Radio column: Stir in childhood memories and simmer

Food is wasted on the radio. If cooking on television is the equivalent of being invited to dine at the chef's table, only to watch with distress as the dishes are taken elsewhere, doing it on the radio is like being denied entry to the restaurant altogether and, deranged with hunger, listening to the sound of chewing through the door.
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Radio column: Festive cheer with comedy classics

Take down the tinsel, unplug the lights, remove that life-size glowing reindeer from the roof: Christmas has been called off
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Stay The Night: Hôtel Americano, New York

Attaching an enormous steel grille to the front of your hotel might not seem the best way to attract guests. Want to feel like a zoo animal? Come on in!
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Radio column: In the company of men

It was around 7.57am last Friday, while listening to the Today programme, that I started quietly banging my head on the kitchen table.
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Radio column: You can't always get what you want

Does all modern music sound the same to you? Do you hanker for the days when rock stars knew how to be rock stars? Does the sight of teenagers with their trousers at half-mast make your spleen explode? Have you – though you swore it would never happen – finally morphed into your parents? If so, perhaps it's time to embrace the inexorable slide towards an old age of liquidised ready-meals and Antiques Roadshow.
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Radio column: No escape from reality

Radio has never fully explored the reality format so adored by television. I can't help thinking it's missing a trick here. Imagine the pleasure of hearing Just a Minute's Nicholas Parsons shattering contestants' dreams, in gentlemanly fashion, on an X Factor-style sing off: "You now have 60 seconds on Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive". Hesitation! Oh, gracious me, what bad luck!"
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Music review: Kasabian, Brighton

These are tough times for the beery, leery, all-male indie-rock band. At a time when women continue to dominate the charts and synth-pop remains the overwhelming sound of choice, such acts have rarely been less fashionable than they are now.
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Book review: Hockney: A Rake's Progress by Christopher Simon Sykes

David Hockney is, we are often told, our most popular living artist. This always sounds like faint praise, as if to earn your place in the canon you're better off being dead
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Radio column: Bedtime stories that are still the stuff of dreams

Where would radio be without literature? Stuck with hours of dead air, that's where. Just as we cram our shelves with books at home, so radio commissioners use them to grout the gaps between news programmes, science documentaries and The Archers.
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Radio column: The No 1 news show for a new world order

There's a certain type of listener that organises their day around what's on the radio. The Today programme might haul them out of bed on a weekday morning and see them through breakfast and ablutions, while lunch might be accompanied by Jeremy Vine declaiming about cuckolding vicars. For me, Friday evenings aren't complete without a glass of wine and the sound of Jonathan Dimbleby on Any Questions quietly banging his head on the desk at being called David for the 874th time.
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Music review: Gillian Welch, Brighton Dome

No fuss, no frills. Such is the approach of Gillian Welch and her long-term partner, David Rawlings, who arrive carrying their instruments on to an empty stage.
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Radio column: The careerist comics who are taking the mic

Being funny on the radio should be a breeze for comics. You'd think they'd be in their element: on a stage with a microphone, with the added advantage that their listeners, scattered across the country rather than crammed in the back room of a pub, can't see the sweat patches forming under their arms.
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Book review: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? By Jeanette Winterson

This real-life counterpart to 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit' deals with lifelong abandonment issues and the torment of a religious upbringing
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Mary J Blige: 'I've been through hell, but I survived'

Mary J Blige has beaten drink, drugs and her demons – and a brand new album is in the bag. So why is the hip-hop soul superstar so insecure? Interview by Fiona Sturges
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Book review: Here Comes Trouble, By Michael Moore

In 2003, the film director Michael Moore made his infamous Oscar acceptance speech in which he called George Bush a "fictitious president" who had sent America to war "for fictitious reasons". He was rewarded with a vandalised statuette, half a ton of manure on his front lawn and so many threats of violence that he was forced to hire a bevy of ex-Navy Seals to see off any would-be assassins.
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Comics...it's the way they sell 'em

A dire childhood and years of failure are good for sales, when professional jokers relate their life stories. By Fiona Sturges
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Baby blues: Laura Marling on hits, heartache and that tricky 21st birthday

Laura Marling was so young when she started that the bouncers wouldn't let her in to her own gigs. Now 21, with a Brit in her pocket and a sell-out tour ahead, how is our 'most gifted young singer-songwriter' coming to terms with fame? Interview by Fiona Sturges
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'Nevermind': Smells like my teen spirit

Nirvana's second album is to be re-released, 20 years after it sparked a musical revolution. Fiona Sturges salutes an album that changed her generation.
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TV review: The Jonathan Ross Show

It was the chin that gave him away. Jonathan Ross, who since his departure from the BBC following the Sachsgate affair has been advertising his devil-may-care, unemployed status with flip-flops and a goatee, stepped on to the set fully shod and shorn of all facial hair.
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Book review: Black by Design: A 2-Tone Memoir, By Pauline Black

Pauline Black's earliest memory is of vomiting, at the age of four, on to a pile of sheets that had been cleaned, starched and ironed by her mother. "She was not amused but then again it was her own fault," says Black. "She shouldn't have told me I was adopted." Read more...

Book review: The Long Goodbye, by Meghan O'Rourke

The American poet Meghan O'Rourke's mother died on Christmas Day in 2008, two and a half years after being diagnosed with colorectal cancer. The family had known the end was coming, though nothing could prepare them for the crushing absence, the sense of a world that had lost its colour, which assaulted them after she had gone.
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Art of the west: See Devon through different eyes

'Art" reads a tiny signpost skewered into the hedge at the end of three miles of narrow, winding road. All is quiet here in Bantham, a remote seaside village in south Devon, save for the gentle whisper of the trees.
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Stay The Night: Earthship Perrine, Normandy

You can be sure of the green credentials of this zero-carbon gîte. But is it a comfortable place to stay? Fiona Sturges reports
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Exmoor: A walk in the wild West Country

In the first of a four-part series on our national parks, Fiona Sturges delves into Devon and Somerset
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Book review: Nicholas Ray, by Patrick McGilligan

Lights, camera...where's all the action? By Fiona Sturges
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Obituary: Amy Winehouse

Despite being as famous for her private life as her music, there is no disputing that Amy Winehouse was one of the finest singers of her generation. By Fiona Sturges
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Book review: No Off Switch, by Andy Kershaw

Many faces, but no time to look in the mirror.
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Johnny Vegas: 'I never liked being the centre of attention'

How has Johnny Vegas done it? By 'it', I mean transformed himself from a failed priest and potter to sought-after comic actor and much-loved household name. As he says himself, he's "no great shakes in the looks department" and first made his name as a stand-up who specialised in being bitter and drunk and bellowing insults at audiences.
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Fiona Sturges: If women are funny, it's the end of the world

The thing is – and this is patently obvious to around 49 per cent of the population – women cannot be and will never be funny. Why on earth would we be, with all these reproductive hormones pulsing around our systems and paralysing the parts of our brains that would otherwise allow us to deliver a stream of hilarious off-the-cuff gags that would have all you boys LOL-ing, ROFL-ing and other curious acronyms that denote the splitting of sides?
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Neil Diamond: 'I need a woman who understands my work ethic'

He's one of pop's biggest names – but when the lights go down, he speaks to his kids via Skype and plays cards with any 'friendly face' he can find. On the eve of a UK tour, Fiona Sturges meets Neil Diamond, the septuagenarian singer for whom the show really must go on
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Book review: Hope and Glory - The Days That Made Britain, by Stuart Maconie

There was a time when Stuart Maconie's work involved loitering on tour buses in assorted eastern European cities recording the drunken utterances of indie pop bands. These days, when not on the radio, he's more likely to be found clutching a thermos flask and cagoule on the TransPennine Express and gearing up for a bracing walk on the fells.
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KD Lang: 'In the end, I knew it would all come back to the music. And it did'

She has been a lesbian icon, party animal, and paparazzi favourite. But now, she tells Fiona Sturges, she's happy just to be singing
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Russia's got talent: Meet Emin, Moscow's answer to Michael Bublé

He's a property mogul, heir to family billions – and a pop sensation. Interview by Fiona Sturges
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Theatre review: Horseless Carriage of Curiosities, Brighton Fringe Festival

In the mid-19th century, no self-respecting home was without an electric-shock machine, a state-of-the-art gadget that, it was claimed, could cure everything from poor eyesight to baldness to problems in the bedroom.
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Theatre review: Butley, Brighton Festival

Forty years ago Simon Gray wrote a play about a hard-drinking, venomously cruel English professor in the midst of a crisis. Directed by Harold Pinter and starring Alan Bates, Butley was his first big hit, swiftly transferring to Broadway and later being turned into a film. That it has since been neglected by directors has been attributed to Bates's indelible performance, though watching Lindsay Posner's revival, starring The Wire's Dominic West, you suspect there are other reasons why it has been given a wide berth.
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More man, music, and mystique

What is it about Bob Dylan? Routinely hailed as the voice of his generation, a man who expanded the possibilities of popular song, he is treated with the kind of awe reserved for literary giants and continues to be the subject of academic enquiry; his vast body of work is studied at universities and endlessly picked over by critics and biographers.
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Book review: Reelin' In The Years by Mark Radcliffe

Named after a single by Steely Dan, Reelin' In The Years is a pleasant ramble through five decades of pop culture seen through the eyes of a music-loving northerner and told through a series of singles that each represents a year of his life.
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Music review - The Great Escape, Brighton

Brighton's answer to the South by South-West festival has, it appears, already outgrown its roots.
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Music review - Asian Dub Foundation, Brighton Festival

In his book 33 Revolutions Per Minute, Dorian Lynskey offers an intriguing challenge to the assumption that the protest song has had its day.
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The anti-popstar: Moby regains his focus

Moby's life has driven him to drink, drugs and therapy. Now we can see it too, in a photo album and show. He talks to Fiona Sturges and shows us some of his pictures
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Book review: Breakfast in Nudie Suits: Out of Tune and on The Run with Gram Parsons, By Ian Dunlop

No country (or western) for old men
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Book review: No Regrets by Carolyn Burke

Much has been written about the singer Edith Piaf, France's "Little Sparrow" who was famed for her impoverished childhood, her doomed love affairs, her illnesses and addictions and her mastery of la chanson réaliste. So what can there possibly be left to say?
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Emmylou Harris: 'I smoked country music but I didn't inhale'

She may now be winning Grammys for 'contemporary folk', but Emmylou Harris is finally ready to confront the heartache and loss that made her the queen of the red-raw country ballad. Interview by Fiona Sturges
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Online arts: Click-fix culture

You can watch a rock concert and tour an art gallery from the comfort of your armchair. But can it replace the thrill of the real thing? Fiona Sturges finds out
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Music review - Jesca Hoop, Ballroom, Brighton

If you suspected, from her fairytale name, that Jesca Hoop was not entirely of this world, a few minutes in her company confirms it.
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Fame at last for rock'n'roll's unsung star

Darlene Love was the unacknowledged voice of many Sixties pop hits. Now that's all about to change. By Fiona Sturges
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Book review: 33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynskey

In May 1970 Neil Young was relaxing on the porch of his road manager's house in Pescadero, California, when he was handed a copy of Life magazine. It contained a vivid account of the deaths of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war protest earlier that month.
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The real stars know when to call it a day

As Mike Skinner calls time on The Streets, Fiona Sturges says that Girls Aloud would do well to consider a similar coda
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Born This Way: It's the same old song... so what?

As Madonna's brother accuses Lady Gaga of stealing her latest hit, Fiona Sturges says pop plagiarism claims miss the point
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Why does reality TV hate women?

Half the population is getting a raw deal on screen. Fiona Sturges says it's time to switch off the sexism
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Music review - Joan As Police Woman, Komedia, Brighton

Joan Wasser, the New York singer-songwriter who goes by the fabulously barmy moniker Joan As Police Woman, may not yet be loved by the masses but she is a woman with an impeccable pedigree.
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Can you really be too posh to perform?

Pop and comedy stars have been pasted for their privileges – but inverted snobbery in the arts is nothing new, says Fiona Sturges
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The good, the bad and the wildly bitchy

Awash with champagne and catfights, Dynasty, the ultimate 1980s soap, is set to become a film
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Assume the position! Sing like a canary

The classical violinist Joan Wasser only recently found her voice, and what a voice it is, says Fiona Sturges
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Tipped today, gone tomorrow?

Every year the music press and the BBC anoint the new messiahs of pop. Yet all too often these new stars fizzle out more quickly than a damp firework. By Fiona Sturges
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A stay here should lift your spirits – and send you over the edge

Alain de Botton has put theory into practice by offering inspiring properties to rent for short breaks. Fiona Sturges visits the Balancing Barn
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