Martin Barnes, one of the V&A’s photography curators, suggests that: ‘by the end of the 1960s “freaky” could be used as a term of excitement and interest to describe something or someone’.

So Diane Arbus, who had a relatively privileged background, may not have been looking down on her subjects when she called some of them freaks. Not that that really matters, because the real point seems to be that everyone is a freak is some way or other and so none of us are. We came to this fresh from Degas, Sickert & Toulouse-Lautrec at Tate Britain, where Degas courted controversy by making art that refused to present a prettified vision of the world. Diane Arbus Revelations challenges in much the same way. But these don’t feel like contemporary revelations. These black and whites help turn the 1960s into a foreign land populated by strange people… ‘freaky’ indeed.

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There’s an awful lot to Degas, Sickert & Toulouse-Lautrec, London & Paris 1870-1910 at Tate Britain, but fortunately the website is rather good (see the paintings, view video clips et cetera) and the multimedia guide is even better (even if Stephen Fry’s the narrator). It’s worth mentioning the latter because even though it’s the same price as an audio guide and works the same way (tap in a number and press enter) the Tate’s staff is keen to push the older technology. Restricted to audio, you don’t get to compare what you’re looking at with other works, see what place look like today or view archive film footage. So ask for the multi-media guide and plan to be here for hours.

Fully immersed you’ll get a real sense of the time in which these artists were working and why their work was controversial. Particularly enjoyable is Room 5, a homage to dandyism and, at the other end of the social scale, there’s real insight to be gained into the world of the variety theatres in Room 2. L’Absinthe gets Room 4 and a mocked up newspaper charting the controversy that raged. Many felt that L’Absinthe could not be art:

‘A man and a woman, both of the most degraded type, are seated on a bench in a wine-shop, their backs reflected in a glass screen behind them… the total effect… is one which most of us will be anxious to banish from our minds as quickly as possible’

The work told us nothing of Degas’ skill that we didn’t know already. The subject was ‘repulsive’ and so this could not be art… though nobody denied it depicted a reality. These ideas meant that visiting Diane Arbus at the V&A, as we did that afternoon made perfect sense. It showed how completely the establishment’s view of what art is for has changed.

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Early in my career I worked for one of the grand old men (although not that old really, let’s call him X) of the Manchester PR scene, who’d been exiled to Stoke-on-Trent following a misfortune arising from the recession of the early 1990s.

The interview for my next career move was with someone I sort of knew and we got talking about my former boss, X, as you do. My prospective employer (let’s call him Y) had met X in a professional capacity and told me how X had been shocked to see that Y wore a cheap plastic watch. In fact Y’s watch was so very cheap that X seemed quite distressed and concerned that Y might bring the PR industry into disrepute. People might think we were all struggling financially (although, ironically, it was X who was in trouble). I pretended to agree that there was nothing wrong with wearing a cheap watch, even though watches are jewellery and Y’s was the equivalent of something you’d find in a Christmas cracker. At least X was going down in style.

Anyway. A little while ago I suggested easy4men was a silly idea. I’m not sure I was wrong, but it’s still going. On this basis there must be plenty of people who think cheap watches are okay and will be delighted to herald the arrival of easyWatch, the fifteenth ‘easy’ branded business launched by Stelios and the easyGroup in the last 10 years. easyWatch watches are made by Zeon.

If you wear a watch for purely practical reasons – perhaps you want one for sport or you just take it easy – then easyWatch, with prices starting at just £9.99 and never topping £20 (at time of writing) is for you. Some of the watches are bright easy orange, but on others easy branding is more subtle. It may be that just as Primark clothes can be combined with Prada, so an easyWatch will sit well on the arm of someone wearing an Armani suit.

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I almost never watch ITV. It’s not a deliberate snobbery thing; it’s just that I don’t watch reality TV, game shows or soaps. ITV news, with its silly distractions is too light. Everything about ITV is really cheap somehow. I’m not alone. ITV viewing figures continue to head south as do those for the red-top tabloids (and the Mail and Express). ITV guaranteed audience to advertisers and must now give them some of their money back, while over on the Sun budgets have been frozen.

Meanwhile, ex-broadsheets are expected to do well, so perhaps we’re all middle class now.

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While Rachel Whiteread’s Embankment was unimpressive at Tate Modern, the next day we were at Tate Britain and delighted to discover that Turner Prize 2005 is well worth a look. I think this year’s contest is the best there’s been for quite some time as for once all the artists seem to have something to say that goes beyond, ‘whatever’.

I suspect the winner will be Gillian Carnegie, even though the film you’ll find here sounds like the narrator’s a pretentious student (its Carnegie reading someone else’s commentary: ‘whatever’). The thing is she’s painting, creating pieces you can put on your wall (so she ticks the boxes for some people’s idea of art), but the work is unmistakably contemporary and draws you in to other worlds.

That said, the most touching work on show here (and it’s not on these works that the artists are judged, but the last year’s output) is Darren Almond’s If I Had You. The kind of installation you associate with the Turner Prize, it really does seem to allow you to share a melancholy moment in his grandmother’s head. The problem with Simon Starling’s Shedboatshed and Tabernus Desert Run is that, as Katharine said, they’re more feats of recycling than art. Yeah, it’s impressive to see how this shed was turned into a boat and back. But I liked the watercolour cactus, a by-product of Tabernus Desert Run best. And it depends on your knowing the history of piece and its manufacture. This leaves Jim Lambie. He was okay, but you’ve seen found pieces and discarded tat turned into art before.
Update 6 December 2005: The winner is Simon Starling.

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I’m not about to run a marathon, but if I were I’d be strapping myself into a Poweriser 7090. These velocity stilts would allow me to jump six feet into the air and lengthen my stride beyond nine feet. So powered, speeds in excess of twenty miles an hour would be within my grasp, allowing me to complete that suddenly high velocity marathon in about an hour. I’d hardly break into a sweat.

Smaller adults (ladies I guess) should try the Poweriser 5070, while the Poweriser 3050 is perfect for the kids. Soon the whole family will be bounding ahead on its Poweriser velocity stilts, the envy of all the neighbours.

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As I was preparing to disappear into mobile blog mode last weekend, the EU Parliament was voting on its chemicals policy, REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals). The effect of the legislation looked pretty vague. It would cost between £1.5bn and £8.6bn to save £billions (perhaps) in healthcare costs. What didn’t appear in doubt was that REACH would result in additional animal testing with millions of beasts affected.

Well there’s been a surprise. REACH may not be so bad after all because I came home to find BUAV (British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) claiming victory. Most significantly the Cosmetics Directive which already prohibits animal testing of cosmetic products and bans animal tested cosmetics within the EU from 2009 will stand. Competing businesses will be forced to share data, which will reduce duplication and alternatives to animal testing will receive significant and guaranteed financial support.

I was wrong when I said: ‘What we do know is that the few MEPs – Labour, Tory and Lib Dem – who actively considered non-animal alternatives were supportive of them, but that at least a million animals will suffer as a result of legislation passed by a majority of others who gave it very little thought.’

It seems that, on the whole, the majority has chosen to listen to the minority who knew what they were talking about. But it was a close thing. If we were to have the much needed wider debate, it may be that animal testing would be reduced much further as alternatives, which up until now have received no significant funding, were fully explored.
EU votes for REACH… what’s that?
City Life’s lobotomy reversed: I was wrong#3……John Leech MP: I was wrong#5

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Daisies like this popped up all over Manchester on Monday (bet they don’t survive the weekend; I’m surprised the bloody students haven’t nicked them already). It’s all part of a campaign for a smoke free Manchester. I’m not sure a ban on smoking in public places would extend to the street. But it might. And that would be very silly.

There’s something odd about pushing up the daisies at busy junctions and roundabouts. I once lived in Stockport once ‘one of the darkest and smokiest holes in the whole industrial area’ (Engels) because it’s deep in the Mersey valley where pollution collects. Walking to work down the busy A6, I developed a little asthma. Should you have difficulty breathing while standing with these daisies, other people’s smoke is unlikely to be the cause.

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I’ve spent some of this afternoon listening to BBC GMR and discovering that afternoon DJ Phil Wood is very Alan Partridge. But it’s not his show I’ve tuned in for but Michelle Daniel’s drive-time news programme to hear NUJ Northern Organiser Miles Barter do a great job of launching the campaign to save City Life.

I’ve not always been nice to City Life, but the magazine’s improved a lot recently and not just because they commissioned me to write for them. Should local print media monopolist Guardian Media Group close City Life, the city’s media and cultural scenes will have been dealt a body blow.

City Life is one of the city’s most important media outlets. Editorially it stands out of the GMG crowd. The Manchester Evening News concentrates on the concerns of the curmudgeonly over 60s with campaigns against public art. The columns of its sister weekly free sheet, the Metro News, are populated by whingers and another sister paper, the South Manchester Reporter, rages against the bars and restaurants that mark Manchester’s cosmopolitan success. It’s like everyone wants to write for the Daily Mail and really, really hate where they live. Which is rather sad.

City Life is a breath of fresh air because it celebrates Manchester, its many successes and the regeneration that has brought real prosperity and quality of life to the region. It plays a vital role in spreading the word on the cultural events that make the city special and provides the vital oxygen of publicity to organisers of those events. Mark Dodson is the chief executive of Guardian Media Regional and the man to bug (politely of course). To see what I sent him click: mark.dodson@men-news.co.uk and, if you like, hit send. (If you send your own e-mail, please cc nujmanchester@nuj.org.uk.)
Update: City Life to close… as Guardian Media Group downsizes

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I was right. The Darkness charted at number eight with One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back, just as I said they would. And within two weeks it will gone from the chart. The album will not be the commercial success record bosses hope for and we will soon be rid.

But why the gloat? Well I had e-mail from a young Darkness fan from a school that goes by the motto ‘Zeal for the Faith’ (they’re Catholics). And what a zealot he is! I came back from my short break to several attempts at anonymous nasty comments. I don’t mind that. I think it’s fun. But I am no more notorious than before I went away. While the comments are posted over several days, they come from just two IPs and they both belong to same ISP. How sad.
Buy The Darkness: One Way Ticket to Hell and Back here if you must!

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