Nelson Mandela had a nose for the dramatic gesture. The evidence is there in his speech at the Rivonia Trial in 1964, in his symbolic walk to freedom as he emerged on foot from captivity in 1990, his astute performance at the Rugby World Cup in 1995 and then finally in death, announced just as an epic new film of his life was being premiered in London, the seat of the old colonial power.

OK, R Kelly is gross. We knew that. The number of deeply creepy and abusive acts he's been accused of beggars belief (just Google if you want grotty details, it's all on Wikipedia). The fact that he continues happily along his way with wealth and public adoration fully intact must make him feel invincible

In the past weeks there has been a frenzy of publicity about the timelessness of a Time Lord. Through sundry incarnations (and one sizeable moratorium), Doctor Who has been on television screens for 50 years. But it's by no means the only show possessing what a football pundit once called stickability. In this edition of Listed, we celebrate the shows which have been knocking around for what feels like forever, nearly half of them for even longer than the good Doctor.

On 22 November 1963 President John F Kennedy was shot, yoking his name to an ex-marine and sometime defector to the USSR called Lee Harvey Oswald. Everyone old enough to remember is said to know where they were when they heard. As America dealt with its trauma, the conspiracy theories started,and spawned well over 1,000 books. The assassination also became the focus for artists in all art forms - in literature, theatre, film and even music. The latest is the movie Parkland, out this week, which reconstructs events in Dallas while steering clear of the main event.

Of all the rock pantheon, Joni is the one who has evaded definition and over-determination better than anyone. The seemingly ethereal folkstress who partied with the most grizzled rockers and left them weeping for their mothers; the lover of the rock'n'roll life who can sing jazz standards and stand with the very greatest; the musical maestro who prefers to see herself as a painter - for all the reams of text written about her, the depths of armchair psychoanalysis attempted on her, Joni is always something other, and something more than anything you might expect.

The National Theatre tonight hosts its 50th-birthday gala, 11 days after the English-speaking theatre's most important and influential address in fact reached the half-century mark. With celebration comes recollection, not least for those of us for whom the brutalist portals of Denys Lasdun's concrete structure have come over the years to seem nothing less than a second home. 

"I’m up to my ass in traditional songs," Linda Thompson says in the extensive Q&A published today on theartsdesk. When she talked to me she also discussed her early adventures in traditional folk music. "I was already interested in folk singing in Glasgow," she said. "Great people like Archie Fisher. When I came to London I got friendly with Sandy Denny, who was singing at The Troubadour. I’d been singing seriously since I was 18, in folk clubs, with Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, all those people. I really liked the music.

Right at the start of the boom around 20 years ago, a Hollywood mogul is said to have told one of his people to get some more work out of that Jane Austen. She seemed like a good source of romantic comedies. Regrettably for all, there were only ever six titles from this promising scriptwriter, and those have been done and done again by film and particularly television.

Seeing and hearing A Field in England's Richard Glover sing "Baloo, My Boy" while in bedraggled character reminded me of the power often exerted by songs explicitly or implicitly germane to a movie's narrative.

Hysteria is back. Terry Johnson’s comedy was written for the Royal Court in 1993, and for its 20th anniversary it is being revived at Hampstead Theatre. It is a homecoming in a sense: the play is set in the Hampstead home of Sigmund Freud, where he receives unexpected visits from Salvador Dalí and a young woman who cannot keep her clothes on. Freud will be played by Antony Sher.