TV review: Shakespeare in Italy, BBC2

Francesco da Mosto’s two-parter is ostensibly about the Bard and his fascination with the TV historian’s native Italy. In reality, it’s a film about da Mosto and his apparently God-given, below-the-belt hotness.
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Radio column: What women want

There are people out there, or so I'm told, who believe that Radio 4's Woman's Hour shouldn't exist. These are the same people, one presumes, who talk about feminism in the past tense, referring to that silly business when women got uppity about not being able to do things like vote or have a career, and being treated as simpletons.
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Book review: Telling Stories, by Tim Burgess

There are several eye-watering anecdotes in this memoir by Tim Burgess of The Charlatans, though one in particular stands out. It involves a straw, a paper cone, a Rizla paper and two willing participants, and offers the seasoned cocaine user a novel method of ingesting their drug of choice. Suffice to say that this chapter is called "Cocainus".
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Visit the seaside for electric cucumbers, nudity and more!

This year's Brighton Fringe is bigger and brasher than ever, says Fiona Sturges
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Radio column: One too many whines

Has there ever been a more glorious title for a programme as Radio 5 Live's Drunk Again: Ann Widdecombe Investigates? Prior to listening, I had visions of Britain's newest national treasure three sheets to the wind, wobbling out of a Wetherspoon in mini-dress and heels at one in the morning, and trying to snog a policeman.
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Music review: Ladyhawke, Komedia, Brighton

If you had taken seriously the relentless hyperbole swirling around Ladyhawke aka Pip Brown four years ago, which included feverish endorsements from Courtney Love and Kylie Minogue, then you’d expect to see her packing out Gaga-sized arenas by now, not playing the first date of her tour to a small audience in the upstairs room of a modest comedy club.
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TV review: Louis Theroux: Extreme Love, BBC Two

In Louis Theroux: Extreme Love, a film about the realities of looking after children with autism, a mother of twin girls from New Jersey confessed: “I just try and make them happy because, God forgive me, I don’t get a lot of enjoyment from them.” Meanwhile Josephine, the relentlessly cheery mother of 20-year-old Brian, remarked: “To be afraid of your child is a terrible thing.”
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Radio review: Trip back in time

If your legs start twitching when you hear "Jack Your Body" and the scent of Vicks VapoRub sends you into a nostalgic reverie; if you still dream of havin' it large at the Ministry of Sound at the weekend but can't stomach the cost of a babysitter; if you're an ex-raver of a certain age then you could do worse than switch on to Radio 2 on a Saturday night and listen to the network's latest appointment, the long-serving dance DJ Dave Pearce.
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Rufus Wainwright: 'I am somewhat imprisoned by my fabulous career'

Hailing from folk royalty, Rufus Wainwright has happily toured the world almost all his life. But how is he managing to combine stardom with the commitments of fatherhood?
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Radio column: Great minds

You could never accuse radio of dodging the Big Questions. I'm not talking about programmes that weigh up the merits of pensions over ISAs, cabbage over kale or Boris over Ken, as life altering as these topics may be.
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Book review: A Natural Woman, By Carole King

Musicians' autobiographies are typically crammed with the classic signifiers of stardom: sexual encounters, drugs and alcohol-fuelled hi-jinks, followed by remorse and redemption. Not Carole King's. The singer-songwriter whose album Tapestry spent six years in the US charts and sold 25 million copies, is a hard worker who drinks in moderation, doesn't touch drugs and likes to be in bed early and get her full eight hours.
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Radio column: Intimate snippets of a family life

"Never forget what belly you came out of," cautioned a grandfather to his granddaughter in The Listening Project. The conversation lasted just a few minutes but revealed much about the social and economic shift that had taken place over three generations of one Yorkshire family.
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Time to put a lid on all those not so great British shows

Television is turning into one long Little Britain sketch, says Fiona Sturges
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Book review: How Soon Is Now? By Richard King

To the younger generation of music fans, "indie" is a genre, a ubiquitous term used to describe artfully scruffy purveyors of white-boy guitar pop. In the late Seventies and Eighties, however, it was an abbreviation of "independent", used to distinguish the small, self-financed, artist-friendly record labels - the type started in garages, garden sheds and behind the counters of record shops - from their corporate counterparts.
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Radio column: Hooked on the classics

So, Schubert. He's inescapable, or at least he is on Radio 3. If you're not an admirer but a regular listener, you'll either have to decamp to Classic FM or seek refuge in silence which is, of course, unthinkable.
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