotten oranges.

Harmless too, unless you work in a call centre, share your desk or accidentally eat one of the decomposed oranges.

Not so at the National Library of Scotland though, where there's been a right old rumpus about flags.

According to a series of emails, released to SNP MSP Christine Grahame, a member of staff was told to remove several Saltires, a Lion Rampant and a red tartan chair from his work station.

It was, according to Director of Customer Services Alex Miller, a nationalistic display "more appropriate to the football terraces."

Ms Miller's concern, she said, was that the display might intimidate non-Scottish colleagues.

When she returned two weeks after the first email to find the offending flags and tartan chair still in place - not to mention a movie calendar she found offensive - she personally took down some flags herself and put them in the culprit's in-tray.

It was at that point that Ms Grahame was alerted and tracked down the incriminating email conversation.

She was so outraged that she wrapped herself in a giant saltire and posed for photos on the steps of the library.

Ms Grahame said the incident was a "completely unacceptable slur on Scotland's national flag", but the National Library, in turn, insisted it hadn't banned anything.

According to Martyn Wade, National Librarian, "We merely asked a single individual to remove what we considered to be an excessive display of large flags from a desk in a shared, professional work area, and we would have done so regardless of what the flag was or indeed any other adornment."

Meanwhile, back on the stack floor - which is a grey and gloomy place, beneath George IV Bridge - staff are no doubt wondering whether they've all accidentally dozed off and ended up on the pages of George Orwell's 1984.

It was there, at the Fringe, back in 1984, he first appeared with Forbes Masson in the cult (and camp) cabaret act Victor and Barry.

Cumming recalls on his blog that not everyone appreciated their humour.

The Scotsman's critic - none other than our own Andrew Marr - gave their show a feeble review, leading to a suitably cabaret response from Victor and Barry, who paid tribute to him at a Best of the Fest event with a variation of the Dean Friedman classic Lucky Stars - "We can thank you, Andrew Marr, that you're not as smart as you'd like to think you are..."

Cumming is one of the jurors at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, which got under way last week.

He was particularly keen to support Sam Mendes - director of the opening night film Away We Go - and the director of the Broadway version of Cabaret, which won Cumming a Tony award.

Speaking to critic Mark Kermode in a live broadcast of Radio Five Live's Simon Mayo Show, he said he preferred Edinburgh to Cannes at film festival time.

"Edinburgh is what Cannes would be like if it took place in a civilised country with a decent climate and reasonable licensing laws and good pubs," said Kermode.

Cumming agreed, particularly as an actor as he said most of the focus was on sales.

"You have conversations here about film rather than about sales of films and distributors."

Cumming, who recently took up joint US citizenship, was awarded an OBE in Queen's birthday honours.

He said: "You know what was great about it - it was for film and theatre and the arts but also for my activism trying to get equal rights for gay people in America.

"I thought it was very nice to get something from the Queen and those that love her for doing something in another country.

"I said thank you, your majesty, for highlighting the omission of the Obama government on this issue.

"I don't she will have had anything to do with it at all actually.

"I think there is some nice homosexual in the Home Office."

Cumming said he took up US citizenship to vote for Obama.

"It took too long. I missed it by three days but I'm glad I did it."

He said the main advantage was that he now did not have to worry about losing his Green Card and never being allowed in the country again.

Cumming also told the audience he will be providing the voice of Adolf Hitler in the stop-motion film Jackboots on Whitehall.

He said: "I use my acting skills. I do one of my range of German accents. There was the Nightcrawler in X-men, that was a German accent, Emcee in Cabaret - that was a German - and now this."

"In the story of this film, it is what would happen if the Nazis had invaded Britain and Hitler goes and lives in Windsor Castle and tries on all the Queen's dresses, so it is kind of like a drag-queen Hitler."

As a member of the international jury, Cumming recommended a film about phone sex called Easier with Practice.

"It is not a family film. It is like a phone sex road movie."

At the time, the Wedgwood Museum in Stoke was in the lead with almost half the online vote.

Kelvingrove had a mere 10%.

Then, in the space of a week, Kelvingrove took the lead.

If voting had closed on Wednesday at midnight, as planned, it would still have been in the lead but by Thursday lunchtime, the Wedgwood Museum had returned as favourite.

Then came the news that the Guardian website - which was running the poll - had closed down the site after "potential irregularities" had been discovered.

I'm told they were concerned about the extra 15,000 votes cast for Kelvingrove at the last minute and wanted to investigate possible "unusual fluctuations".

Over at Culture and Sport Glasgow, they're adamant it was simply a last minute flurry of votes, part of a concerted campaign to boost the museum's votes.

They say they sent staff e-mails to encourage last minute votes, and persuaded the Evening Times to get on board, despite their reservations about sending readers to another newspaper's website.

When the numbers rallied, they got coverage on radio and television, encouraging further voting.

"It's a popular museum and when people found out it was lagging behind, they voted, it's that simple,"says my source at Kelvingrove.

"It then became a viral thing, with people using Facebook and Twitter to spread the word.

"As far as we're aware there's nothing irregular about it at all - it's just late voting."

And that's an opinion The Art Fund shares.

It says the Guardian has verified the voting is correct and that the People's Choice vote will be announced as planned in London, on Wednesday night.

However, the overall decision for the prize lies with the judges, chaired by Lord Puttnam, and it's clearly overshadowed the prize in the first year it's asked the public to make its opinions known.

And no, I don't mean the European elections.

The one Scottish hopeful in the running for the £100,000 Art Fund Prize - Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery - is apparently trailing in the polls.

The prize - for the most original and imaginative museums collection - is decided by a panel of judges (including this year, film-maker Lord Puttnam and Turner prize winner Grayson Perry) but this year, for the first time, the public is also being given a say.

The Wedgewood Museum in Stoke on Trent seems to be the favourite so far, with almost half the vote although both Orleans Gallery in Twickenham and Ruithin Craft Centre in Denbighshire are also doing well.

But Kelvingrove seems to be lagging. Last week, it had a mere 8% of the vote.

This week, there seemed to be some rallying and the figure was up to 10%.

Perhaps the fact the voting is via the Guardian's website is putting some voters off (the Evening Times is a strong supporter of the museum but can hardly be seen to send readers off to another paper!)

Or maybe it's just that its educational scheme is less newsworthy than Wedgewood.

Whatever the reason, supporters of Kelvingrove are anxious to rally support and increase the vote by 11 June when the online poll closes.

The winner will be announced in London a week later.

El Sistema is the pioneering Venezuelan network of orchestras, which has inspired millions of children, many from the barrios, the poorest inner city areas, to take up music.

It's as much about the team spirit and the discipline of the orchestra as it is about making music - although 30 years on, with more than 150 orchestras, including the flagship Simon Bolivar Orchestra, music is now one of their most important exports.

The much acclaimed Gustavo Dudamel - who recently won a classical Brit for his work with the orchestra - is a product of the system as are many professional musicians.

Thousands more have simply used it as a foothold onto less musical careers.
Here in Scotland, it was the Raploch area of Stirling which was chosen for the Scottish pilot.

While it would be unfair to class the area alongside Venezuela's barrios, it has its fair share of problems, and a reputation for less worthy pursuits.

Many were sceptical about how well the project would be received by its tight-knit community but going by this week's concert, it seems to be well and truly established.

Many of the families are now seeing the second or third child joining the orchestra or the pre-school activity.

Rehearsals are hard work - three or four times a week but the results are already showing, with some of the players moving on from open strings to more concentrated playing.

They're a long way off from being a symphony orchestra but in some ways, that's not the point.

The social interaction and determination of this little band - many of them still only six and seven years old - is as important as their ability to perform in a packed Albert Hall in Stirling.

While they're still trying to convince the Scottish Government it's worthy of funding - the new English scheme meriting a whopping £2m pound grant from the UK Government - it's not stalling plans for further expansion with both Glasgow and Aberdeen on the radar for possible new orchestras.

The celebrity strand of Howson's work - whether subjects or buyers - has always sat oddly with some of his more impassioned work.

These new images - inspired by the victims of the Irish famine - are much more in style and tone like his work from the Bosnian war, where he was official war artist in 1993.

Howson himself agrees. "There's at least one painting which is a Bosnian painting, I've just turned it into a famine painting, because war, famine, suffering, it's all the same," he says.

Although that period produced some of his strongest and most controversial work, it also took its toll on his health and the same seems to be true of his current project.

Advised by doctors to stop working all together - although he admits he's not been able to do that - he seemed weak and tired at the press preview for the exhibition. The subject matter is likely to be controversial but Howson says he hopes it will spark discussion and debate.

He says: "The whole point for me was to get across an anti sectarian message and get as many school children in as possible.

"Famine is not just about Irish Catholics, Protestants died too and famine still kills people today. If this makes them think, then that will be something.

"One of the most undignified ways to die is of starvation and people did literally due of starvation, there are people still dying of starvation today and that's what I want to draw attention to."

Howson's work is hugely popular - and despite the harrowing subject matter, these paintings are likely to be snapped up.

And that's good news for St Mary's Church in the Calton area of the city.

The church - and in particularly its extremely knowledgable parish priest Monsignor Peter Smith - assisted Peter Howson with his research when he first began work two years ago.

Its founding father was a priest - Fr Forbes - who spent three years fundraising in Ireland for the money to build the church. He raised £3,000 in 1842 - that's the equivalent of almost £6m by today's standards.

The Calton area was the focus for wave after wave of Irish immigrants. At one point the parish was the place of worship for 13,000 Catholics. These days, it's closer to 1,300 and that makes the job of raising money for restoration of the church even harder.

They've raised £900,000 so far, with some help from Historic Scotland who've noted its tourist potential but they need to raise the same again.

"Peter Howson came here and we talked about the famine and the impact it had on the people who came to this area, to start new lives and make new homes," says Monsignor Smith.

"He was interested in the work we've been carrying out and he promised he'd do what he could to help out."

Peter Howson kept his promise. Late last year, he donated two paintings of Brother Walfrid, who founded Celtic Football Club from the church hall, to a charity auction the church hosted.

This week he also confirmed he'd be giving a substantial percentage of the sale of all the artworks in the exhibition to st Mary's appeal. For Monsignor Smith, it's a generous gesture but also an apt one.

"What do you say when someone is that generous? Except thank you. It's going to make a huge difference to our appeal.

"It's a theme which touches at the heart of this parish. It goes to our origins as so many of the people in this parish came in the face of famine, looking for work, for food and a future for their children and they found it here."

Famine - New Works by Peter Howson is at St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art
29 May to 28 September
2 Castle Street
Glasgow, G4 0RH

Seven firms were shortlisted today - among them, the Glasgow-based practice Elder and Cannon, the Irish company Grafton Architects and Francisco Mangado Architects from Pamplona in Spain.

Their task? To build a new £50m student building for the expanded Glasgow School of Art campus - and no pressure, but it has to stand alongside Charles Rennie Mackintosh's iconic school.

Mackintosh of course famously won a competition to design that building.

He was not quite 30 and working for the Glasgow firm Honeyman and Keppie, so there's huge kudos in winning this commission which perhaps explains the phenomenal interest in the competition.

Nine thousand people expressed interest in the project by downloading the application form in the first instance.

The 153 companies who officially entered the competition gave a much fairer assessment of interest but the organisers say it is still "extraordinary and unprecedented".

With big hitters such as Lord Foster and Zaha Hadid allegedly interested, the only concern was whether the judges would be swayed by "starchitects".

But according to today's shortlist, they're not.

A good mixture of local and international, two of the seven have Glasgow partnerships, one is a completely Scottish operation.

The task now is to focus their final submissions for interviews with the judges, with the winner being announced in September and the new building up and running by 2013.

It will be interesting to see whether the winner - and the budget - allow the sort of design crossover that Mackintosh achieved in fusing arts and crafts and architecture inside and outside his building.and whether the new building is as fresh and iconic in a hundred years time as the Mac is today.

It wasn't simply down to the fact it was the closing night of the RSNO's current season, or the extraordinary performance by Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta, although both were worthy reasons in their own right.

The extra bodies - all 300 of them - took the RSNO up on their offer of free rail tickets and places at Saturday's concerts.

Swift damage limitation following the cancellation of their two concerts at Edinburgh's Usher Hall (builders and architects now working round the clock to make sure it is ready for the festival!)

The same number, to the RSNO's relief, took up the same offer the week before - including refunds on their Usher Hall tickets, and a 50% discount on the Glasgow tickets.

I'm sure most would agree it was worth the hassle, particularly for Sol Gabetta's enthralling performance of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations.

All too brief, she followed up with a stunning encore of Dolcissimo by the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks, a technically complex and other worldly piece which had the audience on the edge of their seats.

I wasn't alone in straining from the upper circle to locate the offstage soprano, only to discover it was multi-talented Ms Gabetta singing, as well as playing.

Another RSNO regular was in the spotlight yesterday at Perth Concert Hall.

Christopher Bell and the National Boys Choir of Scotland had taken up the challenge of encouraging a thousand local schoolboys to get singing. Or rather keep singing.

According to research by Perth and Kinross Council, many boys stop singing at the age of 10 or 11.

The reasons, according to those I spoke to yesterday, included being worried about changes to their voices, that choirs just aren't cool and that they don't want to sing alongside girls.

The latter point was quickly resolved by making it a "boys only" event, the cool factor tackled with special dedications from actor Billy Boyd, WWE wrestling star MVP and local radio DJs (although I'm not sure David Cameron's endorsement necessarily upped the cool factor).

And as for the inevitable voice change, the Changed Voices Section of the choir were as good an advert as any for the benefits of singing.

The boys - from 76 of the 77 Perth and Kinross primary schools - took a little bit of warming up but the exuberant Mr Bell, who has been known to make grown men sing along while dancing like penguins, refused to take no for an answer.

By lunchtime, they were already meeting their secondary school teachers and signing up for school choirs.

And Debra Salem, who came up with the whole idea when she realised her son was one of the few boys from the area in the national boys choir, can rest easy.

As well as fielding a few more singers for the national choir, it looks likely that Perth and Kinross will now have a boys choir of its own.

Several years ago, the theatre was one of a number of arts organisations told by the Scottish Arts Council that it couldn't rely on Foundation funding. Instead it had to seek funding on a project-by-project basis.

But rather than withdrawing quietly, the theatre seems to have become even more ambitious.

On Friday it opened one of its largest productions to date - and the first musical since Theatre was set up in 1951.

Whisky Galore, which is firmly based on the Compton MacKenzie book and not the Ealing film - was first staged in a much smaller version at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 but this show features a cast of 14 who have to sing, dance and play everything from bagpipes to tin whistles.

Director Ken Alexander admits it was one of the hardest productions they've ever had to cast since being a rep company, actors also have to go on and appear in the season's other five plays.

On top of that, musicals are more expensive to stage but the company seems confident this will be the mainstay of the summer season, and may even have life beyond.

But the expansion isn't just onstage. Those who've had a peek behind the scenes will know Pitlochry has one of the hardest working back stage crews in Scottish theatre.

They're going to be even busier now that the production facilities have been expanded.

The theatre has raised £1.25m in a hugely successful fund-raising campaign to buy the old Hydro Board headquarters on the neighbouring Port-na-Craig House estate.

As well as providing much needed new rehearsal space, the massive Tank Room is now being developed into new production space for the increased demand for sets from other companies.

Pitlochry is quick to point out that they have historically received the lowest level of public investment in Scottish theatre so they've always had to generate their own income.

But in the current climate, it's even more admirable.

It already earns around three quarters of its annual income from Box Office, catering and retail.

It expects the new facilities within five years to be bringing in a further £100,000 a year.

There's an old tradition at Pitlochry Theatre that audiences applaud the set and scenery at the start of every show.

This year, it seems there's a whole lot of people behind the scenes who deserve that applause.

Carol Ann Duffy is to take over as the new Poet Laureate (Andrew Motion's ten year tenure officially over as of midnight last night).

All this week, we've endured the poetic equivalent of football transfer speculation.

Simon Armitage is the favourite, Roger McGough already has the popularity vote but Duffy who was pipped at the post last time around, surely had to be in with a chance.

This morning, Downing Street confirmed that Glasgow born Duffy has the job - the first woman and the first Scot since the post was first created in 1668.

Already there's been much discussion about whether the delay in appointing Duffy was Tony Blair's nerves about appointing an openly lesbian laureate. Who, apart from the tabolid headline writers really cares about Ms Duffy's private life?

Much more relevant to her poetry seems to be the fact she's a woman and a mum (her poem A Child's Sleep one of the most tender of its kind).

And while she was once quoted as saying no self-respecting poet should have to write a poem for the wedding of the queen's youngest son, she's clearly got over her concerns.

Speaking on Women's Hour on Radio 4 this morning she said, "A poem will occur if there's a genuine beginning which comes from memory or imagination or a public event so if I felt in the event of a royal wedding inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I'd be grateful to have an idea for the poem and if I didn't, I'd ignore it."

Duffy is already one of the best read poets in the UK today, largely thanks to her entertaining and accessible style and to the fact her work is on the school curriculum.

Her Scots roots are solid enough to guarantee her a place in any Homecoming celebrations (although if the First Minister is to be believed, a holiday in Saltcoats is enough to qualify) but she left here when she was four and has lived in Manchester for the past decade.

But her first official visit here as Poet Laureate is bound to create a buzz.

And according to the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, that looks like being at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The Princess' Blankets, based on her picture book of the same title is a folk tale about a princess who's always cold.

It'll be performed from August 15-26 by Carol Ann Duffy herself, and musician John Sampson, with a preview performance at the British Library on 2 May.

And while the literary world toasts her success, sad news about two losses from the Scottish literary world.

Tom McGrath - who has died from cancer at the age of 68 - was influenced both by the beat poets and by Scottish music hall. He had an amazingly colourful life - and knew everyone from Billy Connolly to Jimmy Boyle to Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, who he persuaded to come to Glasgow while inaugural director of the Third Eye Centre.

He helped found the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, wrote work for the Traverse and Lyceum in Edinburgh and countless screenplays for television. His final work was My Old Man in 2005, which he completed despite having suffered from a stroke two years earlier.

Meanwhile, the broadcaster, writer and poet Maurice Lindsay has also died. He was 90. As well as publishing his own poetry, he edited the 1946 anthology of Modern Scottish Poetry.

He forged the way in arts broadcasting too, fronting BBC Scotland's first arts programme - Counterpoint.

I'm told the first edition had Benno Schotz modelling Hugh MacDiarmid live on air - the resulting bust stood in the entrance hall of BBC Scotland's headquarters in Queen Margaret Drive.

As they went live, one of the cameras malfunctioned and Dr Lindsay simply led the remaining camera across the studio to the sculptor and his model.

His ability to find a poem appropriate to any situation remains. He's even left a poem for his own funeral - first published in 1995 - called Directions for a Funeral.
 
Don't hire some vacant priest to send him off
in 'sure and certain hope' of resurrection;
at such uncertain certainties he'd scoff,
so at the end would have no forced connection
with creeded superstitions, or the ways
some use to rite their muffled passage through
the last experience, dulled by age's haze
when little that they feel or say rings true.
Rather, let music sound, if chance arise -
Bach, Boccherini, Haydn, Mozart; men
whose thoughts have raised him far beyond the skies
where heaven slipped its moorings; if not, then
read out some protest in the caring rhymes
he fashioned from the scuff of fractured times.

The usual banter between the Daily Record and the Sun curtailed by the fact that no-one from the Record was there.

Journalists from the Record and its sister paper, The Sunday Mail, boycotted the event ahead of a three-day strike over jobs cuts.

Meanwhile, senior management weren't there either, as they were preparing to put the papers together in the journalists' absence.

The Record picked up three awards for Journalist Team of the Year for their coverage of the Angelika Kluk murder case, News Photographer of the Year for Tony Nicoletti and Multi-media Journalist of the Year.

The Sunday Mail won another for Reporter of the Year (for a second year running for Charles Lavery) - hopefully all delivered in time for them to hold them aloft on the picket line this weekend.

But the Sun table did some solo celebrating after picking up Newspaper of the Year, Sports News Writer of the Year, Front Page of the Year and Columnist of the Year (for Bill Leckie).

A good night for Scotland on Sunday writer Peter Ross (who won Newspaper Feature Writer of the Year and Magazine Writer of the Year) and Bill Jamieson of the Scotsman who won Financial Journalist of the Year and Journalist of the Year - one of six for his paper.

Like several speakers, he urged journalists to stay strong in the face of the worst industry crisis since Wapping.

"Words are our gift that will see us through this storm and through other storms," he said.

It did little to lift the mood of the room - well aware that this is an industry in rapid decline.

Sports journalist Doug Gillon - who has seen off 14 editors in his 30 years at the Herald - used his speech accepting a Lifetime Achievement award to encourage better training of younger journalists.

He said: "I'm certain we'll adapt successfully to the digital and online era. I'm less confident that the staff-cutting, rife throughout the industry will promote the kind of training and mentoring which I was fortunate to receive.

"So if may use this platform to urge anything, it's to encourage a culture which helps nurture and encourage young journalists. It remains critical for all of our futures."

A case in point - the recipient of Young Journalist of the Year, Mike Farrell - who works for my old paper the Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter.

His coverage of the C.difficile outbreak in the Vale of Leven Hospital won him the award and a few nods of approval from his peers.

The paper is now based in Clydebank - and employs just a fraction of the staff it once did - but at least it's still there as a vital training ground for young journalists.

Whether the traditional career path through regional and national papers still exists in the future, is another matter entirely.