"Most of Wagner's operas are simply Harry Potter set to music." Sir Jonathan Miller tells theartsdesk ...read more

...and isn't afraid to tell them. The contemporary art world - filled with million-pound paintings, august institutions, competitive gallerists, rich collectors and so many egos - is never that good at keeping things quiet. There's always some advantage (or just glee) to be gained by spilling the beans, and the better your sources the more popular you'll be.

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first: if a law firm is going to put on an opera, it should probably be Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury. Instead, having progressed through G&S’s Mikado and Pirates of Penzance in previous years, Magic Circle firm Allen & Overy last weekend staged The Magic Flute, and not just anywhere, but at Glyndebourne. The house which has resounded to Peter Pears and Felicity Lott this time was filled by tax lawyers and legal secretaries.

Author Simon Singh has spent £100,000 defending a libel action under our notoriously archaic libel laws, which are unjust, often against the public interest and have been internationally criticised. The case relates to him being sued by British Chiropractic Association for writing a newspaper article that questioned some of the claims of chiropractors, and now he is heading a campaign to reform these laws, and needs 100,000 signatures.

Although this campaign was sparked by this particular case, I believe that it is in the interests of all writers, critics and journalists to support reform because the right of freedom of speech applies to us all. The campaign states that freedom to criticise and question, in strong terms and without malice, is the cornerstone of argument and debate, whether in scholarly journals, on websites, in newspapers or elsewhere. Our current libel laws inhibit debate and stifle free expression. They discourage writers from tackling important subjects and thereby deny us the right to read about them.

The law is so biased towards claimants and so hostile to writers that London has become known as the libel capital of the world. Rich and powerful foreigners bring cases to London on the flimsiest grounds (libel tourism), because they know that 90 per cent of cases are won by claimants. Libel laws intended to protect individual reputation are being exploited to suppress fair comment and criticism.

The cost of a libel trial is often in excess of £1 million and 140 times more expensive than libel cases in mainland Europe; publishers (and individual journalists, authors, academics, performers and blog-writers) cannot risk such extortionate costs, which means that they are forced to back down, withdraw and apologise for material they believe is true, fair and important to the public.

The English PEN/Index on Censorship report has shown that there is an urgent need to amend the law to provide a stronger, wider and more accessible public interest defence. Sense About Science has shown that the threat of libel action leads to self-censorship in scientific and medical writing.

If you'd like to help, then read and sign the petition now!

What do you do for an encore at a theatre awards ceremony that several years ago featured James Corden locking lips with a mighty surprised Daniel Radcliffe? The unscripted moment that had spectators buzzing at Sunday night's whatsonstage.com trophy-bearing gala at the Prince of Wales Theatre involved one theatrical knight making a rather, uh, pointed reference to another.

You'll be lucky to find the one you want. Yesterday I took a nine year old to gape at the wonders of the Victoria and Albert Museum's new Medieval and Renaissance galleries, which I've been popping in to frequently since reading about them here. He reeled at the giant memorial to the condottiere, the enormous choir screen from 's-Hertogenbosch, the entire chapel of Santa Chiara from Florence and the gorgeous Hardwick Hall tapestry of a boar and bear hunt, among other treasures.

Then we paid a final visit to the shop so that he could spend some of the £5 he'd saved up to buy postcards of the things he'd liked best. Not one was to be found. I asked the nice girl at the counter why they had so few, and she said there had been a cull a couple of years ago: sign of the times, I wasn't the first customer to complain. The lady waiting to be served beside me  joined in with the moan. What about the musical instruments debacle?  Why so much flimsy merchandise when they had so few books and cards? We went away thinking of the V&A as a naff shop with a great, if increasingly unbalanced, museum attached.