Gertsamtkunstwerk

Hurrah for blog...

Sorry about the non-availability of the blog for most of today. I was given sufficient warning by my host, but due to a major domestic crisis I felt completely unable to post to blog yesterday. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Suffice to say that I reached home at half past seven, tired, but not exhausted, only as tired as one should be after a day at work, looking forward to a prawn curry purchased from the absolutely brand new Sainsburys just opened a hop skip and jump away on Brixton Hill, bang opposite the bus-stop, and exponentially better than the three-month-old Tesco on the South Circular.

I opened the front door - which is a good thing, because last week, coming home from the Wigmore Hall, I didn't need to bother because it was already heart-stoppingly wide open - and immediately smelt a very strong and unmistakable smell of gas. I also heard the sound of unlit gas and went straight to the gas cooker, where one of the hobs was on, but not lit.

Let's just say that major words were exchanged, many of them sweary. I was petrified even to switch a light on until I was fully satisfied the gas had dispersed - by dint of opening the back door, something you really want to do on an cloudless November night /sarcasm.

I posited the possibility that I might have accidentally left the hob-knob on when leaving the house at nine-ish. If so, it is probably reasonable to assume that it would have been smelt at four-ish, the next time the house was occupied. If it wasn't smelled after being on for seven hours, there is a problem with the non-smeller. Alternatively, the house did not smell of gas at 4-ish, but did at 7.30, which suggests the hob-knob was switched on sometime in between. I was surprisingly not beside myself with rage: I think I was just numb with the shock of 'what ifs...'. And I made it absolutely clear that someone who risks the security of our home one week, and then risks our lives, not to mention that of our immediate and not-so-immediate neighbours, for the sake of too much vodka, has to take a very very serious look at themself.

About the only thing I did last night was watch a recording of the increasingly excruciating The Awful Mrs Pritchard, which is becoming more and more watchable for its 'so-bad-it's good' qualities.

My personal lowlight/highlight last night was the way they sit around in Cabinet Meetings like it's the coffee party after the Sixth Form Debating Society. No notion of briefing papers, pre-meetings, discussions in Cabinet Committees, one-to-ones between PM and Cabinet Ministers. And the almost total lack of officials.

The PM seems to have a total of three - the Press Secretary, where Jodhi May is admittedly rather gorgeous, the daffy bag carrier, and the token bloke, who manages to be, I think, Cabinet Secretary, Principal Private Secretary, and Chief of Staff, quite a tall order I think for anyone, especially one supporting a PM so utterly devoid of the ability to think through the consequences of any action, let alone think in any sort of joined up way or outside of a vacuum.

I'm in desperate need of Yes (Prime) Minister. Compare and contrast. I don't remember Jim Hacker spending a great deal of time in Cabinet.

Ladettes to Ladies

Best show on the TV. Annoyed we missed the first in the series.

Very mixed feelings about the people; Ithink that's what they call thought-provoking. Or, at least, conversation-provoking.

We love Cook; she has people-skills. She can persuade and win respect because she listens and empathises yet does not tolerate nonsense. We laugh at Flower-Arranging Woman. Shame she can't talk proper; string a sentence together. Shame she's so stilted and awkward.

Some of the stuff they teach is rot. I mean, flower arranging. Isn't that what bored housewives do when they're too broom-up-their-arse to have an affair, even when hubby's screwing the secretary. My view, either put some nice flowers in a vase, or pay a professional to do it.

Flower-arranging woman is stuck in the Fifties where Nice Ladies married City Bankers. In the Noughties, Nice Ladies become City Bankers. Or whatever. The 'Ladettes' lack a sense of appropriateness, a sense of what impacts on other people, and an ability to adapt to context, to read a situation.

I had a brief thought of what would happen if some of my friends and I did the Ladettes to Ladies course. Presented with the public school oikish chinless wonders, quite a few, myself included, would go dyke. I can imagine quite a few exclaiming over the lack of vegetarian alternatives and coldly explaining to The Ladies Who Lunch that in 2006 a lack of veggie alternative, perhaps pre-negotiated by email, or a lack of regard of food allergies, is Plain. Bad. Manners.

I'd like to run a finishing school. Turn girls into women. They'd learn how to run a Residents Association, what to do when they break down 200 miles from home on a dark rainy evening. How to deal with insolent Twunts in Call Centres. How to adapt. (Overheard outside the Royal Opera House 'she's gone to change from her evening dress into cycling gear'). How to survive in the workplace without being exploited. How to make choices that aren't fashionable. And most of all to feel the sense of achievement. Of anything. Anything that needs a struggle, anything that's a challenge.

But if I ran telly, I'd do a programme that converts public school twats into human beings. Men mainly. But Miss Flower Arranging, too. I'd take her to a football match, on a pub crawl, on a week's hill-walking. On an audit to dockyards and Public Enquiry Offices and subsistence-level hill-farms. Or a Community Law Centre, to Rehab.

Trouble is, programme is commissioned by kinsoles. Coke-sniffing public school twunts with pony-tails. Know nothing about life. Want to take the piss out of people who've not had their chances, who've not had Daddy open the door so that they can sit on their fat arses earning Stupid Money.

Or what about Lads to Citizens. Teaching Grunts a bit about respec'. Starting with Self-Respec'.

Woah, stop it there. Laughing at blokes. Woo, might make my willy shrink. Koff.

Cosy by the fire with toasted crumpets

Autumn is the season for TV-viewing. An impressive and varied line up was on the Sky+ when we returned. Kath & Kim, Arrested Development, Lead Balloon, Swingers...like Gert Cottage is Comedy Central.

Also Galapogos, strictly for the male portion of the house. Ancient Rome, so far too masculine and battle-heavy compared to the shagfest that was last year's Rome.

Jane Eyre, shaping up nicely to be a brilliant and well-acted evocation of one of the very great novels of all time, lots of noir...blimey, I've taken this long to mention Toby Stephens. Jimmy doesn't know the story, so I'm resisting the temptation to blurt out about the Mad Woman in the Attic...it was like when Pride and Prejudice was shown and my mother made some passing reference to "the wedding" and I was "You've ruined it, I had no idea" and she was shocked that I had no idea. then a few days later it was under discussion at work and S. my manager said something like "No doubt you women are all excited about how they'll film the wedding" and J. went "Wedding? They get married!", and W. ticked S. off for spoiling it: S. was shocked that the book hadn't been read, and turned to me for moral support. Smugly, I responded "Don't worry S., my mother's already ruined it by revealing the ending". I digress.

And then we have Robin Hood.

What a pile of pants. Looked forward to. Hey, I'm a Nottingham graduate, I do Robin Hood. I have a teddy bear on my PC table dressed as Robin Hood.

That was turned off after half an hour; we only endured that long in the mistaken belief that the other was enjoying it. The dialogue was so stilted. Which might have been deliberate, to hammer home that it was set in "Old Times". And they might have got way with it if the actors could have, you know, acted. I was trying to work out whether it was a particularly bad example of Jackanory Playtime, or just an extreme case of AmDrams overparted. The lead was leaden; in general I was trying to work out whether the style was ham or turkey.

Such a shame it had to be switched off because Richard Armitage (Guy of Gisborne) is eye-candy in an evil sexy way.

I couldn't live without my telly, but I don't feel any great urge to lap up all the formulaic shite they generally hurl at us

Nothing on the telly...

Most of the time anyway...

However, tonihgt at 9 o'clock we could be watching:

• Al Qaeda, Time to Talk on BBC2
• Midsomer Murders on ITV
• Gala Operatig Gwyl Y Faenol on S4C (featuring Rolando juggling while singing while swigging from a can of Tennants Extra), which also partly clashes with West Wing on More 4
• Beethoven's 9th on BBC4 (which also clashes with Faenol and West Wing)
• Blackbeard on Sky One (Jimmy, not me), not to be ocnfused with BBC1's Blackbeard that starts next week.

Fortunately, we can receive two at once, and many of them are repeated later in the night or the week.

But even so, I find it frustrating that so much of the week is taken up with garbage than there is this unmanageable list at 9pm on Sunday - which I assume is peak peak peak viewing time...

Update: Well, the Beethoven 9 dilemma is solved by cancellation after small fire

Wot, no Beethoven 9 at the Proms? Is this the end of civilisation?

Unconnected thoughts on TV

A couple of programmes grazed my radar this week.

One was Newsnight, who did an extended profile of John Reid. Fairly interesting, but do you know what really annoyed me? The reporter, bimbo with a meagre IQ, did a piece where she was filmed outside the various departments he has held office. "Department of Defence" she said.

No, it's the Ministry of Defence. Talk about Dumbed Down TV. If a 'political' correspondent on Newsnight - yes, Newsnight, not the Natasha Kaplinsky dumb bimbo show - can't get right the name of a major government Department that hasn't changed in my political life, really what the hell is going on with the BBC? I would be more forgiving if it was live, but there was no way one can move form Department of Defence to Interior Ministry to Department of Commie Socialised Medicine in seconds. I wonder how she got the job - because she has detailed knowledge of the British Political System, or because she's a twenty something blonde with big tits? And who edited the report?

I hope I never see her again on Newsnight, which used to be a reliable source of information.

The other programme is Respectable. NSFW. I thought it was excellent, I laughed out loud involuntarily. A sitcom set in a suburban brothel. As long as you're not a prude, give it a watch.

But then I googled and got a petition against it.

We, the undersigned, believe that Channel 5’s new sitcom, 'Respectable', due to be screened in August 2006, about women selling sex in a brothel as subject of humour is a gross misrepresentation of the lives of women involved in prostitution. The reality for most women involved in prostitution is coercion, extreme violence, drug dependency, homelessness, criminal records, rapes and beatings - not shoe collections and student loans.

And now I feel on the horns of a dilemma. I do so agree with the sentiments expressed. But I'm not sure that I feel comfortable condemning the programme. It is genuinely funny. But I argued when BdeJ won the Guardian best blog award, it really is not an accurate representation of prostitution, which is nasty, whatever gloss someone tries to put on it. So I 'm not sure that consistency allows me to endorse a sitcom set in a suburban brothel.

It's over...

Maybe they will repeat it all the way back from Series 1

One of the best TV series ever. In the history of everness.

West Wing

To me it absolutely epitomises the demise of Channel 4. The channel that used to be serious and could be relied upon to show the very best dramas, amongst other things, to a TV channel that surely has absolutely no credibility and barely shows any programme that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator, assisting those who are complicit in their own brainwashing.

I missed too much of West Wing thanks to the capriciousness of Channel 4 messing it around all over the schedules. Once upon a time I would have called it my favourite channel, but I can never do that now. More4 looks like it's becoming a serious channel for people who think. But what a betrayal by Channel 4 Terrestrial.

That Seventies Thing

We struggled almost to the end of that *Five* pretentious twaddle that struggled to be a history of the Seventies. They dealt with industrial unrest entirely superficially.

What a contrast with BBC2's documentary, a few weeks back, about the Secret Coup against Harold Wilson, when they detailed how the Right Wing Establishment and The City organised the overthrow of the Democratically Elected Government. I thought it was all a bit far-fetched, having read widely in the past about Wilson's decreasing mental powers.

According to this documentary, the coup plotters went to The Queen Mother (gawd bless her) and got her consent to install Lord Mountbatten as the Quisling Head of Government. The troops even had a rehearsal manoeuvre at Heathrow. But they did quote senior MoD and MI5 sources who confirmed that rogue but senior figures in those organisations were indeed plotting to overthrow the elected government. I'm still uncertain - my intellectual and professional inclination to scepticism is fighting my instinctive naivety and "They wouldn't, would they?"

We thought last week's was poor when they went on and on about how awful high rise inner city council blocks were without actually getting the views of anybody who had lived in them. They asserted that in the Seventies everyone was going on holiday to exotic foreign destinations. Well, maybe they were in affluent media-working North London, but I left Primary School in 1979, in an area which though not affluent, was hardly poor, and today is one of the top ten most affluent constituencies in the country. If I recall, other than visits to relatives in Ireland, only three people went abroad - and that was to the Balearics.

The final one last week so took the biscuit that we switched it off less than halfway through. We had got to commercial break two and had been told repeatedly that the Seventies were VERY CREATIVE without anybody actually citing anything that had been created, and Steve Harley saying that Abba are irrelevant to the Seventies. Yeah, because the output of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel has endured, right...?

The claimed that the Seventies was the decade where everybody wore trendy clothes, which had never happened before. Well, that wasn't the case in Sale. And Sale wasn't exactly behind the times, I mean, George Best owned a boutique there. But most people did not have much disposable income, especially with pay increases struggling to catch up with inflation. They certainly didn't shop at trendy boutiques. Altrincham market more like.

They also claimed that Biba was the first example of mass-production. Marks and Spencer, I suggested. Ladybird at Woolworths, suggested Jimmy. Then, in the next breath they declared that it was not until the Seventies that male teenagers had ever thought about following fashion and being tribal. This rather surprised Jimmy who as a teenager had a Beatles haircut, a Beatles jacket and winkle-pickers (but, oddly, no camera...!).Then we remembered Mods and Rockers, and decided we really didn't want any more of this poorly researched tripe.

And we concluded that Rick Wakeman is a total tosser.

In contrast, Life on Mars, which we missed first time around but are enjoying in repeat on BBC4 is far more accurate. I liked the bus. I was convinced they would make it a GMT* bus, but to my delight it was SELNEC**. I'm not saying that LoM is deadly accurate, but not too many of those characters, cops or crims or witnesses were dressed in hippy boutique designer fashion.

(I also flash back to the first series of Grange Hill, made and shown in 1978 and repeated in about 1990, at which point I gasped at how Trisha Yates's older sister, Carol, not required to wear uniform in Sixth Form, dressed like a middle-aged frump. Because Sixth Formers did in 1978).

So many aspects of Life on Mars are excellent. Philip Glenister is a star; I love that whole John Thaw/The Sweeney "You're nicked" thing, but I also like the snippets of stuff we forget. When 2006 cop Sam Tyler instructs the ambulance man to insert a saline drip, the ambulance man says "I'm an ambulance driver not a doctor." Heavier stuff, too, like the callous contempt the police showed to key witnesses. Not to mention the "Plonks" - there was Annie Cartwright stuck with being a WPC, almost certainly on significantly lower wages than a PC, and stuck brewing tea and cleaning up vomit-strewn cells, when she had the skills and intelligent to be a DI or higher. Good to see the police have thrown off those neanderthal attitudes.

* Greater Manchester Transport - created 1974
**South East Lancashire North East Cheshire, created to prepare for Local Government reorganisation in 1974.

Talking Heads

"Five" - which I insist on calling Channel Five - aired the first in its new series: The 1970s: That Was the Decade That Was.

It was a worthy attempt but a bit hit-and-miss. They are investigating a different theme each week. Last Friday it was gender, sexuality and sexual orientation; this coming Friday "how Britain went bust; society became divided; and racism was on the rise."

I was initially irritated as it uttered barely defensible assertions eg "The Seventies was the Decadent Decade, the one of Consumerism." Where does that leave the Eighties, I thought? Yes, people did buy consumer goods, but they had done so since the Fifties, to the extent that they could be afforded. It also highlighted certain social trends, such as out homosexuality and unmarried couples living together, which may well have started in the Seventies amongst the pace-setters but in my opinion did not really take off until later. Conversely, they suggested that illegitimate children was a total social stigma until the Seventies. I think that was a simplification, because I can think of many illegitimate children of my own age (ie born in the Sixties) and yet I will swear that there was considerable social stigma into the eighties and beyond.

The best bits of the programme was the archive footage, and the contribution of knowledgeable people, such as Rosie Boycott, who were actually there and making things happen. Some contributions were obviously thrown in for comedy value: Norman Tebbitt saying that he was not entertained by Women's Lib, followed by an immediate segue into a demonstration for Equal Pay for Women. Very depressing to think that a former Employment Secretary still does not understand the importance of Equal Pay to over half the population. And Henry Cooper proclaiming that before the Seventies married women didn't work, but instead had the dinner on the table for the children. My interpretation is that going back decades and decades working-class women did work, had to work, and also got the dinner on the table.

But I was puzzled at the inclusion of 'Celebrity Contributions'. People expressing their opinions in a Talking Head. Or perhaps mouthing the words of a researcher. I can't understand why they were used, because they did not seem to bring a particularly personal experience nor do they have any credentials as social commentators. Even more puzzling in a programme that was aimed at a UK TV audience and was exclusively about developments in British society was the use of American social commentators. They weren't there, what do they know. Sure, there were parallel developments in the US, but so were there in France, Germany and numerous other countries. I detest this inappropriate, incongruous and inappropriate constant-Americanisation by the media of UK space.

The absolute best contribution came from Tom Robinson, who, despite being a 'celebrity' was able to articulate and amusingly analyse a personal anecdote to illustrate a wider point. In his case, reading Gay Times on the Tube, knowing there was a City Gent behind him, expecting some verbal abuse, and then hearing the City Gent make a comment to the effect that he too reads Gay Times.

What I took away was that so many people are so anxious to control the lives of others, when it's none of their business. Failing to understand that giving other people a choice does not mean being obliged to do likewise. But I don't know to what extent it is stupidity or fear or hatred.

It will be interesting to see whether they tackle environmentalism, which is far more important in understanding how private actions really do impact on society and its constituent individuals than faux morality about private sexuality. Yet quarter of a century later, sexual 'morality' is still more controversial than environmental morality.

Our intermittent satellite TV problem

Or rather, an entire weekend without any digital TV and only poor quality terrestrial to sustain us.

I have contacted the Development company outlining the problem, and noting that their site manager has been helpful and constructive, but that is not sufficient.

It is possible to move the satellite dish but even if we find an alternative suitable spot I suspect that it will still hit the concrete boom at some point.

If the company does not respond to my email by mid-afternoon tomorrow I shall telephone them and explain that it is a matter that requires immediate attention. If they have not come up with an absolute and permanent solution I shall contact my solicitor, my MP and the site owners, the Metropolitan Housing Association. I will not hesitate to contact media outlets if necessary, starting with the South London Press but not ruling out national media.

In the interim I shall try and call out the Lambeth Noise Patrol people this evening. They are unbelievably womderful people and although our problem isn't Noise, it most certainly is a nuisance coming from a building site. Whether it constitutes a Statutory Nuisance, I do not know, but that is to find out! I am of the view that it is an "unreasonable intrusion", and I suspect if I hopped on an omnibus to Clapham and questioned a random man, he would agree.

A possible solution might be for the construction company to pay for us to have a motorised satellite dish installed, but even then, it would only be acceptable if we can still receive Sky Sports, the various film channels provided by Sky or equivalent, and Artsworld, as well as Sky Plus or an equivalent service. And receive them 24 hours a day 7 days a week if we so wish.

The obvious solution is for them to remove their crane and replace it one that doesn't have a concrete boom.

Brainwashing is us

This was on TV last week, and we recorded it, and I've just walked out of it.

Alternative Health: Healing

I think it makes me angry.

To me, it's obvious, that there are great number of low-level chronic conditions that are an interplay between mind and body. They mentioned eczema. I suffered it as a child; in theory I still do. At about age ten, my GP flippantly remarked it could be exacerbated by Manchester United losing, then checked he'd got the right team. But his flippancy aside, he was observing, even back in the Seventies, that psychology has a major influence over chronic conditions.

Some of us remember Pat "One in a million" Seed, who was supposed to have terminal cancer and die, but through sheer will-power and a determination to raise £1million, lived well beyond her prognosis, until her husband was killed in a freak methane gas explosion. Soon after, she died.

This programme started with footage of some dreadful hysteria-raising preacher who got people to walk out of their wheelchairs by saying "Hallelujah" a few times at a football stadium.

A couple of years ago my aunt had a hip replacement and said her recovery was down to religion or Holy Water or some such, to which my mother, really quite religiously obsessed herself, questioned "Wasn't it down to the NHS and advances in medical science?".

I'm not knocking any individual's personal religious beliefs. A great many of my best friends are people who are seriously spiritual Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews or whatever. I don't think there is one reader of this blog who knows what my spiritual beliefs are.

I find it extraordinarily arrogant that anyone can say with absolute certainty, that there is not a Higher Power out there, be it the literal God or Allah or G-d of the ancient scriptures, or a more difficult to define Mother Nature-type figure. I think that religion, more so than politics, or music, or even football, is an area where it is wise to accept the private beliefs of others without question and with tolerance.

What I find problematic is where people use their religious beliefs, whether of an old-fashioned centuries old world religion, or whether of a 21st Century New Age type, to oppress or brainwash others. From the few minutes I watched of this programme, until I walked out in disgust, I was appalled at how these evangelical preachers prey upon the poor, stupid and vulnerable, ultimately by taking far too much of their money. "Mind over matter" is an ancient proverb. If you believe you will be healed, you will be.

I knew a guy; when I first met him he had no hair. I didn't realise I had not seen him for some months; when I did, he had hair. He had cancer. He was not a spiritual person in any conventional sense, but he believed in humanity and he believed in the world. He seized each morning as a thing of beauty and lived each day as if it was his last. I don't know if he danced, because I wasn't watching. I don't know of he loved, but even though we were only neighbours, he obviously made an impact on my life, because I'm writing about him fifteen years later.

It makes me angry to see a GP in a polka dot bow tie (as an aside, what is that about) expressing his incredulity at faith healing. If he had been doing his job rather than accepting the payola of the drugs companies, he would have known that psoriasis, along with moderate depression and a host of other conditions, is far better healed by treating the patient holistically as a person rather than as a mere receptacle for prescription drugs. And that's what the faith healers do.

We were in conversation with someone a few weeks ago. (Actually, their friends, whilst tipsy, expressed they were never happier than when discussing their ailments; in J and me they found captive audience). The woman had been in a car crash forty years ago; as age crept up on her, she found greater problems with her musceo-skeletal system, until she found a sports therapist who was a qualified nurse and physiotherapist with a psychology degree. Within weeks, she had seen a marked improvement in the condition that had troubled her since university.

I find it frustrating that people are so busy filling their time with reality TV shows and Heat! magazine, they don't spare the time to find out about themselves. By not knowing about themselves, by being free-choosing agents of brainwashing by the forces of capitalism, they lack they intellectual rigour to recognise when they are the unwitting victims of brainwashing by the forces of Organised Religion.

I always try and distinguish between Organised Religion and personal spiritual belief. OR is a political party, the biggest, most totalitarian, the most oppressive , the most destructive and murderous force in the world, now and throughout history. Personal spiritual belief is what keeps one sane, what keeps one human, as long as it is accompanied by intellectual discovery and personal soul searching, rather than unquestioningly accepting the teachings of the vested interest as a lazy add-on to Reality Celebrity TV and vacuous conspicuous consumption.

One day, I expect, I shall wake up a Buddhist. It seems to make sense. But my intellect fights against being told a set of rules, when God, or g-d, or Allah, or Mother Nature, has given me the capacity to work things out for myself. For me, it would be the worst sin of all to ignore what my mind, unbidden, is telling me is right. And wrong.

West Wing to be axed

Political drama West Wing is axed

I gave up a long time ago. not because of anything inherent in WW, one of my alltime favourite series but because of the capricious scheduling of Channel 4, E4, More 4, 4Again, 4+1, 4Four, 44444 etc.

I have concluded that I shall venture into personal virgin territory and slowly buy up the DVDs from Series One. I have never bought TV programmes on either video or DVD.

Rolling news is doomed

Rolling news RIP

Regular readers will know about my ambiguity about 24-hour news stations. This article spells out why it is most definitely not the future, citing two of my arguments - viewers' preference for a thoughtful editoralised bulletin, and the fact that when something really big happens, the terrestrials switch to rolling news, anyway (and, in my opinion, the content of rolling news on a day such as 7 July is qualitatively better by an order of magnitutude).

Although I am yet to be convinced about video-by-broadband. It's not a medium I access frequently. However, I do access internet radio fairly often and can only compare its quality to listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes on a transistor radio with the batteries going flat in circa 1980. And I can't imagine many people get a better bradband connection than me, at least at home, considering that I am mere yards from the telephone exchange.

Rolling news

I'm ambivalent about the availability of 24 hour news channels.

I happen to like it at work, when it's possible to wander walk purposefully round the building catching BBC News 24 with subtitles.

In theory it's useful to have TV news at a time that's convenient for the viewer, not simply dictated by the other scheduling demands of the terrestrial stations. I would say that when a big story breaks it's important to have access to coverage as it happens - but if the story is big enough, the Terrestrial channels go to rolling news anyway. And with the existence of teletext, and the internet, and the radio, there isn't any reason to miss a breaking story just because it happens in the down hours between scheduled bulletins

It would be good if the rolling news channels took the opportunity to present the big stories, or the non-headline stories, in greater depth, but on the whole, they don't - there again, that contradicts my liking for having instant access when I'm at work. They are very arbitrary in that they provide regular capsuled Sport and Business bulletins, often covering matters that sports and business fans would regard as peripheral or unimportant. Yet they don't have such capsules for eg science and technology, culture, public services. Arbitrary.

I much prefer an editorialised bulletin; it's slicker and sharper. The comedy show Broken News is excellent at parodying the irritating nature of Rolling News.

Yesterday was an interesting study in rolling news. The Hemel explosion is big news, but, unlike say, 7 July, it lacks an emotional pull. I'm not trivialising the injuries suffered by those involved, but industrial injuries and deaths are frequent occurrences that rarely make the news. Most of us were able to monitor the fire at Hemel with little or no emotional involvement.

Both qB and Jae have blogged on this.

It's the empty speculation that irritates me. There used to be a reluctance to break news until there was some confirmation of the facts from a reliable source. Broken News did it brilliantly last week, with a suspected terrorist incident on a plane midway across the Atlantic. Scrolling headlines speculated that terrorists had boarded the plane in mid-air etc etc etc. It turned out that the pilot had come out of the cabin to go for a pee and and had minor difficulties in re-opening the cabin door because it was slightly stiff. Meanwhile, the reporter on the ground at Schipol was so concerned with asking the mood in the studio he failed to notice that the plane had landed, normally and without any cause for concern yards from where he was standing.

That is comedy, but it embraces a larger truth. Still, the best ever was Fox News just after the 21 July averted bombings. An anti-terrorist expert sat pontificating in the studio about whys and wherefores. I knew that Scotland Yard had given a Press Conference an hour earlier, reported by, amongst others, Fox's sister station, Sky News. Without going into discussion about the accuracy of what Scotland Yard put out, which is subject to an IPCC enquiry, the Fox News 'expert' was even more wildly inaccurate than the Met, despite the 'sources' he had spoken to. Amongst his pearls of wisdom was this was the first time that police had been armed in London; July 7 had been the first terrorist attack on London; and that England should introduce the US Patriot Act - no further explanation, just an order from someone who probably knows little about UK legislation, which, in any case, is none of his business.

TV ad

I'm sitting here; the commercial break is in the other room.

I was reminded of a TV ad I saw in the doctor's waiting room the other day.

It was an advert for a DVD.

The screen contained the legend 'DVD player and TV not included'.

They've got a bloody nerve, those tossers in the advertising agencies. They sit there, earning four times the national average salary, and they sit there insulting your intelligence. They expect you to buy this product.

Whoever said we live in a meritocracy when those knobheads put more money up their noses than most normal, intelligent people earn? What will we see next in adverts "Black Magic - entire SAS battalion not included; Tesco's always cutting prices but we don't expect you to take the store home; Esso petrol - luxury Rolls Royce not included; BMW He-man series, entire Swiss Alps not included."

It's like films - they have this warning at the beginning - "bad language and mild cartoon peril"; I turn to Jimmy and say "What, no perverted sex? Is it even worth watching?"

Egypt

Although I'll probably end up sounding like Tom "Who" Baker, I think it's programmes like this that make Britain great. Along with its people, of course.

I include both the dramatic reconstruction on BBC1 and the Don Cruickshank on BBC2. As a BTW, I do like the fact that the Beeb are doing more and more of this programme-linking.

Three mini-series of two episodes each. Not being an Egyptologist I can't tell how accurate these dramas are. But I haven't yet found something I know to be false (unlike last night's drama "The Queen's Sister" which implied Douglas-Home was PM in the late Sixties. As if)

The Howard Carter one was fascinating; Don Cruickshank saddened me by saying that Carter was never honoured in his lifetime and there are no memorials to him. Although, of course, there are statues all round London and elsewhere to people long forgotten, whilst we all know Howard Carter. Even so, I think he deserves at least a Wing of the Brit Mus named after him.

I thought that after Carter the others would be less interesting, but in some ways they were even more compelling. the BBC have a comprehensive-looking website devoted to ancient Egypt but bizarrely not the programme. I found the one about Belzoni to be utterly fascinating, and what a tremendous portrayal by Matthew Kelly. did anyone see him on Parkinson? How crap is Parkinson nowadays he's on ITV. Didn't dare mention Egypt. Too intellekshool for an ITV viewer, thinks the coked-up ponytailed jackass who tells Parky what to ask. If he'd have been on BBC1 we would have had a discussion about Egypt. And I only tuned in for Thierry Henry, and missed him, really. But Stevie Wonder was pretty damn cool. Raquel talked a pile of pish, I'm afraid to say.

And the current one about cracking the secret of the Rosetta Stone. Wow! We did all this sort of thing in history in First Year. I sort of found it fascinating then, but lost interest subsequently. A day trip to Cairo is enough only to skim the surface; now we want to do likewise at Luxor. Or perhaps, some time in the future, a Nile Cruise. The thought of Cruises in general make me feel ill, but I've been led to understand that Nile Cruises are more Nile and less cruise.

I suppose there is an argument that it's only proper history if some boring geezer is walking round the Brit Mus lecturing us in the style of Kenneth Civilization Clark. Nah, give me drama, give me CGI, give me an insight into the personal circumstances and motivations of these unsung heroes. And give me Don Cruickshank and his brilliant photography team, too.

It's comforting to know that in these troubled times, when so many people are watching the pile of cack that passes for entertainment in some parts of TV-land, and bemoaning its darkness, or else claiming it gives brilliant insights into psychology that on a terrestrial TV channel not far away is some excellent TV that is teaching me about the wonders of creation. And the amazing people that create and rediscover it. There's a part of me that says why isn't everybody watching it. But there again, I'm not watching David Attenborough's Insects. Jimmy's watching it without me. It simply isn't me. But, somehow, it makes me feel a better person just to know that it is being transmitted at Prime Time on a popular station.

But other than this, what do we get for our £10 per month licence fee?

TV

I have been watching a lot of TV recently.

We record a lot of things on the Sky+ and watch then it suits us. It works brilliantly for us.

Over the week I shall offer a few thoughts on various programmes, as the various episodes come up on the Gert Cottage watching schedule.

I tried watching the documentary on the 7 July bombings but could only last ten minutes because of the deeply irritating druggy-disco music that persisted as background, even over talking heads. I was not sure that I found it more disturbing that someone so drugged up could possibly have thought that that was a suitable way to present a documentary on such an important subject, or the fact that it bothered me so much I had to turn off.

House of Cards. Currently on repeat. One of the great drama series of my adult life, and delighted to find it has stood the test of time. Of course, it was blessed on initial showing with superb timing, just as Thatch was being gloriously demised. The opening sequence is interesting - no London Eye, and the notorious Three Sisters standing on the site of my present office.

But what really struck me was how very male it was. When I watched it fifteen years ago, I did not specifically notice this. I can only assume that it was an accurate reflection of British Politics at the time. All the main protagonists, except Mattie, are male. The Cabinet meeting shows two women, both of them faceless washed-up nonentities. There seems to be an absence of female backbenchers. This is not a criticism of the programme. It reflected politics at the time. At that time there were more MPs called John than there were women.

We watched the first episode of Broken News. I wasn't sure, thought maybe of dropping it. It was obviously a good idea, but was it sustainable for a series. So it was almost accidental that we watched the second. By the third, it became obvious - it's a slow burner, takes time to get into. But definitely worth the effort. And definitely improving the enjoyment of watching 24 hour rolling news.

I think I like the East Anglia Regional News spoof best. And the weather forecasts for obscure parts of Central Asia. Melanie Bellamy, Katie Tate and Richard Pritchard. The business correspondent who is not one bit based on Jeff Randle not at all oh no. But there isn't a bit I don't like. Jimmy likes the American duo, her so serious, him such a dork.

Blitz

We have just been watching this amazing two hour documentary from Channel Four about the Fire Storm that all but destroyed the City of London on the night of 29 December 1940.

I expect its viewing figures were miniscule; perhaps Jimmy and I were the only people under seventy, not connected with the programme, who watched it.

An extraordinary combination of eye-witness accounts, written testimony, and archive film footage from the Fire Brigade's Film Unit.

Reality TV, if you like, documenting the experiences of the voluntary firemen, those caught - and killed - in bomb shelters. Amazingly, the deaths were less than two hundred in that one night. And the lessons we learnt were later applied to the bombing of Dresden, now acknowledged as one of the most disgraceful episodes of the Second World War, when one hundred thousand people died in one night.

Very understated, no hysterical hyping up of emotions, just sparing story-telling, the impact greater for its calmness, for the constant soundtrack of roaring, aeroplane engines, incendiary bombs falling, fire roaring, and for the terrible beauty of the footage, the Dome of St Paul's illuminated by fires burning all around.

And the sheer futility. Lives ruined, the bereavements, the loss of livelihood, of home, the theft from people of their right to live in peace. We still bomb civilians, we still try and justify it for strategic means. It's barely news, it hardly scrapes the surface, our attention dims.

We study history to teach us about the present, and we study the present to learn about the past. But I'm not sure we ever learn anything.

Fourth Estate

I've just been catching up with the first in the new series of Have I Got News for You. guest panellists, a pair of nobodies, who it seems, have achieved nothing in their lives, except fifteen minutes of fame on the TV.

Different people have different views of Blunkett the man, Blunkett the politician. Not the point of this post.

Apaprently, lacking the intellectual capacity to analyse the man's politics, it's fair game to take cheap potshots at his disability. And that of Stephen Hawking, too. Well done, Paul Merton, you fell in my estimation by quite a way.

One assumes that these vile little self-obsessed creatures have never had any difficulties in their sex lives. If that piece of shit alongside Hislop ever suffers any disablement remind me to send him a congratulations card full of gloating. Except that he was so singularly inept I really couldn't be bothered to note his name. I understand he was from some downmarket tabloid. Star, I think. Vile piece of shit.

So, the audience thought it appropriate to laugh at his jokes about Blunkett's guide dogs, and yet hissed Hislop when he called that estate agent a Slapper. Well done, children, for operating in amoral vacuum.

Can I ask a question, honest answers? If you have ever had a sexual relationship with anyone famous, infamous, C-list famous or not even that obscure, have you ever publicised that for money? Sure, I've read allusions on blogs to people and their passing fling with someone who went onto be famous. But, have you ever gone straight to Max Clifford for the sole purpose of money and, er, publicising one's singing career?

Jimmy says that someone was on the Andrew Marr show this morning. I was still in bed, obviously. According to Jimmy, this person said that everyone between twenty and sixty takes drugs. They weren't talking alcohol, nicotine, cigarettes but drugs that are, rightly or wrongly but factually, illegal.

Does this just confirm that the entire media is entirely up is own arse in a coke-induced stupour and is just further evidence that we should, as a nation, resolve entirely to pay them no attention whatsoever, whilst getting on with our useful lives and letting them screw up their overpaid futile existence?

I mean come on, what the fuck do these tossposts actually know. Most people I know between twenty and sixty are either carefully balancing
a budgetthat will enable four or five people on one-and-half incomes to pay the bils, buy food and clothes, run a car or two, have a holiday or two etc; or are fitness fanatics preparing for a half-marathon; or so scared of losing control they won't even go on a roller coaster; or health freaks who will barely touch alcohol and eat only salad as part of their fad diets; or religious nuts who regard drugs as immoral; or world-weary people who've witnessed too many other people's lives destroyed by drugs.

Thinking about it, it's suddently occurred to me that I'm a heavy coke user. Or at least, a typical coke user. I'm sixteen months younger than David Cameron, but unlike him, I have no children. I am statistically a high earner. I'm urban, living in an area so synonymous with drug use that the spoilt brats of Surrey and North London come here as Drugs Tourists. I'm a former high-achiever who's slipped into easy complacency. I know exactly who to phone in order to get an evening or weekend's supply of coke, nod and a wink, no questions asked. My own personal Dealer, you might say. I'm far from being a health freak, caring little about my diet and less about exercise, a heavy user of legal drugs.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce: I am a typical cocaine addict.

With just one detail worth noting. I've never taken cocaine in my life. But, otherwise, you may as well assume I spend every Saturday night snorting a good few lines...

Suggestibility

One of my oft-repeated statements is "I don't watch TV adverts"

If only this was strictly, rather than broadly, true.

Last night, I was at a bit of a loose end. Couldn't be bothered to settle down to anything proper, had a TV date (ad-free) at 9. So I flopped on the sofa and channel flicked to Bremner, Bird and Fortune. A few years ago this used to be obligatory viewing. Then Rory Bremner stopped being funny. Last night proved that the habit cessation was correct.

However, this was a rare unscheduled viewing of a commercial TV channel. And, remember, I was feeling lazy and apathetic, so I ended up enduring those dreadful TV ads.

In parenthesis, if people watch on average, reportedly, 50 hours of TV a week, I guess that probably means that they watch as much as five hours of adverts every week. For nearly an hour a day they willingly subject themselves to being told what to think, what to do, repetitively, over-and-over-and-over-and-over again.

How scary is that!

There was some advert for some foodstuff or other, with an enticing tagline "Because it only contains 10% fat, you can eat it without feeling guilty..."

Forget consideration of how much sugar, salt it contains. Forget considerations of whether 10% fat makes it healthy. Forget even the fact that human beings need fat, it's a vital nutrient.

Guilty...!

Guilty

Guilty is what I feel is I've done something wrong. Like committed a mass murder. Or an armed robbery. Or forgotten to bring my partner a glass of water, as he requested. Or surfed the internet when I should be working.

Why on earth should eating induce feelings of guilt?

I don't get it.

Wisdom of crowds

The crowd knows best

Fascinating. Seems credible. But only when the crowd isn't being told what to do.

Some of the examples cited eg the ox-weighing contest are truly fascinating.

And the petrol-panic-that-never-was

In fact, the crowd was wiser than the journalism... Petrol mainly ran out (and then only temporarily) in those towns where right-wing newspaper readership dominated, but not in those with more diverse newspaper sales and readerships.

I am perenially fascinated with crowd mentalities. We spend much of our childhood and most of our adolescence screaming at parents and teachers that we don't want to be told what to do, yet well into our twenties, thirties, beyond, we happily do what the media tells us to do.

Or do we? Wave after wave of advertising, of lifestyle columns, of 'this is the new...blahdeblah' and still the most popular meal in Britain is curry. I have never seen an advertising camapign for Indian Restaurants, just plenty of misspelled leaflet drops and shaky adverts in the cinema. They did try pushing the Balti as the new rock'n'roll, but we soon returned to our Dupiazas, Kormas and Biriyanis. I have never read an article about how "Indian Restaurants" is where it's 'at'; never been told by some lazy-ligging-halfwitted journalist that going to a curry house will make me fulfilled. Yet, persisitently, we keep going, a whole nation of us, of all classes and incomes and ages. And the marketing people don't know why!

Wisdom of the crowd?

Quick question - 'must-watch' TV. UK specific

When is Waking The Dead - new series - starting?

And when is 49-up due to be on? I watched this since 28 Up. I can't miss this one. You know, suddenly, I feel as though they're my age group. When I first watched it they were ancient. And when it started, I wasn't even born...

Coast

We have been gripped to this programme. Unfortunately, we missed the first one, but since then there have been numerous gripping episodes.

We enjoyed David Dimbleby's Picture of Britain, but Coast is on a different plane altogether. I wonder how many people are watching it. It's on BBC2, and, for some bizarre reason, people are less likely to watch programmes on BBC2 than BBC1.

(I don't understand this, have never been able to do so; I look through the Radio Times and I select what programmes I want to watch. The Channel only matters when the decision is borderline - I'm less likely to watch a ITV than any other terrestrial channel, but there are numerous exceptions to this rule. Are people scared of BBC2? Don't they have remote controls that make channel changing effortless).

I really can't praise this programme highly enough. It's presented by a non-celebrity nobody, ably supported by a bunch of nobodies. It's not a star vehicle, it's not a personal and idiosyncratic look at anything. A very simple concept, travelling the entire coast of the UK. Now, if I had come up with this concept I think it would have ended up like a glorified 'Holiday' programme.

This is so much better. We have some amazing photography. We have anthropology, geology, archaelogy, zoology, mythology, folklore, history. An hour twice a week of completely gripping TV. Well, I say gripping, but we have to keep pressing pause because of the conversation it stimulates.

I suspect that viewing figures are tiny. It's not glamorous. Arguably, it's not escapist, although it keeps showing places we want physically to escape to. The only cliffhangers are people literally hanging off cliffs. For me, it's worth the licence fee in itself.

Thursday night is telly night...

...so Saturday night is Timeshift Telly night.

I can't understand people who say there's nothing on TV. Just look at Thursdays. Because Sky+ can only record two things at once, you end up ditching a programme of apparent interest, or scanning the Radio Times for rapid repeat (BBC4's ace for that).

For a few weeks we have been enjoying 1½ hours of pure comic genius as given to us by BBC2. Well, Dead Ringers is a bit hit-and-miss, but it's worth sitting through the misses for the hits. "Hello. I'm Fiona Bruce...!" Then there's the Robinsons, which I watched sort of by accident on Election night and have been subsequently hooked. Very subversive. A respectable moderately successful suburban family of three generations and myriad assorted, mainly dead (by misadventure) relatives. I suspect it is an accurate description of the silent and tolerable despair of many people's lives.

And then we get Kath and Kim. I have been informed that a second series was shown in New Zealand last year, so, yay! I suspect if it were British, I would hate it, as being too familiar. But being Australian, the strangeness can be explained by the otherness. Larger than life characters living lives of utter banality, thinking they have a lifestyle, as dictated by the media. And really very very funny.

The interesting thing about the Robinsons and Kath and Kim is the characters that I instinctively warm to - Maggie and Kell. Poor Maggie, desperate to be kind, lacking in self-esteem. And Kell, with his ghastly haircut and appalling dress sense, and his strange mannerisms , is, nevertheless a giant of a man. Caring, diligent, conscientious.

But the best of the lot was Ladettes to Ladies. It's a series - if you missed the first, catch the rest. I recorded it. thinking it would be probably be dire but might be excellent.

Excellent. The premise is clever - select ten ladettes and send them to Finishing School. The selection of the ladettes was clever, too. It seems that none of them is really bad - one was jailed for flashing her boobs in Falaraki but otherwise they don't appear to have criminal records, they don't believe the world owes them a living. They drink like fishes and are exhibitionists. But each one of them is intelligent, with strong, engaging, likeable personalities.

It was hilarious watching the women from the 'Finishing School'. One who was so plummy and so busy talking posh that she could barely string a sentence together, let alone articulate a thought; another who claimed never to have met a 'ladette' (maybe she should get out more from a narrow blinkered existence?) and another so up herself she was referred to on voice-over as Mrs English. And they seemed entirely non-plussed at the participant who is a gas-fitter. Shock, horror - gas fitter!

I found myself identifying with the Ladettes much much more than the pickled snobs. I did disagree with the Voice Over that suggested 'ladette' entered the vocab two years ago. I would see it as a mid-Nineties thing - Zoe Ball and Sara Cox were cited. And finally, I found a term I could identify with.

I've done it all - drinking like a fish, dancing on tables, removing my clothes. And that was just at Lambeth New Labour 'do's. We shall gloss over the student days, I think...!

Which then got me thinking. I liked all of the participants. All of them are fiercely independent, no one's going to tell them what to do. A couple were very scathing at the necessity of wearing heels. And skirts. You go, girl! I exclaim. All capable of communicating, socialising and enjoying themselves, with lively sense of humour. Not self-obsessed and self-absorbed, they'd be well out of place on Big Brother.

But what struck me was, in general, a lack of awareness of how to adapt one's behaviour to context. One was a PA and her bosses sent her on the course because she has a foul mouth and thought you'd have to go abroad to learn deportment. If she was a bad PA, she'd have been sacked.

None of them seemed to have a clue what to wear for a posh event. Even in my most ladette stage I had an instinct for putting on a posh frock when the occasion called for it. I wonder where I learnt that - maybe at University (Aka East Midlands Finishing School!). Partly from TV and magazines, I suspect. And despite the most 'ladette'-ish excesses of Lambeth Labour Group (one January someone suggested there should be a competition to see who could sleep with the most men by summer: I opted out of that one...!), we nevertheless knew how to behave ourselves in meetings, with officers and with the public. And understood what was needed to being to transform the Borough. I never turned up drunk to a meeting.

What was striking was all the participants seem to be from a working- or lower-middle-class background. Part of the finishing course involves removing their regional accents. I can't be doing with that. I notice regional accents when people are struggling to articulate themselves. But looking at Senior Broadcasters, Ministers, and other members of the 'Establishment', I see no problem with the many with noticeable regional accents. I certainly find that, having moved round the country, and mixing with people who have done likewise, I tend to have a less noticeable accent than I would have done if I had stayed in one place and mixed in a narrow group.

Some of the Finishing School techniques are interesting, but life is way too short to learn flower-arranging. And who wants to wear court shoes and twin-set-and-pearls, and sit with one ankle across the other. That's what DMs, trousers and long floaty skirts are for. the only lesson seems to be that flesh-revealing dresses are not really that nice to look at.

The Observer carries an article
How I learnt to be a lady (just about) - quote

I think it's a mistake to dismiss these sort of classes as old-fashioned or pointless because they build self-esteem and give people confidence.

. I'm all for self-esteem and confidence, I just think they are not things that can be taught and sit on the surface, but they come from within, from achieving something. Anything. Especially if it takes effort.

National Treasure

Sean O'Hagan meets Andrew Marr

When I got up this morning, Jimmy was watching Frost. After the obligatory 'Something of the Night' comment aimed at Michael Howard, I mentioned that Andrew Marr was taking over, and that, really, he is a National Treasure, so it was amusing to read

Marr's canonisation as a national treasure seems assured

More interesting is

something has gone radically wrong with print journalism'. The fault lies, he says, with an increasingly London-centric media, and with the current reliance on stories culled from the wires or from 'people relying on "Googling" instead of real research'.

What is needed, he insists, is 'a return to fresh air reporting. There's a vivid, interesting, unexpected, quite amusing Britain out there, but it just does not appear in today's newspapers. Why? Because we are all doing central London stuff, and celebrities, and lifestyle, and it's basically quite boring.'

Ages ago I read of an editor somewhere in Yorkshire who took over the local paper, and cut out all the lifestyle/television/celebrity stuff and instructed his reporters to go out and report. Sales soared.

Who...

...is Natasha Kaplinsky?

What a bimbo - giggle giggle.

Is she normally on the telly?

Why?

Is she capable of actually saying a coherent sentence? With or without an inane irritating giggle?

Are we actually paying our licence fee into her salary?

What a waste...!

How pop and television damage our culture

So says Peter Maxwell-Davies, famous cygnocide and Master of the Queen's Musick.

Successive governments have cut back on music education in state schools to the extent that music specialists have become a rarity.

Doesn't he actually mean that for a short, brief period a few grammar schools and a very few secondary moderns taught a narrow curriculum of what they called music, that included absolutely no world context, and generally only taught performance to pupils whose parents were willing and able to pay?

One can look at circulation figures for the "popular" papers in comparison with their so-called "highbrow" stable-mates and realise that most people leave school with a restricted active vocabulary of just a few hundred words, and that the very act of thought is thereby severely restricted. Perhaps not only our children but all of us are being educated to become good, docile consumers, so that we become incapable, or perhaps just unwilling, to question the status quo.

But wasn't that always the case? Does he seriously believe that the vast majority of people of his generation, those condemned to a non-education, are somehow literate, articulate and reading the broadsheets?

Actor Val Kilmer, rather patronisingly, has praised British theatregoers ahead of his London stage debut next month, describing them as

smarter than their US counterparts...very sophisticated and probably the most well-read on earth

John Tusa hit out at the dumbing down of BBC Television. His overall message was somewhat diminished by the rather ridiculous examples he gave.

When the BBC uses Rolf Harris to talk about the Impressionists, and when he paints his version of great masterpieces, the programme is saying: 'Look, there's nothing special about art. Anyone can do it. Don't believe those art snobs. Rolf has just done what they do before your eyes

I happened to think that that Rolf on Art was a ridiculous idea and didn't watch it, because Rolf Harris is only slightly less detested in Gert Cottage than Alan Titchmarsh.

He makes a very big mistake by criticising Michael Palin and Dan Cruickshank as presenters. The most ridiculous quote is

In the world of documentaries, the flight from intelligence has taken on the aspect of a headlong rush," he will argue, labelling the phenomenon "the Blue Peter effect

A few weeks ago BBC4 repeated the famous Kenneth Clark 'Civilisation' programmes. I had never seen them before but for many years I had read of them as being the apogee of British documentary television. I'm sorry, but they were boring and of poor quality.

Perhaps the likes of Tusa and Clarke and Maxwell Davies would sneer at me as being symptomatic of the general dumbed-down Great Unwashed. However, I am more highly educated than the vast majority of the UK population, and have participated, for close on 30 years in a range of cultural activities.

I found Civilisation to be dull. Clark was an appalling presenter, talking barely coherently in clichés, making references to an assumed level of knowledge, and pursuing a barely disguised agenda- basically, snobbery against anyone who works for a living (including th eprofessional as well as the commercial classes). The photography/cinematography was to a large extent a product of its time, constrained by primitive technology. But a contrast with Don Cruickshank's Around the World in Eighty Treasures or Michael Palin's Himalaya, both of which were worth watching for the photogrpahy alone.

Perhaps people watched Civilisation back in 1970-whatever, due to the lack of alternatives on TV, but I do not believe it is good enough to cut the mustard in 2005. If I want dry commentary, I will read a book, as so very many Brits do. If I watch TV I do actually want to be entertained whilst I'm being educated. So what if Adam Hart-Davis showed how the Mesopotamians made beer. No doubt the likes of Tusa and Clark (I'll except Maxwell Davies from this) want history to be all about the derring-dos of men in their interminable testosterone-driven battles. And dates and maps. Sorry, but those of us with a more rounded education understand history is also about technological advances, social change, commerce, and all the other factors that explain the difference between then and now. Some of us even ask questions such as 'why?' and 'how?'.

And to use Blue Peter as a term of abuse - well, what a very silly man. Does he not know how many generations of children have learnt so much about the world around them by watching Blue Peter. Why has it been so successful for so very many years - perhaps because it has always understood how to convey a message in an entertaining and informative way, utilising the best visual aids available.

Nicholas Kenyon provides a sort of answer to Max

Audiences, as we know from the Proms, will thrive if you offer them real stimulation and keep formats fresh. What we cannot rely on any more is solidly predictable attendance at uninteresting concerts. Only the best is now good enough to attract a sophisticated audience.

Although he throws in a stupidity

this year we will go to Alexandra Palace to engage with family audiences who may never have been to a concert before

What part of the 'family' won't have been to a concert before? Does he mean children? If so, say so. Is he intending to appeal to couples, singles, groups of friends who have never been to a concert before? The middle-aged and their elderly parents (or don't they class as family?). "Family" and "children" are not generally synonymous.

The Independent has a more balanced view and hits the nail halfway on the head by saying

The great majority of audiences and performers get through life by paying attention mainly to the established masterpieces of the past.

In some ways that is the nub of what differentiates music from other Art forms - except that, really, everyone knows that most Fine Arts afficionados prefer the Old Masters to Brit Trash, or whatever it's called. And what's regarded as the old masters in music change.

It's only relatively recently that Handel, and Baroque in general, have made any impact in the Opera Houses. Nicholas Kenyon's article touched briefly on that. Max may not be that popular a modern composer, but Tavener and Jenkins most certainly are. There wasn't a seat available for the Steve Reich concert I attended in January. Yes, I know it's dumbed-down to like Jenkins, but I'm sure that back in the 18th century Mozart was considered dumbed-down. Many of Beethoven's works, and Bizet's Carmen, to name just examples were flops on their first performance.

I sense that as the years go by, Britten is becoming increasingly regarded as one of the greats. And there seems to be a lot of Tippett around currently, admittedly in the centenary of his birth, but he was a living composer until very recently.

I do feel there is a dichotomy between those who see Arts in general as something to be endured as a painful but intellectually improving experience, and those that see Arts as pure entertainment that needs packaging. This does not seem to be a dichotomy in literature - people read both Jane Austen and Bridget Jones, and there seems to be no conflict. There has to be a Third Way. I think, by and large, the TV documentaries have grasped it, by using Michael Palin, Don Cruickshank, Simon Schama, David Starkey as their packaging, but backing them up with proper research, and sophisticated visuals.

Mind you, I watched a Channel Four programme the other week about Built Britain, introduced by Simon Thurley - from English Heritage, I think. The photography was absolutely beautiful, but I did a lot of wincing at the elementary errors - he couldn't work out when he was talking about George II or George III, and he referred to the Anglican Church as Protestant. I'm not just being pedantic, because I would have thought the non-Protestant nature of the Anglican church is vital to an understanding of church architecture. And his coverage of the Industrial Revolution was shamefully superficial.

Broadcasting Crisis

I can see a real crisis looming for the BBC. What if the funeral(S) are on Friday 8th April. Will Nicholas Witchell be sent to Monaco or Rome instead of Windsor? Who would represent the Queen in Monaco? Will Jeremy Bowen be recalled from Rome and Dispatched to Windsor? To top it all his smugness in No 10 will call an election. Maybe Andrew Marr could go to Windsor and MR Witchell to Westminster.

Biased BBC

I can't stand it - the hype and cant from the BBC. And I'm not even daring to look at Sky. Good man, blah blah blah blah, Voice of Moral Authority. And if that appalling sanctimonious pig of a Cormac Murphy-O'Connor appears on the TV screens once more I shall not be responsible for what gets thrown at the TV Screen.

Can't they just have one voice saying that his ignorant, bigoted stance on "Artifical Contraception" ie disease preventing condoms is responsible for the deaths of AIDS of thousands, if not millions, particularly in Africa. Instead we get footage of teenagers in Glasgow brainwashed into praying for him.

Utter cant and hypocrisy.

Biased BBC, anyone?

The BBC is ace

The best £2.33 you can spend

Well, not totally ace, but Mary Ann Sieghart sums it up pretty succinctly. Which is impressive for a Murdoch-owned newspaper. BTW, my Sky Package costs over £10 a week. Even the most basic one would cost about £4 a week.

Go figure...

TV Ads

Credits roll for TV ads as viewers skip the message

I am really really surprised that only 2% of households have Sky+. I would love to know the socio-economic breakdown of that.

Over the years from when I first got a video I have been amazed at how many people have been amazed at my style of TV watching. I rarely watch 'what's on' , certainly not in comparison to when I go through the Radio Times, marking what I want to watch, and recording it to be watched when I feel like it.

Last night was very ununusual in that I watched West Wing as broadcast, and then a Canadian murder mystery on UKTV Drama - Inspector Murdoch. That had a lot of ad breaks, which we found exceptionally annoying.

I was trying to persuade yesterday that I am totally impervious to advertising. That's bollocks, of course, but I am almost totally impervious to TV adverts. I had a stupid argument with my patronising bitch of a dentist, sorry, ex-dentist, who would not accept that TV anti-smoking ads are unlikely to make me give up smoking, seeing that I don't watch them. "Most people..." she said. "Fuck off I'm not 'most people' I didn't say. (She also told me that smoking will cause cavities, yeah, no doubt, and I bet I'm her only (ex-)patient without fillings - although I know that can't last for ever. And I asked her what elelments of diet contribute to healthy gums. A balanced diet, she replied. 'Fuck off you ignorant patronising bitch' I didn't say.)

I think it's fair to say that Nicola the humourless condescending bitch of a dentist is pretty high on my list of enemies. Oh why did the lovely lovely lovely Andy have to retire? It certainly wasn't on the money I paid him!