We’ve already had the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, but now the biggie is coming up: the industry’s self-governed, own awards to itself, the Laurence Olivier Awards.

It’s always nicer, I think, when someone scratches your back for you, but it is, of course, always possible to give yourself a pat on your own back if you have to. You do run the risk of getting contorted in the process, and it’s fascinating to see just how contorted they’ve got this year: the nominations were announced yesterday, and in order to squeeze as many nominations in as possible, they’ve expanded three of the categories to six nominees. Yet others contain just five, four or even three nominees apiece, depending on the category; there’s simply no consistency at all.

Brevity, they are always saying, is the soul of wit; but these are lean times for theatre reviewing, in every sense. AA Gill famously suggested a few years ago that “no aspect of the culture is as badly served by its critics as the theatre is”, and went on to complain that “Many of the national press reviewers who haunt the lobbies of the West End, picking up their complimentary programmes and free glasses of screwtop wine, are a moribund, joyless, detached bunch. Where are the voices that ring out as being aesthetically intelligent, passionate, current and, most important, entertaining?”

Leaving aside his own dubious claims on that status - last year he began a now notorious review of an E1 restaurant with a long preamble about how he shot a baboon in Africa “last Wednesday, just after lunch”, merely in order “to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger” - he probably needs psychiatric help rather than a good meal out.

The Guardian yesterday ran a tribute to its long serving TV critic Nancy Banks-Smith, who joined the paper all of forty years ago - and is still writing for it today.

That’s an astonishing run, but so is the warmth of the tributes that were paid to her which helps to explain it. As producer and screenwriter Phil Redmond commented, “The truth is sometimes difficult to take. She is probably one of the most objective critics I have had on my back. Most critics are too busy writing about themselves, or trying to outdo each other with the best pun or joke. Nancy doesn’t have to do that because she is the real thing. Her writing is just good, honest, objective reporting. You know that she cares, and understands exactly what it’s all about.”

OK, I know this isn’t very carbon-friendly of me, and the government is already urging me to drive 5 miles less a week since car journeys account for more CO2 emissions than other kind of UK transport, but I still drive to the theatre most nights. I simply relish the convenience of having the car waiting for me afterwards, and getting home to Borough within five or six minutes of the curtain coming down.

But the news that Westminster Council is looking into a plan to extend West End parking meter charges and single yellow line penalties to midnight from Monday to Saturday, instead of the current 6.30pm cut-off, might finally get me onto my bike - literally. (Funnily enough, I was checking out bikes at a shop on Tooley Street just the other day).

Or I could simply walk to and from the West End.

On Monday, it was announced that John Logan’s Red, now in its final week at the Donmar Warehouse, is heading to Broadway, where it will begin a limited 15 week run from March 11. It’s the second transfer of the current Broadway season for the Donmar, following last autumn’s move of the Jude Law Hamlet.

And it’s far from alone amongst leading London theatres to make their mark on the current Broadway season.

Like most Londoners, I usually have to travel to the theatre, rather than the theatre travelling to me, but living in Borough, SE1, I at least feel part of a theatrical hub that means I don’t always have far to go to many of them. The Menier Chocolate Factory is less than five minutes away; Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark Playhouse, the Unicorn, Shunt and (in the summer) the Scoop, are less than ten minutes away; while the Union, Young Vic and Old Vic are nearby, too, not to mention the National which is another five minutes from the Cut. So I’m spoilt already.

But today the Royal Court have just announced that I’ll have yet another choice soon, as they are return to the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre where the summer before last they took over an unoccupied retail unit for a week’s run of Oxford Street (a play set in a sports shop, played out in a real shop, made it very site specific).

There are seldom any guarantees in life, let alone the theatre; but yesterday the Sunday Times reported the news that Cameron Mackintosh intends to ensure that his seven London theatres are to be protected for theatrical use in perpetuity. The plan, according to the Sunday Times, is to endow them with enough cash to keep them open after his death, staging only musicals and plays.

As the Sunday Times points out, “Though most West End theatres are listed buildings protected from demolition, uncertainty hangs over their use whenever they are sold. The Empire in Leicester Square became a cinema while the nearby Hippodrome is being converted into a casino and entertainment venue.”

But Cameron Mackintosh, who has already spent far more than any other operator on upgrading each of the theatres in his stable, has long taken a different view.

I often complain, but also secretly celebrate, the fact that there’s so much to see that I can’t possibly see it all; and of course we all have to make choices as a result. Whether you’re a critic or just a regular theatregoer, you go partly by your instincts and intuition, based on past experience, but you also want to be able to take risks, too, or you never expand on that experience.

That’s where critics can be useful - they might point you to things you wouldn’t think of seeing otherwise. I regularly use reviews to steer me towards new experiences, like Nic Green’s Trilogy that I saw at the Barbican last week.

For the seventh year running, the West End has just reported record figures, in both attendance and revenue, with each year eclipsing the last. Attendance has set an all-time record of over 14m for the first time, up 5.5% on the previous year, with revenues some 7.6% up, topping half a billion pounds, which demonstrates an even more important fact: the growth in income is outstripping even that of attendees, so the latter are paying ever more for the privilege.

All of this has defied every expectation.

Yesterday saw me hosting the annual Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards at the Prince of Wales Theatre, and I have to say that the day passed by in a bit of blur for me, inevitably, so I will await the more considered reporting of bloggers like Michael Coveney and the West End Whingers, for a full report of what they thought happened.

Did I really hear our incomparable guest speaker, Arthur Smith, tell us that Libby Purves - who in June will be taking over from Benedict Nightingale as chief theatre critic of The Times - reveal that she sells crack in Broadcasting House, and gives blow jobs to John Humphreys after the Today show? (I should have checked with Humphreys myself last night, since he was at the first night of Enron).

Later this morning my friend and long-time colleague Benedict Nightingale will be on hand to present the award for Best Actor at this year’s Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, that I am hosting as chairman of the Critics’ Circle at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

I’m thrilled that he’ll be doing it, but it’s a bittersweet occasion, as just yesterday it was formally announced that he’s finally stepping down, after some 20 years in the post, as chief theatre critic of The Times.

On Friday night, I bore witness to one of the most astonishing acts of audience participation I’ve ever seen: at the end of Nic Green’s Trilogy at the Barbican Theatre, female members of the audience were invited onto the stage to strip naked behind the curtain, then it was opened again to reveal them in all their glory before the rest of the audience joined them in a rousing, celebratory singalong of ‘Jerusalem’.

They even put in a new centre aisle at the Barbican Theatre - an unnecessary extravagance, I’d have thought, for just two performances - for the first time in the venue’s history, to facilitate the passage of audience members to the stage; but they could just as easily have reached the stage via the normal exits, as we did in November in the constant two-way traffic between the stage and the auditorium during the Roman Tragedies.

I was noting just yesterday that we’re in the midst of the awards season, and yesterday I found myself at the Royal Opera House for yet another at lunchtime: it was the 10th anniversary of the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards, and the great and good of the dance world were assembled in the Floral Hall to honour recipients in a mammoth 16 categories.

Looking at the list of nominees, I realised with some trepidation what a parallel universe this is.

We’re in the midst of the awards season, of course; and just as the Golden Globes (presented by the Hollywood Foreign Film Association) last Sunday prefigure the Oscars that will follow on March 7, so over here we’ve already had the longest-running Evening Standard Theatre Awards, before the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards next Tuesday celebrates its 21st anniversary, then the Oliviers follow on March 21.

Each of these are decided by variously constituted panels of experts - whether it be a small group of invited leading critics in the case of the Standard Awards (though, curiously, only its own lead reviewer and not his deputy), a wider pool of critics in the case of the Critics’ Circle Awards (drawn from the entire membership of the drama section, or at least those who choose to exercise their private ballot), and a specially appointed panel of theatre professionals and selected members of the public (chosen by interview) in the case of the Oliviers.