Nowhere Boy, the new film about the teenage life of John Lennon, is based on a memoir by his half-sister, Julia Baird. Or is it? Just shown at the London Film Festival before its charity premiere in Liverpool later this month, and then general release in December, her screen credit has now been taken off - at her insistence.
Baird, whose Imagine This was published in 2007, dislikes the way her father (not John's) is portrayed in the movie, and she's also repulsed by the way their mother, also called Julia, is shown sexually fantasising about John, once she's reunited with him after he had been living with his aunt Mimi for a decade. I can understand her concerns, yet it's an extremely watchable movie, which makes you understand why Lennon was so angry. He lost his mother twice - once when he was taken away from her, at five years old, and then when she was killed, when he was 17, in a car crash after their reconciliation.
Credit then to Sam Taylor-Wood, whose first feature film this is, though she is quick to praise her award-winning cameraman, Seamus McGarvey. She should probably thank a couple of others even more. A film director friend pinched the script from an agent, and then gave it to her, as he thought she would be the perfect person to make the movie. Having read Matt Greenhalgh's screenplay, Taylor-Wood kept pestering the producers, Ecosse, to let her direct. Wisely, they relented.
I happen to know the name of this talented "thief", but I won't embarrass him. Of course, Taylor-Wood should credit even more her casting director for finding Aaron Johnson to play John Lennon. They now plan to marry.
Along with An Education and Fish Tank, I rate Nowhere Boy as one of the three best British movies of the year. It's no coincidence that all three were directed by women, who can bring a sensitivity to film-making often lacking in men. And yet less than 10% of directors are women - a celluloid ceiling still so hard to break.
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Disappointingly, however, I hear that Katie Jarvis, who burst onto the screen at Cannes last May with her remarkable debut performance as the troubled teenager Mia in Fish Tank, is not likely to do any more movies. Despite getting high-profile agents in both Britain and America, the 18-year-old from Tilbury thinks she is not cut out for acting. Too much pressure. So it's the life of a mum on an Essex estate instead.
Do go to the new British Museum exhibition of the Staffordshire hoard, uncovered a few weeks ago after a treasure hunter found the amazing Anglo-Saxon artefacts in a field.
The 1,500 pieces will be valued later this month. In a funny sort of way it would be better if the price was not too great, though it will probably be in seven figures. Too high would make it hard to raise money for the haul to be kept and displayed in the west Midlands.
It will, I gather, also be tougher soon for dealers, who are often offered treasure trove, to place artefacts for sale on sites such as eBay. Parliament is, rightly, going to clamp down on spivs exploiting this loophole.
With a weak pound, foreign tourists are filling London's theatres, but at least the West End is now run by the British, with the theatre group Ambassador to buy the American-owned Live Nation's two London theatres - the Lyceum, where The Lion King keeps on running, and the Apollo Victoria, home to Wicked.
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The deal makes Ambassador the undisputed king of Shaftesbury Avenue. It also gives more clout to the owner/producer, which Ambassador is, and with it, hopefully, more often the likelihood of the right play or show ending up on the right stage. Unfortunately, Prick up Your Ears, which has been running at the Ambassador's Comedy Theatre, is now coming off early. It never recovered from losing Matt Lucas as its star, even though top seat prices have recently been a mere £25.
Cultural philistinism or what? The Labour peer Lord Tunnicliffe was at least honest in parliament last week when he admitted that he'd never heard of the French writer mentioned by his colleague Lady Ruth Rendell. The writer was Jean Genet. A couple of weeks earlier, Philip Hammond, the Tory shadow chief secretary of the treasury, had managed to confuse government plans to sell off the Tote with the Tate. I wonder how much Britain's top gallery would go for?