“Brandon is everyone.” Shame, Steve McQueen’s new film, opens later this week. It is a brutally frank portrait of a man’s struggle with addiction to sex. As McQueen explains here, it was shot in New York for the specific reason that no one in the UK would talk to him about sex addiction. No sex please.

Commercial TV's most influential and controversial figure Peter Bazalgette, mastermind of TV's Big Brother, Ground Force, Deal or No Deal and Ready, Steady, Cook!, is one of four arts knights announced in the New Year Honours. Bazalgette becomes a Sir alongside the Royal Opera House's musical director Antonio Pappano, Apple's chief designer Jonathan Ive and V&A Museum chairman and arts patron Paul Ruddock.

The 20th anniversary of the death of Serge Gainsbourg is an important milestone, but it has overshadowed the fact that 10 years have passed since the death of an another significant French singer and songwriter, Gilbert Bécaud. The release of Et Maintenant marks the anniversary in fine style, uniting singers across generations, a couple of whom aren’t even French.

Brace yourselves for pure Damien Hirst madness next year. As well as Tate Modern’s retrospective survey opening in April, there will be a “worldwide” retrospective of Hirst’s spot paintings opening next month.

The Gagosian Gallery will be hosting the global exhibition of Hirst’s jaunty but dull spot paintings across all of its 11 galleries, from Hong Kong to Paris, and from New York to London, as well as in Los Angeles, Athens, Rome and Geneva.

Well, the stars were out near Leicester Square, and it was neither the premiere of a Hollywood blockbuster, nor even a clear night. Instead, the stars were in conjunction at Gaby’s Deli, now the hotbed of a revolt against the plastification of London, a valiant push-back against the heart of theatre- and cinema-land being turned into a clone of every high street in the country.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra's Glasgow concert tonight has had to be cancelled because of what my Scots godson, in far less extreme conditions down in the Borders, once described as "horrifying wind and rain". The programme?

Even in London’s variegated show-world, something called Cabaret Falafel stands out as an exotic title. To discover that it will take place in a delicatessen, performed by the wonderful Henry Goodman, makes it both more piquant and more explicable, for Gaby’s Deli, a stalwart part of Charing Cross Road and of every London theatre-goer's map of the West End, is under threat.

I almost feel duty bound to make a declaration of interest here. I have done several pieces of paid writing for the Red Bull Music Academy, including a piece of course material for this year's Academy, and a few days ago I went to Madrid to see the Academy for the first time on their tab.

Without Hubert Sumlin there would have been no Yardbirds, Captain Beefheart, Led Zeppelin, T-Rex or White Stripes. He was also an essential ingredient for The Rolling Stones. As Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist, his straightforward power was the perfect foil to Wolf’s guttural vocal roar. The combination of Sumlin’s razor-wire distortion and bouncy riffing was irresistible and prefigured – influenced – the hard rock which evolved in the late Sixties. It also gave Marc Bolan his electric guitar style when Tyrannosaurus Rex became T-Rex.

George Shaw might have been the popular favourite, but it was Martin Boyce who carried the vote to win this year’s Turner Prize. The 44-year-old artist from Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, follows fast on the heels of two fellow Scots: Susan Philipsz won the prize in 2010 and Richard Wright in 2009. But neither seemed as much of a clear-cut choice as Boyce, for although the public vote wasn’t his, the critics were pretty much united in backing him.