Wherefore art thou Quentin?

When I first aired my theory about the reasons for the popularity of 'JB' as initials for action heroes, a friend pointed out that not everyone with those initials is heroic, his prime example being Jim Bowen.

In real life, people often lack the nominal suitability of fictional characters - the real James Bond, after all, was an ornithologist.  Stephen Fry once pointed out that if Noel Edmunds were a fictional character (and there's a pleasant thought), no author would have given him that first name.  A few years ago, I'd have said the same about Quentin Tarantino but, as time has gone by, the tension between the two elements has come to seem more and more appropriate for his odd combination of badassery and nerdishness.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the list of people whose names suit them perfectly includes a few cultural icons.  Orson Welles, with its suggestions of 'awesome' and 'swell', is ideal for a man whose genius was constantly brought down by grandiosity, in several senses of the word.  Similarly, it's fitting that Brian Eno, the music business' presiding intellectual, should have a name that combines an anagram of 'brain' with a surname that sounds like a technical device, or medicine.  The fact that his middle names are Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle is just a bonus - Eno, like Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, sometimes seems like a person whose exuberant nature was determined at the font.

My two favourite examples of real people with well-chosen names are less illustrious.  Nicholas Parsons, with its surfeit of syllables, is the ideal name for a generous, slightly befuddled quizmaster, not least because of its suggestion of minor clergy losing their underwear, like an image from an unusually frank Whitehall farce.

By contrast (and it's a demonstration of how much difference an abbreviation can make) Nick Bateman, villain of the first series of Big Brother, seemed predestined for that role by both his first name, evocative of both Machiavelli and the Devil, and a surname that suggested one who lays a trap, as well as American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, itself a hint of his eponymic ancestor, Norman Bates.

Margot Asquith said of Lord Kitchener that, if not a great man, he was a great poster.  Bateman was a C-list celebrity with an A-list name.

On Arts Subsidy, the Beatles and Brian Eno's 'Scenius'.

A few months back, I was reading Jonathan Holmes' article 'Why We Must Fund the Arts' (Guardian, 27/2/10) and the online comments. Many of these were predictable anti-subsidy rants, deploying the classic Daily Mail argument - 'I-don't-like-it-therefore-it-shouldn't-exist' - and a curious preoccupation with Tracy Emin's Bed - a work produced, by the way, entirely without government aid.

One comment, a bit more interesting, came from a poster who called him/herself 'liveanddangerous' and read, in its entirety: 'The Beatles never received an Arts Council Grant. Why should anyone else?'

It's a worthwhile question, because it highlights a problem in the whole way we talk about great achievers in the arts and, by implication, in any other field.

The achievement of the Beatles lay in their fusion of diverse, almost contradictory influences - American rhythm and blues, skiffle-inflected folk and country, music hall, Lennon's art-school surrealism - into something entirely original. Once they settled in London, their tastes got, if anything, even more eclectic - Ian MacDonald's brilliant Revolution in the Head chronicles their visits to theatres, galleries, classical concerts, alternative bookshops, all of them, ultimately, informing the work.

Surprisingly, it was Paul McCartney, rather than the more obviously intellectual Lennon, who was the band's real explorer of the avant garde. MacDonald, describing the genesis of 'Paperback Writer' in the Indica bookshop, makes the connection explicit:

'English culture of the period benefited immensely from the patronage of Jenny Lee, Harold Wilson's Minister for the Arts. Under her direction, theatres, concert halls, galleries and libraries received vital funding while the Arts Council, chaired by Lord Goodman, gained new grant-giving powers and expanded financial resources. In this atmosphere, creativity flourished in every walk of cultural life.' (Revolution in the Head, p.174)

There's a broader point here - we tend to consume (and study) art through a number of Great Men (mostly) and their Masterpieces - a Hamlet, a Citizen Kane, a Sergeant Pepper - and to ignore the soil in which they grew. Brian Eno has a useful concept here - 'scenius', which he defines as 'the intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural scene' (A Year With Swollen Appendices, p.354), as opposed to the individual 'genius', and gives a few examples of particularly productive ones - Russia 1905-1915, the Dadists in France, the punk era in London.

To create a strong scenius, you need a few things - communication and co-operation, a receptive audience, committed critics, and, yes, enough money (from whatever source) to ensure that the financially unsuccessful - who might be the most creative - aren't forced out.

Did the Beatles ever receive an Arts Council grant? Not directly, no, though they played in venues that did, and recorded sessions for the BBC. Was their work enhanced by contact with people who did? Unquestionably.

P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, I feel I should mention that I have myself been the recipient of arts subsidy. In 1987, I got £500 to tour The Tempest round parks and other open-air venues in Norfolk. Just making it clear.