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...