Things that do not make me proud of my home town. Well apart from it being the burning people alive capital of Britain, there is this lovely story of the convicted football hooligan playing for the local football team. This has caused a slight proble[…]

An update on my cookery course is long overdue. Things have pretty much settled into a rhythm, and most of the narrative interest is anthropological rather than gastronomic.
We’re not really competing on the quality of our cooking, and there&#[…]

Turning a book into a film presents the adapter with a fundamental problem. How do we represent internal narration and monologue on the screen. The usual method is to not bother, and just be content with cramming the screen with the action. But what […]

OK, I ‘fess up: professed Timberlake-hata that I am, even I warmed to him on the MTV Europe Music awards. I can see there’s something about him — the little boy lost looks and the floppy-limbed mobility — which is going to win[…]

Too much reality? The most extraordinary piece of TV I’ve seen recently was Matthew Kelly turning the tables on his host on the Frank Skinner Show. The shaven-headed giant had a sinister grin on his face as he demanded that Skinner repeat the l[…]

JogBlog1: Rationale.
When did jogging become running? I’m pretty sure there must be some kind of rockism at work — and I know I’ve been guilty of it… especially over this summer when training for the Great Scottish Run. What w[…]

Gastropubs are the desert mirage for the peripatetic drinker (or pubhopper, if you prefer). Wandering through an unfamiliar part of town these days it’s quite possible to spot what looks like a solid boozer, ideal for slaking your deadly burnin[…]

Tidying Up Art by Ursus Wehrli will be found in the “Humour” section of your local Waterstones, next to horrors such as The Little Book Of Management Bollocks and Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody. Don’t be misled – Tidy[…]

After moving twice, and one big summer tidy-up, I’ve finally got round to unpacking an enormous box of cassettes… I’ve even managed to throw a few out, on the grounds that they had been: a) broken; b) bought for 20p and so awful tha[…]

One potential guarantee of the overall cultural worth of any project may well be the ability of the project to have cheap jokes made about it. Using this rule of thumb 24, Stephen Hopkins finest hour, certainly stands up. But jokes about Kim vs couga[…]