11 JANUARY 1975, Page 19

Will Waspe

Last Sunday, BBC viewers in Scotland saw the first episode of a serial based on Guy"McCrone's novel, Wax Fruit. I hope they see the.: rest of it some day. The Scottish reg. drama department hasn't got the money to finish the thing, and the Beeb bigwigs evidently don't believe the rest of the nation will be much interested in a story about a rural Ayrshire family trying to settle in nineteenth-century Glasgow.

Poor Hugh

I am beginning to feel quite sorry for our doomed Arts Minister, Mr Hugh Jenkins. Even his eagerness to make long and boring public speeches is

excusable in one who has only a limited time to make some sort of mark in the office and who knows he will be chopped in favour of Mr Bryan Magee as soon as the Prime Minister feels the moment propitious.

Meanwhile poor Jenkins has desperately to defend the Government's reluctance to tell the Arts Council what its grant next year is going to be. It will be just his luck if Mr Wilson brings in Magee to give the news.

Going Strong

Roy Strong seems to be getting away with a kind of murder at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Following his razzmatazz treatment of the serious question of the destruction of country houses, the museum is now staging a show called Bodywork in fun-fair terms which I am happy to join Mr Terence Mullaly of the Daily Telegraph in describing as not only trivial but "positively harmful."