Nigel Kneale, the British screenwriter who created the various Quartermass series and foresaw the ubiquity of "reality" television in The Year of the Sex Olympics, has died at age 84. There's more at my Celebrity Deaths Archive.

Is Tom Cruise the next Charlie Chaplin? He and his production partner Paula Wagner have taken control of United Artists, the studios set up by Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. But does Cruise, who was sacked by Paramount after his bizarre public antics were deemed to have hurt the box-office performance of Mission: Impossible III, have the nous to run a studio making four films a year? Time will tell.

This morning on 612ABC, Spencer Howson and I spoke about the La Boite Theatre Company launch today (details will be on my other blog after midday), the issue of arts funding, which way is up and which way is down, and why I buy clothes online (and how I could come unstuck with two identical pairs of shoes).