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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