Goodness me, what a shocker. The Secret Diary of a Call Girl began so safely, with Billie Piper bonking gormless punters in full lingerie that reveals less than a sixteen year old on the pull in the Printworks.

Oh how we laughed at her bouncing up and down with big knickers very safely in place. How we tutted at the portrayal of prostitution as a fun lifestyle choice for the independent woman who hankers for an apartment overlooking the Thames. It’s made by women and so is for women, argue it’s defenders… yeah right.

But it’s actually all right as chill-out nonsense to mock in a ‘I don’t know why we watch this’ kind of way.

Then all of a sudden, a few episodes in, Billie Piper goes topless, then naked. There’s a nude Billie Piper going for it in a threesome with another hooker to the currently obligatory Mark Ronson (Coldplay’s God Put A Smile Upon Your Face with horns) soundtrack. I guess they thought that the perverts would give up after the first tame episodes… they were wrong.

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If it wasn’t for Mathew Turner, I’d never have known there was a pro-EU Treaty Referendum march on Westminster at the weekend. Which may be just how the organisers would prefer it:

‘What a ghastly, disheartening experience. A crowd of about 500 I guess, only about half of them safe out without a minder…. tried chatting to a few… wished to God I hadn’t… “Who’d be an MP… and eat rubber chicken with people like this?”… Weakens one’s commitment to democracy, meeting the demos en masse…’
– pro-EU Treaty Referendum marcher, ‘Prodicus’

This Prodicus guy/gal’s self-awareness is almost a redeeming feature and explains why s/he’s one of those anonymous Tory bloggers; s/he expresses him/herself in the manner of a wo/man with coprolalia; particularly ironic as s/he explains that s/he’s taken the name of a philosopher keen on ‘proper use of language’.

Prodicus also mistakes the crowd of misfits above for MPs, but most are clearly Ukipers and so are unlikely to ever be elected to Westminster.

It’s good to see that despite the hysterical campaign – ‘Right-wing newspapers labelled Brown a “traitor”’ – against the EU Treaty, when push comes to shove it’s just the odd nutter with time on his hands that can be bothered to kick off.

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Great to see Tate Liverpool so busy, with Turner Prize tickets snapped up well in advance. But sadly this year’s nominees are an underwhelming bunch and there’s nothing here to wind up the Daily Mail.

The Turner Prize should instead go to the Tate PR team for ‘Taxi Project’. They brought some of Liverpool’s black cab drivers together to talk about art and stuff and having primed them sent them off to challenge their passengers. So having explored the art you can climb into a black cab and listen to the debate with the passengers projected on screen.

It’s a far more interesting than the real Turner Prize artists who aren’t really that bad, but simply lack that winning X factor.
Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s Diary of Sorts.

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Few would pick out Bradford for a day out, but they’re trying and Salts Mill makes for a good afternoon. We only became aware of the place after seeing Hockney’s portrait of Jonathan Silver in at the National Portrait Gallery which isn’t right, is it?

Nevertheless, any fan of Hockney should make the trip to Salts Mill at least once during their lifetime. Stars of the show are Hockney’s opera sets which reveal the artist at his most surreal, with the remaining galleries providing a good overview of his work. And somehow well complementing the up-market out-of-town shopping experience that pays for it all.

The experience is contextualised by an okay introduction to Sir Titus Salt, the philanthropic mill owner and founder of the village of Saltaire (it’s by the River Aire, get it?) who nursed Bradford through the pain of industrialisation. Yes, it was grim up north.

All that’s missing is some temporary exhibition space to give us a reason to come back and raise the profile of the place.