Busy, busy, busy. Two major problems on hand at the moment - sorting out who is going to star in my new film and contemplating a fairly deviant connection between food and sex. The two problems may end up as one, I suppose.

The film is an as yet unwritten project which will be wrung out of me sometime next year by the Open University. I've embarked on a course which opened yesterday which will end up with me scripting a film. I've always thought screenwriters should have performers in mind even if, in the end, there's no chance of your chosen star doing it.

Yes, you'll look this surprised if you go to The Old Rep Theatre next week, when audiences are in for a rare family theatrical treat.

Skellig is one of those small selection of books for children which has universal family appeal. It became an instant classic (and award winner) when it was published in 1998. Five years ago a stage version was premiered at the Young Vic in London. Next week a new production by Birmingham Stage Company opens at The Old Rep (Oct 7-18 at 7.30 with 2pm matinees on 9,13,14,16). It's aimed at youngsters of 7 upwards.

For that's the school featured in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the spectacularly successful show currently wowing audiences at Northampton's Royal and Derngate.

There are a few specials in the pipeline, but Dr Who is not coming back to the regular Saturday night slot until 2010. Meanwhile, the Tennant-shaped gap in the Saturday evening schedule is being filled by Merlin. It's Harry Potter meets every Disney Channel high school sitcom you've ever seen.

It's utter rubbish, but, accepted at its own level (like Mamma Mia) is hugely enjoyable. Once you get past the young wizard calling the soon-to-be Once and Future King 'a prat' and phrases like 'No way' being bandied about, there are pleasure on offer.

A new movie seems about to make considerable ripples around the world. Wave is the story of a real-life social experiment in an American high school when a teacher brainwashed students into becoming fascists. Ironically, the film version has added punch by being made and set in Germany with all its overtones of a Nazi past.

It's been done before in a rather more nuanced and thought-provoking way by novelist Muriel Spark. Her fictional creation of a Scottish school teacher obsessed with the regimes of Franco and Mussolini, is one of the great creations of modern literature.

Today (that's Sept 17) is the Feast of St Lambert, a Flemish monk and bishop of the 7th Century, celebrated as the patron saint of surgeons.

Once the poor devil was made to stay out all night in his abbey's cloister in virtually no clothes - when it was snowing. This was his penance for breaking wind audibly, which the elders interpreted as a breach of his monastic vow of silence.

Religion is so character-forming, don't you think?

Lots of guff here if you're interested. He's pictured being martyred - lots of disagreement about that, but not his ability to fart with the best of 'em ...Google Le Petomane if you want to learn about a REAL master.

A little cluster of mental itches need scratching - Meryl Streep, shoplifting, and what I've come to call the Costa Conundrum, for starters.

Streep is easy, but far from simple. I'm on about Mama Mia, of course, which we got round to seeing this weekend. It's proved extremely popular with audiences around the world, and has been sniffily received by many critics. The plotline is about as deep as that thin, thin layer on the surface of water (meniscus?) which serves as the M6 for water boatmen and the like.

Another lazy but great value blog ...Here's a clever publicity shot for The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, which I went on about the other day, showing Anna Francolini as Jean.

Couldn't resist it ... original post on Flickr, but found on the brilliant stumbleupon.com, the subject of a Post blog some time back - do try it: it will change your browsing life.

But amid all the wailing, insecurity and, frankly, hatred of parent company Trinity Mirror, there seems to be a reasonable amount of sympathy for editors Marc Reeves and Steve Dyson, currently Post and Mail supremos respectively.

I recall doing an interview with him at Birmingham's Strathallan Hotel donkeys' years ago when I first observed him at it. He was fascinated by the effect of what was once called 'elevator music' on fellow lift users and the general levelling out of rhythm and pitch.

The four-day International Festival of Glass centred on Stourbridge was absolutely wonderful in every way. It was worth travelling from the ends of the earth just to sample the fabulous bread pudding (made with muscovado sugar) on offer in Wordsley Church Hall or see the extraordinary glass dresses at Broadfield Museum or the magnificent work by international artists in the Sculpture Garden at Ruskin Glass Centre.

Not forgetting the sounds of the street performer in a bowler hat, apparently smashing windows or being chased by wolves, hiding behind a buggy-pushing mum or relieving himself against a wall - hilarious and utterly unexpected.

It lasted a bare hour, but the world premiere show by Theatre of Glass has kept us talking for days.

Tempestade is very loosely based on chunks of The Tempest, the Shakespeare text which has been referenced by several items and events at the Stourbridge International Festival of Glass, which finishes today (Monday, Aug 25) with a knees-up on the Nile.

But Tempestade has about as much to do with the Elizabethan narrative as the melody of Greensleeves has to do with the Thomas Tallis Fantasia. It's a starting point for a riff, a brave and fascinating experiment which struck me as having a lot to do with the methodology of free improvisation in music.

Let's set the background for you, the mise en scene, as we say in the trade.

All parents will know, I hope, about the brilliant (with awards to prove it) website set up by the BBC which runs in tandem with the CBBC channel. One of the myriad features gives youngsters the basic software tools and some instruction in film making. It's called Me and My Movie.

Then, at the cafeteria at the Discovery end of Conkers, the giant red squeezy plastic bottle turns out to be full of French dressing.

As a cultural commentator I thought it was a given - big red squeezy bottle with nozzle equals red sauce, big yellow squeezy bottle with nozzle equals mustard. It's part of the ancient Hot Dog Code, before French dressing was invented. We have to pay 5p each for sachets of ketchup which, like the similarly-packaged vinegar and brown sauce, are impossible to open without going on a Learning and Skills Council course. Luckily our seven-year-old has mastered the knack.