An impressive noir-ish biopic, American Gangster won’t go down as a classic but it is a solid, well acted and convincing mafia-style flick.

And the moral of the story… don’t wear fur.

A buy-in-plenty-of-popcorn 8 out of 10.
Director: Ridley Scott……Starring: Denzel Washington……Russell Crowe
It’s a Free World……Ocean’s Eleven

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Pictures of Gemma Atkinson in Ultimo are easily available at the Daily Mail, which spends good money on photos of her working out, showering and the rest. It’s this soft porn – stars like Hollyoak’s Gemma Atkinson semi-naked, nude or topless – that keeps the Daily Mail’s circulation up; two photos of this pole dancer on GMTV are required to get across the outrage felt by right-thinking people. (The only one who takes its politics seriously, sadly, is Gordon Brown.)

Anyway. If you’re thinking ‘phoaahh!’, I wish I / my girlfriend / my wife looked like Gemma Atkinson in Ultimo, you’ll be wanting to get yourself over to Figleaves, where Ultimo is in stock right now. But Gemma Atkinson’s Ultimo is only for bras sized D to G, if you have a more modest requirement check out what Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding has to offer… phoaahh!

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‘Relatively small touches, that need not cost the earth, can make a significant difference to the experience the gym offers,’ is how I like to sign off my emails to Virgin Active, but it’s a message that falls on deaf ears. The transition from the fairly upmarket Holmes Place to Virgin Active, which is happy to be a cheap and cheerful bargain brand, has been quite painful.

The big sweetener, heavily promoted through posters, special staff t-shirts et cetera, was that Virgin Active would be the only gym in the country to offer hula-hoop classes. They soon found out why they were the only ones and didn’t have to tell anyone when the axe fell on the hoops. In keeping with the novelty first approach, Virgin is to be the only gym in the country to have whole rooms dedicated to Powerplates (which the Sun reckons cost £6,995 each). When that flops, perhaps it will become the only gym to offer hopscotch and Space Hoppers.

I’m glad to see I’m not alone in having the odd whinge. Someone in London has …continues here.

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Local shops, backed by the Lib Dems and Cllr Sheila Newman have won the first round of a campaign to stop Tesco converting a run down Esso garage into a Tesco Express. Given that Esso has, say Greenpeace, ‘done more than any other company to stop the world from tackling climate change’, it’s hard to see why anybody should be sorry to see them leave Chorlton. And when they go they’ll leave a dirty eyesore of a site that may take years to find a developer. A former Texaco on the other side of the Chorlton was left derilict for several years before a developer took it on.

In contrast, the arguments against a Tesco are unsustainable. An Express would not be a full size supermarket and would be dwarfed by Chorlton’s Morrison’s. It would compete with Somerfield and the tatty discount supermarkets in the precinct.

The likes of Barbakan, which lays claims to being the UK’s best baker, do themselves no favours when they claim consumers would prefer to shop at a Tesco on the other side of the street. The independent Unicorn Grocery is leading the charge. Figures on their website reveal that the Tesco Express would be less than a third of the size of Unicorn. Yet, like Barbakan, they are convinced that, given the choice, shoppers will pick the smaller store.

Chorlton’s independent traders have done an incredible job of making the village special and it’s amazing that they fail to recognise that they offer unique shopping experiences with which Tesco Express simply doesn’t compete; do Barbakan really belive their customers would prefer Tesco bread?