Alex James, bassist in Blur and self confessed wild man of Brit Pop, retires to a farm in the country and in an act of penitence – a companion to the confessional autobiography – puts himself in danger’s way to make a documentary on the production of what was his drug of choice, cocaine, in Columbia.

But what a disappointment Cocaine: Alex James in Colombia was. Maybe it’s down to Panorama being reduced to half an hour, but it was a terribly unsubstantial piece, more like a trailer for something good.

This documentary failed because it fell into the trap of telling us stuff, without really showing us anything and so there was nothing to connect with emotionally. Alex James spoke earnestly about how cocaine is a cancer eating away at Columbia, destroying an otherwise beautiful country, but never presented us with an opportunity to connect with any Colombians.

So when we’re told at the end that the cab driving hit man, who does a job a day, was killed over the New Year, we’re not bothered. He was only ever a dodgy character hiding in the shadows and those who live by the sword… And then there’s that interview with the country’s president. We’re told he he’s a right winger determined to stamp out the drug trade. Maybe he’s motivated by the death of his father at the hands of drug dealers. At the end Alex James gives him a big ‘people power’ salute (without irony) even though he said absolutely nothing of substance.

And yet throughout all this, is a sense that something dark was going on just beneath the surface. Something we’re protected from. A missed opportunity.

Perhaps Cocaine: Alex James in Colombia was always doomed. It’s easy to connect with these issues on an intellectual level and we all know drugs are bad. Violent crime in Columbia is out of control (but do we really care about drug dealers killing each other). Spraying kills legitimate crops grown alongside the cocaine and creates poverty (but those legitimate crops bring in very little anyway, its cocaine that puts food in the farmers’ mouths).

Just as people continue to buy battery farmed eggs and foie gras despite knowing what the production of these foods entails, so they’ll continue to enjoy cocaine. The end user is too divorced from the production process to really care.

Although, it was quite funny when the Columbians kept making it so clear they’d much prefer to be showing Kate Moss around.

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How sad that as soon as Geraldine McEwan’s finished filming the twelve Miss Marple novels the creative geniuses at ITV begin the search for a new Miss Marple so they make them all over again; just as they did when Joan Hickson completed the dozen for the BBC.

It’s as if every generation must have a Miss Marple to call its own. Sunday nights just wouldn’t be the same without one.

And yet, I’m sure I’m not the only one who can get over the idea that Miss Marple’s been done and Sunday nights are ready for something a bit more… well contemporary. Contemporary on ITV seems to mean waking up old and tired concepts with cameos from stars not usually associated with such safe and sleepy drama: like Catherine Tate. But while ITV likes to bang on about Catherine Tate’s appearance, it’s worth noting that was just before she was famous and at a time when she took jobbing roles on stuff like the Bill to make ends meet.

So let’s not film Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple novels all over again. If you want Sunday nights to stay the same forever, simply turn over to UKTV Gold and its rivals. That’s what they’re there for.

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Once you’ve gotten used to an electric toothbrush there’s no going back. No matter how much elbow grease you apply when using an old fashioned manual brush, your teeth never seem to feel as clean and polished.

But you know it is. We’re always looking for the next best thing. Our Braun Oral-B Professional 7000 has done sterling work for a while, but at £40-45 it’s a low-to-mid range product. What would it be like to use a high end toothbrush costing at least three times more?

So I was delighted when Amazon asked me to try out and review the Philips Sonicare HX6932/10 Flexcare Sonic Toothbrush with UV Sanitizing Station by Philips Sonicare.

The first thing we noticed was that the brush heads are of a far simpler design than the Braun Oral-B which seem to have become ever more elaborate over time. The next thing was just how much the Phillips Sonicare Flexcare Sonic Toothbrush tickles, but that sensation soon passes with regular use. The third thing was just how much cleaner – and I go as far as to say dentist polished – your teeth feel.

There’s also a gum massaging mode that actually feels quite nice. It leaves your gums with a gentle ache, like they’ve just had a workout. Gum massage is supposed to increase blood flow, firm up gum tissue and help prevent gum disease. It’s something to do once in a while and there are sensitive and quick modes as well.

This Sonicare toothbrush comes with a UV Sanitizing Station that zaps bacteria with ultraviolet light for ten minutes, giving the nasties rather more than a suntan. I can’t really tell if that works, and I’ve been content to rinse my toothbrushes (manual or electric) under water for what’s approaching four decades, but now the idea’s in my head I’m zapping my toothbrush head on a regular basis.

Perhaps more useful is the travel bag and travel recharger. It would be even more useful if there was room in the travel bag for the toothbrush and the travel recharger, but this is the only flaw in the package.

In conclusion, had I been persuaded to buy a Philips Sonicare HX6932/10 Flexcare Sonic Toothbrush with UV Sanitizing Station by Philips Sonicare, I reckon I’d be feeling pretty delighted. It’s certainly vastly superior to its lower cost rivals.

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Labour’s local election victory in a Sandwell ward the Lib Dems probably thought safe, shows Manchester Labour just what can be done.

However, Manchester’s Lib Dems can be expected to shout about their achievements loud and proud. Earlier this month they scored a major success in Levenshulme, where a street with no name is now clearly signed the ‘THE STREET WITH NO NAME’. Rather sensibly Lib Dem councillors John Commons and Keith Whitmore insisted the sign be placed high off the ground to stop the tourists from nicking it. If you fancy visiting this tourist hotspot, be sure to contact John and Keith beforehand as I’m sure they’ll happily pose with you for pictures.

And yet I’m not convinced this is such a major coup. Clint Eastwood never introduced himself with ‘Hi! I’m the man with no name’. He simply didn’t give a name. In fact he probably did have a name once, as a child say, but for whatever reason stopped using it. It is this failure to give a name that made his character so enigmatic. Had his mother turned up and revealed he was christened Dave Smith, or whatever, a bubble would have well and truly burst. Now that the street with no name is The Street with No Name I feel something is lost. The street is no longer nameless, the sign is an oxymoron.

But hey! If it wins votes, who am I to argue.

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‘The music industry is all about fences. Those who are on the inside, and those who are on the outside. SellaBand wants to break down all the fences. Everybody with a passion for music can be on the inside. It’s your music. It’s your choice.
– Sellaband mission statement

No industry has struggled more loudly with new media than the music industry. Record companies are cultural institutions in their own right and watching EMI’s new owner struggling to keep the business together we wonder if we are witnessing the death throws of a dinosaur and it’s hard not to feel a pang of trepidation.

In place of the all powerful record companies offering mega contracts to a chosen few, while most see their dreams come to naught, is the promise of a new democratised industry.

Sellaband is a website striving to position itself in the vanguard of the revolution. The vision is a three-way partnership between the artist, their fans (cultishly referred to as believers) and Sellaband itself. Fans buy shares, or parts, of an artist at US$10 a pop and once they’ve raised $50,000 music gets professionally produced and everyone dines out on the proceeds. I guess that if it takes off, Sellaband could make a serious investment vehicle for music lovers; in three months Sellaband distributed $25,000 to the first three bands to find success and their fans (I reckon that’s $0.83 per $10 part, so you could get your money back in about a year along with a free copy of the CD).

The sticking point seems to be distribution. You don’t find Sellaband artists in HMV. And you don’t see them on the playlist of Radio 1. Which is a pity, because raising £25k from fans should count for something.

But you will find them at Amazon, who asked me to check out Second Person, the first UK band to hit the $50,000 target. And I have: over here.

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The first UK band to release an album (well EP) through Sellaband, Second Person are unlikely to escape inevitable comparisons with Portishead, which is not all bad; their eponymous album has never really left my personal playlist. The Elements is a concept album of five tracks inspired by the Chinese elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water, but it’s not as pretentious as that makes it sound.

While Second Person don’t push any boundaries, The Elements is good quality chill out music (combine this with the concept and it’s starting to sound like those tapes they play in spa treatment rooms; but that’s a cruel thing to say) and is likely to go down well in the background at dinner parties given by people who like Morcheeba.

What’s missing from The Elements is some grit. Perhaps surprisingly, given that this is not a proper record company offering, the music is a little overproduced, a little too polished. We need some emotion, which I guess wood, fire, earth, metal and water don’t really provide.

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‘Mr Cameron will learn this year whether his own daughter has won a place at a state-funded Church of England school in Kensington, West London.’
– The Times

David Cameron’s promotion of progressive new Tory values like co-operation always looked shaky and now the Tory twist is beginning to reveal itself. As Bob Piper says, these are the morals of those with sharp elbows, which doesn’t sound very co-operative at all.

Not only will Cameron not criticise any parents who pretend to be Christians in order to get their children into a faith school, he praises those who do as ‘active citizens’. A neighbour of the Tory leader says: ‘Church schools in Kensington and Chelsea are chock-a-block with parents who have conveniently found God when their child is two and a half, which gives them just enough regular church-going before they must put their application in. Although there are genuine Christians, I would say the majority are in the other category.’

Of course parents will lie for their children, but rather than praise dishonesty it would be nice to hear David Cameron’s plan to change things so that parents no longer feel a need to deceive the local vicar.

All of which fits into a pattern of slimy dishonesty when it comes to Cameron, that makes him particularly dodgy. If he had some principles – however flawed – it might be possible to respect David Cameron, but he is no more than an opportunist wishing crises on the country: ‘an enthusiastic Tory backbencher like me can hardly wait to switch on the Today programme every morning in order to listen to all the bad news.’

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The dead or comatose protagonist or narrator is fast becoming a literary cliché and Daniel Clay takes a good stab at popularising the idea with a first novel billed as a cross between The Lovely Bones and Shameless.

Sadly, while Broken begins promisingly enough, the Shameless side quickly dominates and the comatose eleven-year-old’s voice swiftly fades and disappears for more than 100 pages, before returning to add little. What’s left is a caricature that, while too cartoonish to be satirical, does offer some comedy.

The Shameless inspired Oswalds live in a housing association property on the edge of a middle class Southampton square, setting us up for a traditional British comedy of class and manners. But the novel has no sympathy for the Oswalds and so we can never really believe in the family; there’s no pathos and so they’re simply condemned as trash.

That eleven-year-old, Skunk Cunningham, lives with her lone parent father, a solicitor, her brother and their live-in au-pair. But we only know the Cunninghams are posher than the Oswalds because Daniel Clay has told us; to name your daughter after a band, Skunk Anansie, is a very chavy thing to do.

There is no evidence of any kind of research (a healthy child dies of thirst in less than four days), relevant experience or empathy. Instead, Broken is underpinned by Daniel Clay’s unrelenting cynicism, which quickly becomes wearing. Hung over Hampshire police route a report of a missing child to the Glasgow fire service, the NHS forgets to give a mentally ill man his medicine, scene of crime experts charge time-and-a-half and so on.

Broken is a novel to be read as it appears to have been written; in one hurried sitting. But if you enjoy Shameless, you might enjoy Broken as an unchallenging holiday read.
Broken is published on 3 March 2008: pre-order your copy from Amazon.co.uk.

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Alcohol related scare stories are unhealthily popular at the moment and today we learn that a new study ‘suggest[s] that alcohol consumption is increasingly a problem among the middle classes’. Except, as John Band points out, it doesn’t.

We learn that in 2006: ‘Men and women in “managerial and professional” households drank an average of 15.1 units a week’. (The workers manage just 11.8 units.) Which is no big deal as the Department of Health recommends that men should drink no more than three to four units of alcohol a day, and women no more than two to three units of alcohol a day; so 21 to 28 units for men and fourteen to 21 units for women per week.

And we learn with mounting horror that men out drink women by 18.7 to nine units per week. Which is good news as this imbalance means that both men and women are comfortably outside the danger zone.

The story is being spun by Alcohol Concern, who achieved notoriety last year by calling for parents who serve children a glass of wine with dinner to be prosecuted.

What really matters is not average alcohol consumption – which this report suggests may even be falling – but the number of people whose health is threatened by drinking to excess.

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A Hollywood a-team is assembled to create a suspiciously sympathetic, but highly entertaining (and still informing), biopic of the architect of the America’s proxy war against the USSR in Afghanistan; where the folly of the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ strategy to defeat communism has never been greater exposed.
A CIA pleasing 8 out of 10.
Director: Mike Nichols…….Writer: Aaron Sorkin……Starring: Tom Hanks…… Julia Roberts…… Philip Seymour Hoffman
The Darjeeling Limited……No Country for Old Men

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