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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