Press:
Sunday Times: Jasper Gerard comments on the dumbing down of ITV's flagship news, which led last week with the diminishing popularity of the Kit Kat.

"Sir Alastair Burnet, a former star of Fleet Street and The Economist, and Sandy Gall, battle-hardened from dodging bullets with the mujaheddin, read news that mattered. It thrashed the BBC, partly because money was no object in pursuit of the story, partly because it had pace and flair. But after endless cuts ITV’s news coverage is just typing pool chitchat about chocolate bars. You scream at the screen: “Sir Trevor, we really don’t care.”"

Meanwhile, Lowri Turner brings the heartening news that crop tops, low-slung jeans and thongs may have had their day.

"The look on the catwalks for next autumn and winter is sexy librarian meets the Iron Lady. Hallelujah. Arms and knees have been covered up. Marc Jacobs had Miss Moneypenny clones strutting down the runway in pussy-bow blouses and prim tweed skirts. Jacobs said that the look was “about finding Mrs Thatcher sexy”. Which might be a scary thought, but not nearly as scary as what on earth Britney will wear next if unchecked."

And finally, a headline I never expected to see in my lifetime:
Tina Turner, rock goddess, reincarnated as Hindu deity
Apparently la Turner (Tina, not Lowri) is to appear in Merchant Ivory movie as Shakti, the female deity that symbolises power and energy.

Radio:
Alistair Cook’s Letter from America this morning featured a brilliant
exposition of the US wars against Iraq, and how we got to where we are.
It included the still little acknowledged fact that Bill Clinton was
preparing to raise forces against Saddam when the Lewinsky affair raised
its head. After that, as Alistair pithily put it, “he didn’t have the
moral authority to invade Long Island.”

Books:
Currently reading: The Scottish Nation – T. M. Devine. Certainly helping
to fill in the many gaps in my knowledge of my own country’s history. So
far, covered the Act of Union – which seems to have been won through
underhand persuasion and bribery, and then a chapter on the Jacobites.
We did the Jacobites in history at school, but it was so drearily taught
that I never learned much. This one chapter has done more to enlighten
me than two years in the classroom.

Just finished: I Am An Oil Tanker – Fi Glover. A wonderful tour around
the world of radio, as well as a tour around the world. Fi is the sort
of person I’d love to share a journey with. Witty, intelligent and
observant, with that wonderful touch of irony that the Brits do so well.
Its chapters take us to a radio station run by Irish UN troops in South
Lebanon, to a smoooooth jazz presenter in Palm Springs, and most
touchingly to Montserrat, where the radio station literally helped keep
people alive during the eruption of the volcano. All the way through it,
Fi shows her love of radio, and I must say it’s infectious.

Radio:

Sacha Distel on Desert Island Disks. I didn't realise he'd been "discovered" by Brigitte Bardot, starting off in her film, "And God Created Woman", a film memorably misprinted as "And God Cremated Woman"

Video:

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Beautiful scenery, brutal scenes. If I were Sam, I'd have given Frodo a slap, and as for that anorexic gargoyle, the less said about him the better.

Quotations

Icelanders are a very cultured people. They stay in school until they are twenty, mainly because it’s too cold to go into the playground.
AA Gill,

The great thing about Glasgow now is that if there’s a nuclear attack it’ll look exactly the same afterwards.
Billy Connolly

Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother’s corpse.
James Joyce

So there I was lying in the gutter. A man stopped and asked '"What's the matter? Did you fall over?" So I said "No. I've a bar of toffee in my back pocket and I was just trying to break it."
Chic Murray