The Strife Of Brian

The Damned United, Odeon Telford, Monday April 13 2009, 8.45pm.

The makers of The Damned United decided that David Peace's dark brilliant fictionalisation of Brian Clough's doomed 44 day tenure as gaffer of 'dirty Leeds' clearly wanted bloody shooting, despite the structural difficulties of filming a novel that was driven by an increasingly despairing and hugely controversial internal monologue.

Lacking privy to Clough's imagined personal thoughts but having access to TV footage from the time, the film seems a little more factual and even-handed than Peace's book, and what is lost in terms of stylised psychological torment is replaced by a stronger focus on the on-off relationship between Clough and his assistant manager and scouting genius Peter Taylor.

The resulting film is not without its flaws (erratic casting in the supporting parts and slight tendency to sentimentalise being the major contributing factors to an occasionally uneven feel) but remains a highly entertaining addition to the footie film canon, with an astonishing recreation of Clough by the ubiquitous Michael Sheen and strong supporting turns by Timothy Spall as Taylor and Jim Broadbent as Cloughie's Derby chairman making this compulsive viewing for anyone with even a passing interest in the green-jumpered gaffer.

Daft Bricks

The Apprentice often seems like a laboured self-parody in itself (albeit a hugely entertaining one) but this Lego makeover takes it one stage further -



(via walletpop)

Easy On The Sauce, Cupcake, This Is Serious

Happy New Year to all our readers, amazingly there's still a few of you out there, despite the sparsity of updates in the last few months. Unsure to what sort of degree that will change in 2009, but here's a few links to get things kickstarted and see where it takes us.

853 describes Ladytron's Velocifero (our favourite album of 2008 lest ye forget) as a damb squib, but gets most other things right reporting from the frontline of south-east London.

I Am The Crime is a cool Swedish music blog run by hot Swedish music blogger Cecilia.

Robyn Wilder reveals her Top 10 embarrassing childhood crushes. Includes Dudley Moore dressed as an elf - there's hope for Dead Kenny yet then, eh Robyn?

Meanwhile, an interesting art blog - At The Moment.

West Ham's Congolese left-back Herita Ilunga also has blog (albeit in French, malheuresement).

Matt Smith has been announced as the new Dr Who. We saw Matt in That Face at the Royal Court just over 18 months ago, and he's a talented actor with a lot of energy who should do well.

The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2008 (NOT SAFE FOR WORK) features a heavy smattering of former TV actresses like Neve Campbell, Mischa Barton and Eliza Dushku (gesundheit!).

Heather Locklear's mugshot. What would TJ Hooker say?

Worth seeking out on DVD...Alan Rudolph's surreal cartoonish romantic thriller Trouble In Mind available on R2 for the first time.

And finally...the results of the Music Bloggers Poll of Polls are in and again 7 of our Top 10 made the cut. Thanks again to Simon for compiling the chart.

Scents and Indie Sensibility

Not that we're shallow enough to buy a mens fragrance on the basis of a moodily-shot B&W advert starring Josh Hartnett and soundtracked by Interpol, of course!

Elvis Lives And Is Forever Blowing Bubbles Somewhere In A Field In Toronto

MLS All-Stars v West Ham United, Dead Kenny's living room via Setanta Sports 1, Friday July 25 2008, 00.20am.

The Parallax View business expenses budget didn't quite run to sending your scuttling scribe over to Toronto, but courtesy of Dickie Branson's Virgin Media empire got to see the full game beamed into my house via Setanta Sports. My beloved Hammers are still in relatively early stages of pre-season so wasn't quite sure what to expect from them, or for that matter the Harlem Globetrotters-style opposition, who have a 100% record against British teams in these games, and now include current England international David Beckham in their ranks.

The Hammers rested Craig Bellamy and Mark Noble and the likes of Upson, McCartney and Dyer were left at home to work on their fitness, but a starting XI that included Robert Green, Lucas Neill, Anton Ferdinand, Scott Parker and Dean Ashton should have proved competitive. Indeed, after a quiet start to the game, it was the Irons that took the lead when Dean Ashton caught the All-Stars defence napping and slotted smartly past the MLS keeper. Straight after, a similar move at the other end of the pitch saw Gomes equalise, the All-Stars then continued to shine for the rest of the half, culminating in a brilliant finish from Blanco after his movement left Scotty Parker on his backside.

The MLS All-Stars' extra fitness started to tell in the second half, but a hugely impressive Dean Ashton always posed a threat, and a speculative effort from the big striker took a couple of deflections before whizzing past the keeper to level things at 2-2. Again, though, this only prompted the All-Stars to step up a gear, and Lucas Neill remembered his lines from last season and lunged like a brainless oaf in his own area to concede a penalty that was duly converted. Villa reject Juan Pablo Angel had a great strike disallowed for no apparent reason, and Boa Morte missed a sitter after smart work from Parker just before the end.

It was a much better game than expected, hugely entertaining and played in the right spirit. Obviously any defeat is dissappointing but the fitness work will be hugely beneficial at this stage of pre-season, Faubert and sub Boa Morte both did themselves favours with their commitment shown, and rookie left-back Joe Widdowson didn't look out of place against Mr. Posh Spice. Amusing cameos were provided by Elvis blowing bubbles at half-time, and Boa Morte losing it big-time after being kicked in the head by an MLS defender, much to the evident amusement of the clearly not-too-concerned Hammers physio.

Parallax View Player Ratings: Green 6; Neill 5, Ferdinand 6, Davenport 5, Widdowson 6; Faubert 7, Mullins 6, Parker 6, Etherington 6 (Boa Morte 7); ASHTON 9, Cole 5.

Gruff Justice

Off out shortly to Brum for the rest of the day, but in the meantime let your eyes have a lunchtime feast over The Mercury Music Prize nominations, which contain few alarms or surprises, and include a couple of top contenders for album of the year to date in our upcoming Half Term Report (due by the weekend) in Neon Neon and Laura Marling. Radiohead and Burial are also worthy choices from 2007 for the MMP, with Burial and Laura Marling probably the best value bets, as genre contenders with broader appeal usually do well in these kind of competitions. A second successive win for a dance-orientated record may be risky, so my money's on Ms Marling for the folkin' good album 'Alas I Cannot Swim'.*

*Remember, pop punters, always gamble responsibly, and with money you can afford to lose.

Summer Night City

Richard Prince: Continuations @Serpentine Gallery, Hyde Park, London, Sunday June 29 2008, 11am.
Female Agents, Odeon Covent Garden, Sunday June 29 2008, 6.25pm.

Spent the first weekend in a while down in London, the first couple of days mainly taken with meeting up with and getting to know a certain voluptuous Brazilian online friend of mine, who, amongst other things, introduced me to the delights of pacoquinha, an intensely sweet hit of peanut taste textured somewhere between biscuit and fudge, good with tea or coffee as long as long as you have a sweet tooth!

Sunday represented an opportunity to soak up some culture, and went along to see the Richard Prince exhibition Continuations at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. Prince may be best known to alt.music fans for providing the striking sleeve art to Sonic Youth's Sonic Nurse, but, although there were a few of his nurse paintings included, as well as a drumhead autographed by Thurston, Kim and Lee from SY, the exhibition presented a broader overview of his work that spans over four decades.

Just as the nurse pictures are appropriated images from pulp novel covers subverted and fetishised by Prince, much of the rest of his work involves customising found objects such as car hoods, and in one stunning case, an entire Buick adorned with objectified images of naked women. Elsewhere, there are a series of photographs of cowboys and biker chicks, and Prince isn't even beyond appropriating other peoples' jokes, with stylised paintings featuring looped one-liner gags. The result is an impressive, arresting collection worth a half-hour's browse for anyone in London with an interest in modern art.

Then headed off on the District Line to Brick Lane, where visited Rough Trade East for the first time, renewed my taste for octopus, wine and chocolate dessert at a tapas festival and wandered into 93 Feet East where there was supposed to be an all-dayer happening, but found no punters to be seen or music to be heard!

A quick change at the hotel later and then into the West End to see Female Agents, which follows in the sly, saucy footsteps of Paul Verhoeven's Black Book by looking at the derring-do of undercover female resistance agents in World War Two. In this case, Sophie Marceau's crackshot recruits/conscripts some dodgy distaff divas into the SOE's female operative branch (known as, we shit ye not, FANY) to distract the Nazis in France long enough for them to help the escape of an Allied geologist doing important groundwork paving the way for D-Day.

It's fairly derivate stuff, suffering from some erratic levels of characterisation that means you don't always care as much during episodes of jeopardy as perhaps you ought, but it says much for the zip of the production and the committed performances from the game, gallic cast that, despite some obvious flaws, the resulting film manages to be thrilling and poignant for the most part, particularly recommended for filmgoers with equal levels of passion for wartime heroics and the female form.

Turned out to be a bad time of it for Germans all round, as got back to the pub beneath the hotel in time to watch the second half of the Euro2008 final in which Spain vanquished the 1996 champions 1-0 to become worthy winners of a surprisingly entertaining competition, a particularly welcome result given that many of the bar's patrons seemed to be Spanish or Portugese speakers.

Specs Mark The Spot

The Autumn Store Presents: The Deirdres/Winston Echo/Amida, Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham, Saturday May 10 2008, 8.45pm.

In honour of all things Deirdre, the Autumn Store organisers have put six pictures of Corrie character Deirdre Barlow/Raschid in various places within the venue for customers to take a punt as to how many and enter a prize draw of merchandise from all three bands playing. The correct answer is six, and your short-sighted scribe only found two, so no spotters badge for Dead Kenny tonight. Your concentrating correspondent does, however, manage to catch all three acts and these are our views.

Manchester's Amida are hurried on first on the bill so that they can get the train back home, but with a bit of decent fortune their slightly shambly and properly jangly take on alternative pop will bring in enough moolah to get themselves a van real soon. The band take time to thank the audience for being so polite and paying attention to their tunes before beating a path to New Street station. Overall impression: amiable, humble, could well be worth checking them out again real soon.

Winston Echo is a roundish gentleman from Wellingborough who has his own public transport woes to relate, as well as singing some observational lo-fi pop with a little bit of instrumental assistance from some bloke from The Retro Spankees. The missing link between Johnny Vegas and Billy Bragg, he's a bit different from the usual Autumn Store fayre, and the bill feels all the better for his hugely entertaining turn.

The Deirdres from Derby are huge in number and young of age, and there's too much going on at any one time to take all of it in at first. They start the show with their backs turned to the audience and have their own dance routine before revealing that they're all in character by wearing a pair of big Deirdre specs either on their face, their head or coquettishly tucked into their blouses. There are obvious comparisons to Los Campesinos! and another fashionable twist sees the group swap instruments and vocal turns with dizzying regularity.

Which is all very well, but does it all work? By and large, yes, aside from a slight glitch with that most evil of instruments, the recorder (the distant memories of disinfectant taste and clumsy fingers still bedevil your haunted hack), these precocious upstarts reveal talent, invention and more than decent songwriting skills. One suspects it may have taken years of practice and preparation for them to be this gauche and yet so good and so fun. The Deirdres, then: not a Barlow par performance between them.

Curious to see these acts for yourself? All three will be performing at the Indietracks festival in July in The Deirdres' home county of Derbyshire.

Nic's 'Snatch' Not Quite Up To Scratch

The Invasion, Odeon Telford, Saturday October 13 2007, 1pm.

Why bother going to see a fourth screen adaptation of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers? Good question, and one which the makers of The Invasion (2007) seek to answer by placing it in the milieu of a post-Iraq America beset by a curious combination of paranoia and self-loathing, acutely agitated by the prospect of enemies within yet troubled by their own violent tendencies revealed as they defend through offence.

In fact, the film-makers busy themselves so much in justifying the remake in terms of topical relevance, referencing not just Iraq several times but also the break-up of the Soviet Bloc, the use of anti-depressants to flatline emotions and the near-pornographic fetish for 24/7 news saturation that other, equally crucial elements to make the film come alive are fatally neglected. Namely, there's an acute shortage of credible romance, thrills or suspense. The lack of chemistry between an often uncomfortable Nicole Kidman and a worryingly wooden Daniel Craig is worthy of a sci-fi investigation in itself, the tension never quite builds to anything you might call excitement and the action sequences barely rise above competent and fail at any stage to quicken the pulse.

Still, at least Nicole Kidman remains easy on the eye, and even though her blonde bob, bleached visage, pinched nose and heavily arched eyebrows make her so unrecognisable from the freckle-faced redhead who made such an impact in Dead Calm that it might suggest a bodysnatching exercise worthy of a thriller plot in itself, it's reassuring to know she still looks good running around in a range of tight-fitting tops whilst in deadly peril. Yet if it seems harsh in this day and age to criticise an action blockbuster for having too many ideas in its head to concentrate properly on the staple action dynamics, no thrills + no suspense = nobody paying at the box-office in this or any other known universe.

Parsons Knows

Andy Parsons, Shrewsbury Music Hall, Shrewsbury, Sunday September 16 2007, 8pm.

Being a comedian is hard work, so Dead Kenny took the day off and went to see Andy Parsons live at The Music Hall, in the company of Gisbourne and Neal. Parsons is the balding guy with a high-pitched southern accent who's a regular on late-night comedy panel show Mock The Week and he's a professional comedian for the very good reason he's rather effective at making people laugh.

Reviewing comedy gigs is not a Parallax View forte also for a good reason - we're usually too busy careering from chuckling to chortling to take down notes of which gags worked or didn't, and your crap correspondent can never remember jokes at the best of times, unless they've been directly aimed at his friends. And while Parsons gets mucho mileage from the front row (a lady in a woollen beret with unfortunate toilet timing, a crisp-chombling chap and a fat bloke called Fred and his teacher wife coming in for particular attention) as well as singling out the bloke behind us who shouted 'Woo!' at the beginning, my companions for the night survived unscathed.

So as we can't remember specific gags you'll have to take your hoho-ing hack's word for it that Parsons represents good value-for-money in terms of solid quickfire material that, while remaining topical, should appeal to a broad audience range. Gordon Brown and David Cameron came in for roughly equal amounts of stick with defensive teachers ('I've got marking, you know!') and the good folk of Telford (always goes down well in Shrewsbury!) also heavily targeted. Unlike the likes of Richard Herring though, there were no surreal elements as such in the material so your concluding correspondent will contribute by saying that throughout he laughed like a train.

Maps Prove Useful

Part Two of a Set of Three reviews from the Summer Sundae Weekender 2007.

Summer Sundae Weekender, DeMontfort Halls And Gardens, Leicester, Saturday August 11 2007.

Meander back onto the site about lunchtime feeling a little dehydrated after the previous night's alcohol consumption, so crack open a thirst-quenching but credibility-crushing can of Tango in the belief that there's no-one around to see and tell. On turning around, however, immediately bump into Simon who talks intelligently about music while your hoarse hack tries to avert his gaze from my childish choice of soft drink.

Manage to chug it all down before Ray and Deb arrive on site, and we stroll off to see The Falling Leaves on the Indoor Stage, who have their moments, and recall The Kissaway Trial here and there, but in general are as familiar and slightly depressing as the season of autumn itself. Some sunshine is in order then (have we mentioned yet this is the best festival weather of the year so far?) to catch the first few songs of teenage prodigies Kitty Daisy and Lewis who play with (and indeed, in the style of) their parents. It's pastiche, but done with style and gusto, and in the light of Amy Winehouse's success, you can't argue there's not a market for this sort of thing. Even so, your wandering writer slopes off to see whether The Lea Shores have finally started their slot over on The Rising stage. They hadn't (a last-minute switch to the Indoor Stage on Sunday, we later learn) so console ourselves with the warblings of Jeremy Warmsley a personable young man in search of that singularly defining tune, whose new material betrays a vaguely alarming ambition to be the British Rufus Wainwright. Jez, leave it.

Grab some food at this point and bump into The Prykemeister, but can't hear a lot of what he's saying because Jazz Jamaica are proving to be the loudest band on the main stage we can ever remember. Turn it down, grandads, or the overflying pigeons will be history! Peek back into the Indoor Stage to see recently-reformed indie veterans Cud try manfully to cope with the absence of their lead singer on premature parental leave by seeking volunteers from the crowd to take turns to sing ditties like 'Rich and Strange'. Simon Cowell, if he was here, would no doubt call it a shambles, and maybe it is, but it's an entertaining one nonetheless which seems to help bond the watching crowd.

Enjoy a quick pint with Ray and Deb before wandering down near the front of the Main Stage where former Arab Strap-ling Malcolm Middleton has just started his set. At our first Summer Sundae two years ago, Malcolm was one of the big hits on the Indoor Stage and, with the usual sizeable Scottish contingent present, it's a deserved elevation to the Main Stage to help promote his third (rather good) album 'A Brighter Beat'. Middleton breaks off at one point to say 'I didn't realise I swore so much...fuckin 'ell!' before eventually revealing the title of the next track, the rather-sweet-actually 'Fuck It I Love You'. Post-rock tinged celtic folk never sounded so good!

Back up to the Rising Stage to catch latest Mancunian hopefuls The Whip here to represent the Nu Rave movement for Summer Sundae. Not entirely sure about Nu Rave over at Parallax View although the Klaxons cover of 'It's Not Over' may be the thing that tips us over the edge into its favour in a kind of indie kerplunk fashion. Early doors The Whip seem a bit drippy but a steady swirl of sauce soon permeates proceedings and by the tremendous last number it's the moment the Summer Sundae turned DayGlo. Later find out they've been tipped as the new New Order, if had been aware of this before seeing them would have been disappointed, but taken on their own terms they're one of the revelations of the weekend. Indeed, the drummer seems so pleased with the crowd response she apparently flashes the bassist in celebration - it's good to see a rhythm section getting on so well.

The two big choices of the night were Maps vs Wild Beasts and Sophie Ellis Bextor vs Low. Dead Kenny opts for the co-ordinated ones and (sorry, No.1 Low fan Ben) S-E-B. Had heard reports that Maps were struggling to recreate the excellent debut We Can Create in the live arena, but on the contrary this was one of the highlights of the weekend for PV, genuinely mesmerising stuff with Eloise and It Will Find You the most vivid highlights. Sophie Ellis-Bextor divides the crowd in terms of how much is pre-recorded or not, but nobody could deny her entertainment value, alternating between chic and gauche with amusing regularity, and she can still twitch her tush to devastating effect. Enough anyway, to district your starstruck scribe from the sight of Kitty and Daisy of Kitty, Daisy and Lewis sat directly to our right.

Watch the first few numbers from The Magic Numbers but once they've performed 'Forever Lost' we make a move towards the Indoor Stage to see !!!, meeting the gaze of Kitty and Daisy again as they sit on the steps looking on (later discover they join The Magic Numbers for some of their encores). !!! have the cocky fucker from OutHud (remember them?) as their lead singer and he's in typically extrovert form during a frenetic show during which many people seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, even if we're not sure how many of 'em will remember much about it in the morning.

Try to meet up again with Ray and Deb in the Cocktail Bar, where your
confused correspondent thinks he spies the DJ Trevor Nelson. The doppelganger mistakes my perusal for some other enquiry and sidles over to me and says 'everyone seems to be having a good time, brother, whaddaya reckon?'. Not sure whether he thought your harmless hack was after a fight, a fuck or a score, but time for an f. sharp exit, a timeous text message leading the way to a rendezvous at the indie disco in The Charlotte. A couple of hours of twisting and shouting to the latest indie faves later, your duracell dunderhead still hasn't had enough and heads for the hotel bar for a double whisky and to check the football highlights.

My dazed reverie is however interrupted by a familiar cackle. Who should be lounging in the hotel with friends but the esteemed Mancunian punk-poet John Cooper-Clarke! If seeing him once meant we'd done good, and seeing him twice meant we'd done very very bad, what does seeing him three times mean? On that inscrutable enigma, retire to bed.

to be continued...

Why Make A Simpsons Movie? D'Ough!

The Simpsons Movie, Odeon Telford, Sunday August 19 2007, 8.15pm.

First off, let's make it clear your cool-on-cartoons correspondent is no Simpsons obsessive. Have laughed along to many a show, and would generally concur it's one of the landmark programmes of our era, but when pubtalk moves to matching gags to particular episodes your huffy hack will quickly look to shift it back to music, football or girls. Yet in what seems a weak summer season, The Simpsons Movie appeared to offer the most palatable blend of brainfood and pop(culture)corn on the multiplex menu.

Belly-laughs start early with an inspired Itchy and Scratchy toon that sets the tone for a satisfying stirfry of slapstick and subversion, although the laugh-o-meter settles down to a steady stream of chucklesome moments without quite ever spilling over into wet-your-pants hilarity. The storyline quite comfortably reaches the running time without feeling like an over-long episode but there's a softer centre to proceedings than usual and a slight tendency to sentimentality probably explained by the need to pander to a broader audience taste than normal.

Most disappointing, perhaps, is that the linear plotline doesn't allow for meatier subplots concerning the fantastic range of supporting characters that have built up over the series. Having typed that, the Simpson movie of my dreams, that would owe as much to Altman and Pynchon than Hanna and Barbera in its holistic and hilarious debunking of a corrupt age, would never get made, let alone released, despite the potential hinted at during some of the best episodes over the years. And so, we're left with the best Simpsons movie we could hope for that would also earn over 100 million bucks at the box office, a pretty good way to spend 90 minutes without ever approaching the greatness of landmark cinematic toons like Toy Story or The Incredibles.

Uncool List

First up, congratulations to my brother Mark and his wife Gabrielle on the birth of their daughter, making Dead Kenny an Uncle for the very first time, as Madonna might once have sung. In honour of this occasion, here are some other pressing deliveries...

Russ L on The Spotted Dog's spot of bother.

Ben fills his blogging boots with a Glastonbury 2007 diary.

The new Interpol record is a new Interpol record, and thus a mighty thing of wonder indeed.

Hitflip sent me a nice t-shirt.

Billy Bragg's doing his bit for jailhouse rock.

A new Peter Greenaway film is imminent.

Ambition novelist Nirpal Dhaliwal on Emily Parr's 'David Brent moonwalk'.

Robyn's still blogging. This makes us happy.

Simone Radway is a photography graduate based in Birmingham looking to assist fashion and portrait photographers.

This is where your correspondent will be at this weekend.

?

The new Paul Schrader film, The Walker, opens in the UK on August 10. Looks like a modern riff on his American Gigolo with Harrelson getting Wood-y as a gentleman escort.

Fingerjig is an online typing game (via Graybo)

Still game? Pac-Man's skull found.

West Ham Till I Die is Iain Dale's West Ham diary, getting a reputation for reliable pre-press scoop. This close season has been a little too close for comfort, if you ask me.

Drawing things to a full circle...10 things to do before you die.

Parallax View Verdict On The Andorra v England Game

Dead Kenny can exclusively reveal that the official Parallax View verdict on the Andorra v England Euro 2008 qualifier...was to switch over at half-time to watch The Apprentice instead (have given up watching England games in the pub cos the tears of frustration tend to water down the beer). Perhaps the most amusing bit of the first episode was watching the dopey quantum physicist grovelling to Sir Alan about misjudging the amount of milk needed to be ordered for the adhoc coffee vending project because she'd forgotten how much it 'frothed up' in a capuccino!

Still, Sir Alan Sugar (the man who, lest we forget, had the business acumen to get shot of the Tottscum) knew the score and saw through the nice-guy hard-luck stories of car salesman Andy, who, as project manager, was fired for failing in his responsibility to organise and produce results from a bunch of primadonnas with overdeveloped senses of their own importance following their own agendas at the expense of the team objective. Ah, if only Sir Alan was in charge of the FA we could be hailing a taxi for Steve McClaren right now.

Meanwhile, on the BBC2 tie-in programme You're Fired! that followed, my, erm, business interest was piqued by Sahar Hashemi, guest pundit and Coffee Republic co-founder, whose kind face and sharp fiscal brains could get Dead Kenny frothy, man! anytime...

Peter, Bjorn And Gone

We begin with some sombre news that left us feeling flatter than Beirut as Victoria Bergsman has left The Concretes to concentrate on a solo career. We know that The Concretes are a solid unit containing multiple songwriters and vocalists, but Bergsman has a unique delivery and dry stage banter that will be difficult for the Swedes to replace. It does though kinda explain Bergsman's recent diversification - as well as singing on Peter Bjorn and John's recent PV Single Of The Week 'Young Folks', she's credited with providing Camera Obscura with haircuts on their latest long-player 'Let's Get Out Of This Country'...

Simon Sweeping The Nation went to the Truck Festival at the weekend but all we've got to show for it so far is this blurry but still fantastic photo of Dead Kenny's summer crush Emmy The Great in a seriously short skirt. It has to be said we'd have had difficulty finding our focus in the circumstances, too.

In theatre news, a new Terry Johnson play is always something of an event (eg. Insignificance; Hitchcock Blonde) so book early for a limited four-week run of Piano/Forte at the Royal Court Theatre. Sopranos star Alicia Witt and Kelly (Mrs Henderson Presents) Reilly head the cast.

This year's Big Brother we can take or leave, but what is certain is that contestant Imogen Thomas's ex-squeeze is a dastardly dick for releasing a home sex video purporting to feature the purrty Welsh miss in a rarebit of graphic action. But we admit we still looked at the NOT SAFE FOR WORK evidence (purely to identify the culprit concerned, 'course). Time and motion students can download the EXTREMELY UN-WORKSAFE full video from here.

Random Reading-bashing always provides an amusing diversion.

'Night, Warden.