This is Richard and I after the recording of our sixth podcast, which is either the second or third weekly one, depending on whether you count the last fortnightly one we did, not knowing that it would be a week before the next one, if you see what I mean. We are posing in front of the free poster in today's Guardian of 600 policeman in riot gear raiding a street in North London - the equivalent of porn if you are a Daily Mail reader and want more police on the streets. I am wearing a suit and white shirt because I am playing drums with the 6 Music band at the 6 Music party tonight and it is our band uniform. Check later, as usual, with the British Sitcom Guide to hear the podcast, which helpfully ends at 20 minutes for Bill, whose walk to work is only 20 minutes long, but then carries on until 52 minutes for everyone else. Also subscribe via iTunes, even if you don't need to, for self-evident reasons. It's either help us up the charts or see us descend into misery, alcoholism and death like Tony Hancock. And you wouldn't want that.

... up the proper iTunes charts! Today, at 11.37am, Thursday March 27, 2008, our the Collings & Herrin Podcast sits at number 23 in the actual, all-round podcast charts - our highest placing ever. Look who we are two places ahead of, with their 30-45-second videos of uncomfortable looking girls in their underwear by a window. We are better than that. Our next one will be available tomorrow afternoon, thanks to the hosting skills of The British Sitcom Guide. We promise not to hold up a Page 3 girl in this week's picture. (It's very difficult to ridicule and condemn sexism without accidentally bringing attention to it.)

A sense of deja vu that's almost too much to bear: another 16 twats in a big house (a converted factory this time - "It's like a dream!" gasped one of the female candidates, who must have pretty dull dreams. "Look at that staircase!"), Sir Alan slightly baggier around the neck and in a larger, more industrial-looking fake boardroom, but still flanked by Margaret, who's grown sideburns, and Nick, whose face has now set into a withering grimace, like that of a Shaker Maker figurine. Suits. Ties. Stubble. Gel. Overhead shots of London. Prokofiev. Bollocks.

It's The Apprentice 2008 and once again, it provides a public service: demonstrating the damage wrought by Thatcherism and Blairism on this country. The hopefuls are predominantly in their twenties and very early thirties - youngest: Lindi, 22, black, from Birmingham ("How much do you usually pay for two cod?"); eldest: Jennifer, 36, redhead, from Leicester - born or at least raised and educated under Thatcher and pumped up with entrepreneurial self-belief, even though only about two of them actually work for themselves; most are sales managers and liaison managers and buyers and consultants, desperate to break out of their jobs by, hmmmm, getting another job. In Brentwood. The voiceover on the first show suggested that the "dream" house gave the candidates a taste of the lifestyle they could live if they won. On a hundred grand a year in London? Dream on. It would only be possible to live in a big house with a sunken bath if you won a reality TV show that meant spin-off opportunities and your own show on Sky One. Oh yeah.

So, business boot camp, Mary Poppins he's not, and withins minutes of the introductory meeting, our beloved overconfident salespeople were out selling (like Sir Alan used to sell aerials out of the back of a cart, or something, 40 years ago when it was all fields round here): fish. Wet fish in polystyrene boxes. How they must have all smelt at the end of the day, even the victorious girls. I'm not going to look it up, but don't the girls always win the first task? They were set up, talking over one another, with no sales or delegation or pricing strategy, in Islington market (round the back of the Word office!) while the boys were still trying to decide where to pitch their stall, relying on the common, "uneducated" barrow boys to use their instinct (Lee and Simon, I think, it's too early to be able to name individual twats). They chose Islington market.

This at least meant that the hapless Nicholas, 24, trainee barrister and a boy who had never failed at anything in his long, varied life except one of his GCSEs and, so it appeared, shaving under his bottom lip that morning, could go and copy the girls' work. He was singled out of the pack very early on, by project manager and Ethan Hawke lookalike Alex, and by the directors of the show. He knew nothing about the price of fish and was put in charge of pricing fish, marking lobsters up at four pounds 90p when they go for around twenty. (As the second poshest member of the team - after the supercilious Raef: "the spoken word is my tool" - he will have eaten lobster, but never actually paid for it. Or visited a market.) The seeds of the final boardroom were sowed here. "We're gonna get fucked," spotted Simon.

The girls' team, who were nearly called Strive but went with Alpha (the boys went with Renaissance - I thought Simon was saying, "Relations") gave less in the way of entertainment, beyond the expected squealing at the staircase and bath in the house and one instance of project manager Claire, 29, asking the others not to talk over her. I'm quite interested in beret-wearing Lucinda, who seemed to think she was in Ashes To Ashes, and looks like she's down to be the first to cry in the people carrier in next week's show. Jennifer decided she was going to try and stand out by wearing a shiny yellow blouse. It worked. "I rate myself as the best salesperson in Europe," she explained. Don't do yourself down! Why limit yourself to one continent?

Alex, when cornered by Nicholas in the Final Showdown and called "uneducated", was forced to brag that he, too, was privately educated, despite his Bolton accent, and was "working transatlantically" by the age of 21. (What? On a ship?) This man could win it, assuming he combs his hair at some point. He was never in the frame to be fired, not with the chinless Nick and well-spoken Raef on either side. Sir Alan claims not to care where you come from or where you were educated, but that's bollocks. He cares a lot. Raef will not last long, not if he keep using long words like "hyperbole" and "gladitorial" [sic] and saying he "gets on with prince or pauper" (implication: Alex is a pauper; Sir Alan is a pauper - oops! - nothing funnier than someone of privilege trying to claim man-of-the-people status after the fact). Nicholas might as well have had an Omen-style black smudge hanging over him for the whole of the first show. He was fired. Of course he was fired. He chose from his large armoury of debating and reasoning skills, to use the class hatred defence. The wearing of white wellies and blue aprons makes this a classless society, Nicholas.

Ah well, it's all business, and as Alex had pointed out, they weren't "friends", they'd barely known each other for a day. No tears were shed for Nicholas, who will live to earn a fortune another day. He may console himself that he was not actually the biggest twat on screen last night: that was in fact the unnamed oleaginous bastard in the blue shirt and tie at the law firm who haggled Renaissance down to fifty quid for a hundred quid's worth of spare, unidentified seafood - "the customer's always right, yeah?" - let's hope he was among the 19,984 who applied for The Apprentice this year but didn't get chosen.

Once again, we must praise the directors and the editors. They do all the hard work. That single shot of two squid on the floor was art. Once again, I felt most sorry for the lobsters. They couldn't even sign a release form, their hands were taped together.

But who's the mystery blonde boy?

As we move closer to worldwide recession, may I point you at James Surowiecki's summation of America's home loan crisis in the New Yorker - ie. that which seems to be kicking it all off. The piece is helpfully online here. I don't really get global economics, but if anyone's going to help me understand, it's James Surowiecki. He writes The Financial Page for the New Yorker every week. That's every week. In all the time I've been getting the magazine, nobody else to my knowledge has ever filled in for him. He never goes on holiday. Or if he does, he writes two columns in advance, so certain is he that without his clear, concise, usually entertaining bulletin from the fiscal coalface, hundreds of thousands of us would be walking about, baffled and lost. Even though the New Yorker is online - and can be purchased in CD-ROM form, going back to its first issue in 1925 - I have been keeping my new issues, in cardboard files, for the past three years. Actually, I'm about to recycle the lot, as they're taking up way too much shelf-space and I don't need them (don't mention e-Bay, it's not worth the hassle), but it tells you a lot how much I value the stimulation this publication gives me. It feels wrong to throw it away. I will though, from now on, but the likes of Surowiecki, in this one-page piece, are why I love it so.

An interesting trend that I have noticed in two programmes that I watched over the Bank Holiday weekend: gentle telly. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency was a big BBC/Miramax co-production and a pilot for a commissioned series based on the hugely popular books by Alexander McCall Smith, which I have always assumed to be aimed at old ladies. Maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, adapted by Richard Curtis and directed by Anthony Minghella, it was a large plank in the Easter schedules, an hour and three quarters devoted to setting up the titular agency in Botswana, which, according to this depiction, is an antidote to all those other war-torn and poverty-stricken African countries which Bob Geldof wants to save by forcing privatised utilities and free market economics on them in return for waived debt. In the happy, innocent, colourful world of Precious Ramotswe (Jill Scott), she can set up shop without a phone and thrive as the new Miss Marple, albeit without the murders. The fact that it's shot and government-funded in Botswana makes it a tourist board advert at heart, but let's be honest, it's a treat to look at, and there is something relaxing about watching a drama on television that isn't about forensic evidence or serial killers. A boy is kidnapped, there's some bad juju afoot, and an old man is fraudulently pretending to be a young woman's long-lost father, but mostly the sun shines, everybody's really helpful and the occasional giraffe walks past. It's pretty much completely sexless, outside of one philanderer, but again, where's the harm? The critics didn't like it, but I had no problem with it. If all telly was made this way, it would be like eating marshmallows as a staple diet, but it isn't. I smiled throughout. Does that mean I'm patronising Africa? I sincerely hope not.

Neither are all sitcoms Gavin And Stacey, which is back for its second series after winning, let me see, ah yes, every award in the world. I didn't like the look of it the first time around (although, to be fair, I didn't watch an entire episode), but I was determined to catch up. And again, it's really gentle. Yes, one of the subplots is about a pregnancy based on a one-night stand, and there was something about a threesome in the first episode, but it's ultimately really nice. And that's not a criticism. Gavin seems decent, Stacey seems harmless, Smithy seems decent, Nessa seems at least capable of niceness, Uncle Bryn seems like possibly the nicest, least cynical man not just in Wales, but in the whole world (and Rob Brydon is doing his best work, as this is not an easy character to bring life to). I could do without Alison Steadman's latest recycling of Beverley, but all in all, it's neat and tidy and smartly scripted and you care. When was the last time you said that about something on BBC3?

Two gentle programmes. Hardly a movement, and it probably doesn't say anything profound about us as a nation, but I'm glad I can kick off my cynical shoes once in a while and allow myself to be massaged by the telly. It can't all be Messiah and Nighty Night.

Podcast 5, the Good Friday Special, is now up and running. It's the first weekly one and, thanks to the news, we weren't short of material. We hope you like it. Sorry about the photo. It seemed like a funny idea at the time.

The last two books I read, both with white covers featuring smart graphic solutions. Apart from that, polar opposites. Kill Your Friends, first novel by John Niven, is about untrammeled excess. Enough, a non-fiction manifesto/self-help book by John Naish, is about trammelling excess.

The first comes highly recommended by my colleagues at Word magazine, which is unsurprising when you know that the novel is set in the music industry very specifically in 1997, the year that Britpop died (and, coincidentally, the year I left my day job and attempted to put the music industry behind me). Niven worked as an A&R at London records and his main character is an A&R working at an unnamed major record company which is London records. This protagonist, Stelfox, is not John Niven, however, he's an appalling grotesque made up of all the worst bits of all the worst A&Rs he ever worked with, including a little bit of himself, I'm sure. He's venal. He's sexist, racist (he actually used the word "Kaffirs"), misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic. Cynical beyond cynicism. Scheming. Soulless. Sexually depraved. And worse.

It's written very deliberately as an American Psycho for the 90s. I knew plenty of people who worked at major record companies and not one of them was as sexist, racist, homophobic etc. as Stelfox. Maybe he's post-Loaded, and most of the men I knew had their worldview forged before Loaded. Anyway, the book is simultaneously unrealistic - an extreme, Ralph Steadman-esque parody of the worst bits of the music industry - and yet almost painstakingly accurate, using the names of actual bands and real biz contemporaries ("Epic trumpets the launch of the new Echobelly LP. MD Rob Stringer says, 'What a fine act they are. I was very involved with the signing'"). This is totally unnerving, and very effective. There's a band, Songbirds, who are clearly supposed to be All Saints, and yet All Saints are mentioned elsewhere. The musical touchstones come thick and fast, but the whole thing's much more effective if you know the industry and the footsoldiers he's referring to. The effect of reading Stelfox's descent into hell brings on nausea and disbelief. It's like Irvine Welsh, although I'm sure if you were teaching novel-writing, you'd caution against having such a negative protagonist, but Niven is a law unto himself, and has a lot of poison to unload. I feared its target audience might be the staff of Word magazine or anyone who was at the Brits '97, but the customer reviews on Amazon disprove that. You'll need a strong stomach, but it's fascinating to finally see the 90s being documented. And the list of actual bands being championed by the A&R community in 1997 is stunning in its completeness ("This is what we reckon you're going to be buying and enjoying in the coming year: the Beekeepers, Luna, Feline, Proper, Lower, Arnold, the Dub Pistols, the Hybirds, the Aloof, Spookey Ruben, Sally Hardbody, Finley Quaye, Jocasta, Old Man Stone, Ajax Disco Spanner, Gus Gus, Vitro, Travis, Agnes, Monkey, Tiger, Don, Mantaray ..." and on it goes - the list contains just three acts who would actually make it in the coming year: Travis, Stereophonics and Robbie Williams).

Enough, subtitled Breaking Free From The World Of More, is one to gently change your life. Although Naish, a Times journalist, presents his thesis - that it's high time we in the free-market West stopped wanting more stuff before the world actually ends - as a guide. At the end of each neatly arranged chapter (ENOUGH information, ENOUGH food, ENOUGH work, ENOUGH happiness), he gives bullet-point advice on how to reduce the crippling need to acquire, when we've already got too much and don't know where to put it all ("Embrace futility; sideshift; avoid special offers; think in time rather than money").

The graphic device on the cover is a gauge whose needle is bending past "full", but it could easily have been a Big Yellow Storage unit, or similar, the greatest indicator that we have too many things. If I was the sort of who invested in stocks and shares, I'd have put my money in storage, which used to be quite rare when I was a young man, but is now a growth industry, with brightly coloured barns springing up everywhere. Naish is a witty writer, which helps, and has plenty of examples of excess that help illustrate his argument, and he relates everything back to Neolithic man to help explain our urges.

It's the sort of book that makes you examine your day-to-day life. You might not do anything about it, but you will, I promise, start thinking about it. The phrase "enough" keeps popping into my head now. I see an advert for a thing nobody needs and I think: enough. I read a story in the paper about the Japanese currently working on a broadcast medium that will knock HD into a cocked hat, and I think: enough. I recommend this book. And if you have too many books already, why not buy it second hand, or buy and give it to charity afterwards? I'm sure Naish would approve. We're all guilty of buying things we don't need and can't afford. This book slaps us round the face a bit.

Happy birthday, Iraq! George Bush marked the anniversary of the day American forces marched into Iraq to make it a better place by going out on a limb and delivering a speech to an audience of military personnel at the Pentagon. (Does he ever deliver speeches about the war to anyone other than military personnel? And haven't they got other stuff to be getting on with?) Hey, come on, Iraq is a better place. We've seen it with our very eyes. Here's George's speech, extracted from the transcript on the White House website:

"On this day in 2003, the United States began Operation Iraqi Freedom. As the campaign unfolded, tens and thousands of our troops poured across the Iraqi border to liberate the Iraqi people and remove a regime that threatened free nations. Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it. The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision - and this is a fight America can and must win."

It's all going well so far: 3,990 dead US soldiers, 171 dead British soldiers, 132 from other coalition forces, and an estimated 89,760 Iraq civilian dead (according to Iraq Body Count), which rises to a figure around 150,000 (according to the Iraq health ministry), and to 655,000 (according to a report in the Lancet). Another survey put the total estimated deaths at 1.2 million.

"The men and women who crossed into Iraq five years ago removed a tyrant, liberated a country, and rescued millions from unspeakable horrors. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a remarkable display of military effectiveness. Forces from the UK, Australia, Poland and other allies joined our troops in the initial operations. As they advanced, our troops fought their way through sand storms so intense that they blackened the daytime sky. Our troops engaged in pitched battles with the Fedayeen Saddam ... "

What he's doing here is retelling the initial capture of Baghdad in Boys' Own style, reminding us that "death squads ... obeyed neither the conventions of war nor the dictates of conscience" and that they "hid in schools and hospitals" etc. He even speaks with dewy eyes about "the most effective and precise air campaign in history", painting a vivid picture of "coalition forces racing across 350 miles of enemy territory, destroying Republican Guard Divisions, pushing through the Karbala Gap, capturing Saddam International Airport, and liberating Baghdad in less than one month."

He goes into great detail about "counterattacks" and "kills" and "heroism" and moves on to "challenges". Playing once again to the khaki gallery, he mocks civilians and the media for their lack of understanding of war. "Some look back and call this period the easy part of the war. Yet there was nothing easy about it. The liberation of Iraq took incredible skill and amazing courage. And the speed, precision and brilliant execution of the campaign will be studied by military historians for years to come."

No mention of the military's failure to prevent looting and social breakdown once the "liberation" was complete, nor the failure to ever find even a crayon drawing of a weapon of mass destruction, the pretext upon which the entire war was fought. No mention of the fact that two-thirds of Americans now believe the war was wrong.

He dares to speak of the "children's prisons, and torture chambers, and rape rooms" the troops found, when the world knows that the US military were pretty good at setting up their own prisons and torture chambers post-liberation. We've seen the photos. "Because we acted, the world is better and the United States of America is safer." Let's all go for a picnic.

"There's still hard work to be done in Iraq," he concedes. In other words, don't book any holidays. "The gains we have made are fragile and reversible. But on this anniversary, the American people should know that since the surge began, the level of violence is significantly down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down, attacks on American forces are down."Ah, the "surge." Whoever came up with that buzzword at the Pentagon deserves a raise.

"Our enemies would see an American failure in Iraq as evidence of weakness and a lack of resolve. To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th ... "

What lessons? To get your air bases out of Saudi Arabia, which is what started all this? To actually scramble the military when four commercial airliners are hijacked in one go?

"... and make it more likely that America would suffer another attack like the one we experienced that day ..."

Oh, here we go, more "heroism". If in doubt, stir up fear and dread among the people with reminders of "that day."

"... a day in which 19 armed men with box cutters killed nearly 3,000 people on our soil; a day after which in the following of that attack more than one million Americans lost work, lost their jobs."

Yeah, not the Americans who worked for the security firms and reconstruction firms that moved into Iraq. Isn't it time to single one brave "hero" out of the tens of thousands with their lives on the line? Ah yes. Marine Gunnery Sergeant William "Spanky" Gibson. "In May of 2006 in Ramadi, a terrorist sniper's bullet ripped through his left knee - doctors then amputated his leg. After months of difficult rehabilitation, Spanky was not only walking - he was training for triathlons." He is truly Captain America. Nothing against this chap - he's clearly a tough career soldier. Bush is lucky there are men like him around. Bush met Spanky last year and Spanky asked him if he could go back to Iraq. Today he's serving in Fallujah, "the first full-leg amputee to return to the front lines. Here's what he says about his decision to return: 'The Iraqis are where we were 232 years ago as a nation. Now they're starting a new nation, and that's one of my big reasons for coming back here. I wanted to tell the people of this country that I'm back to help wherever I can.'"

Spanky is equating Iraq in 2008 with America in 1776, when it kicked out the British and signed the Declaration of Independence. Who exactly are Iraq kicking out? Iraq wasn't under the colonial cosh and the King of a faraway nation before the coalition went in. The comparison does not bear close examination. Certainly Iraq's troubles have their roots in being run by the Ottomans and then the British, but it's not quite the same as what's happened since the fall of Saddam, is it?

Foreign Policy magazine named Iraq the "second most unstable nation in the world" (after Sudan) last year. In the words of Young Mr Grace, "You've all done very well!"

"The battle in Iraq is noble, it is necessary, and it is just," concluded Young Mr Disgrace. "And with your courage, the battle in Iraq will end in victory. God bless. (Applause)"

Who saw this coming? Not me. Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys in a proper video, miming in front of Russian tanks and everything! For his collaborative side project with Miles Kane of The Rascals, The Last Shadow Puppets, the boy Turner has come out of his shell. The superb video for the first single, The Age Of The Understatement, can be viewed here. Whatever you think of the Arctic Monkeys (and you know what I think), you really should give a listen to this glorious, widescreen music. The album - same name - comes out on April 21, with the single released the week before, on April 14. I've heard the album and it has knocked my socks off. Produced by James Ford (Simian Mobile Disco, Klaxons album) and arranged by Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire), it's ambitious and torrid and big, all strings and horns and melodrama, like something Scott Walker might have done for Philips in 1967. And yet Turner and Kane are only 22. I'd be keen to hear what other people think of the single, especially if you don't care too much for the Monkeys. I care a lot. (I've written a full review of the album for the next Word.)

Photographic proof that, according to our masterplan, we overtook Nuts in the iTunes podcast charts on Wednesday March 19, 2008. Our next podcast appears this Friday. (I've just noticed that Nuts is a video podcast. I wonder what's on it? I will never look to find out.)

Better late than never. Word photographer Muir Vidler has just sent me this souvenir pic of me pretending to be in the reformed Carter USM, taken at the Crystal Palace rehearsal space where they were preparing for the Christmas reunion gigs. Look at the smiling old men. News of next gigs here.

Anthony Minghella has died, all of a sudden. He was only in his mid-50s. This is a shocking bit of news. (Especially for all the publications who have upbeat interviews with him connected to BBC1's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and cannot amend them, including Radio Times.) Not especially fashionable, he was nonetheless a rare beast in the world of mainstream cinema: someone who believed in making literate movies that demanded intelligence on the part of the audience. I met him around the time of The Talented Mr Ripley and found him to be hugely self-aware and jolly, a man who wore his intellect very lightly and was fun to be around. I was an isolated fan of his last film at the cinema, Breaking And Entering, which many found pretentious, what with all the symbolism and symmetry and Jude Law's line about "talking in metaphors". My theory is that if it had been set in Paris and in French, the critics would have fawned all over it. This is the fate of the British smartypants. I've never read The Englilsh Patient, but I understand Minghella did a terrific job of finding an old-fashioned wartime love story in there and making it into a film (which I also understand novelist Michael Ondaatje was a fan of). This was a poncy film with a relatively complicated structure that made 230 million dollars at the box office and won nine Oscars. Nice job. It's sad that Anthony Minghella is no more. I was able to write a full-length obituary today which will appear in next week's Radio Times.

Actually, that's just a headline to draw you in. It might, and it might not go weekly, but without warning I put it to Richard while we were recording today's fortnightly one, and he was forced to agree to it in principle. Anyway don't rush to the British Sitcom Guide just yet, as our friend Mark won't be putting up Collings & Herrin Podcast 4 until midnight tonight (Friday). Best have a look after that. Hope you enjoy it - and in the process send it flying past the Nuts Podcast on the iTunes chart, which is now our stated aim. As I write, it is at 29 and we are at 48 - although it is not in the comedy charts and we are at 19 in that, ahead of Chris Evans and Flight Of The Conchords. (In the picture above you will see one of today's headlines and Richard holding out some of the money he has raised for Scope. He keeps a big pile of it on the table we record our podcast at. It's not 25 million pounds.)

Quick plug for my latest Guardian blog, this one about Newsnight's run of ten ten-minute dramas, 10 Days To War, or more specifically, last night's opening episode, A Simple, Private Matter, starring Juliet Stephenson as Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned over the illegality of the invasion of Iraq on March 10, 2003. (Each drama is broadcast five years after the actual day on which its event took place, you see.) It's still up on the BBC's iPlayer, if you missed it. (I have now fallen in love with the iPlayer.)

I don't really understand it, but I've been "tagged" by Five-Centres, who was tagged by Valentine Suicide (and so on), which means, in the spirit of the game, I have to go to page 123 of the book I'm currently reading, skip the first five sentences and reveal the following three. I can't see the point of not telling you what the book is though, so it's The Terror Dream by Susan Faludi, revealing me to be the feminist you always knew I was. (I'll be reviewing it forthwith.)

"The media hailed the mayor's act as an augur of America's marital future (shelving for a moment Giuliani's less than inspiring marital past). Giuliani had 'set an example,' the New York Times declaired. The Chicago Tribune applauded the mayor for playing 'adopted papa.'"

Doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense out of context, but I expect that's all part of the game. I think I have to "tag" other bloggers now, but I don't know who's already been "tagged" or not. Tell me what to do, somebody clever!

Anyone else been watching The Last Enemy on BBC1, Sunday nights? (If so, we are a specialist band, as I notice its ratings have been sliding, week on week - the inglorious fate of many a quality drama series, which starts in a blaze of trailers and publicity and goes downhill from there.) I'm not clever enough to know if the recording of a programme on Sky+ or similar counts towards its cumulative audience tally - it certainly wouldn't count towards the "overnight" figure that appears in Media Guardian the next day - but being able to programme in a "series link" is a really good way of keeping up with an ongoing drama, and aids viewer loyalty. I wouldn't be without it.) Anyway, I'm really enjoying it. Written by Peter Berry, and starring the brilliantly-named Benedict Cumberbatch, who proves you don't have to have a chin to be a hero, it portrays Britain as a fully-fledged "surveillance state", with ID cards compulsory, everyone stored on a National Identity Register and terrorists, gunmen, nutters and "illegals" with fatal infectious man-made viruses running rampant nonetheless. Although Berry says he didn't want to present a politician as the pantomime villain, it's clear that "the system" is the baddie, and that The Last Enemy has a political axe to grind. Good. Why should authored drama present the same kind of "balance" (ha ha) as the news? Boys From The Black Stuff was pretty opinionated about Thatcher's Britain. Edge Of Darkness had some fairly critical things to say about Britain's nuclear policy. It's a fine tradition.

It also means that, as a drama, it will only really play to those of a like mind. If you happen to be one of those who supports the "rollout" of ID cards - or even one of that much larger lobby: people who don't exactly support ID cards but at the same time can't see the problem - you'll probably consider Peter Berry to be in the pay of al-Qaeda. But it's good when a thriller can polarise opinion, maybe even spark a debate. (I thought it was very fair-minded of Radio Times to put Berry's fevered problems with ID cards to a Home Office drone in the week the programme started. I don't know about you, but I was oddly unconvinced.) It's a bit like the invasion of Iraq - the government seem to have a new reason for doing it every week. It's about stopping terrorism. Not it isn't, it's because biometric passports are being introduced so we might as well. No, it's to stop identity theft. No, no, benefit fraud. Some weeks, it seems that only Henry Porter in the Observer gives a fuck. The rest of the nation, with the clarion call "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear!", is ready to roll over as it rolls out. What irks me the most about the whole thing is that I found myself agreeing not just with the Tory on last week's Question Time, but with the man from the UK Independence Party! Only on this particular issue, you understand, but that's still a scary dystopia to be living in.

It's not because of benefit fraud, it's because they want to own us. But I've seen what happened to Benedict Cumberbatch. No thanks, the government!

I am offering a public service here, as I don't believe that this story has appeared anywhere apart from in the London Evening Standard's Diary section, which, even if you live in London, you might have missed, due to the item being about a Liberal Democrat MP. Norman Baker, Member for Lewes, hereby stands accused of being a Shed Seven fan. In a speech he made to the Commons about the environment, Baker appeared to have worked FIVE Shed Seven song titles into the text. (He used to be regional director of Our Price records, so we may assume he knows his music, although this was in the late 70s/early 80s, and he is 50, which is a little old for the Sheds' glory days. His wife's maiden name, however, was Sleeper. True.) Here goes:

"The electricity wasted while a TV set is on standby is costing consumers thousands of pounds and damaging the environment. If the truth be told, the Government record on climate change isn't getting better. On energy efficiency we are still chasing rainbows. Going for gold we are not."

Here it is again, with titles in bold (and details in brackets):

"The electricity wasted while a TV set is On Standby [number 12, August 1996] is costing consumers thousands of pounds and damaging the environment. If the Truth Be Told [album, number 42, May 2001], the Government record on climate change isn't Getting Better [number 14, Jan 1996]. On energy efficiency we are still Chasing Rainbows [number 17, November 1996]. Going For Gold [number 8, March 1996] we are not."

The weird thing is, Baker denies the charge, calling it "entirely coincidental." Perhaps he's lying. Perhaps he has a cheeky indie speechwriter. Questions should be asked in the house. Such as: why no mention of a Dolphin [number 28, June 1994] in a speech about the environment? Perhaps more pressingly, why is the Standard reporting the story this week, and calling it a "recent speech", when a simple internet search reveals the speech to be at least three years old? (I found it quoted on a Norwich Union website from February 2005.)

Interesting piece in today's Times - by my old NME pal Stephen Dalton (hasn't he done well for himself, I gave him his big break etc.) - about exaggerated reports of the demise of the weekly music press. He asked me to contribute and caught me at a verbose moment. Of the reams of opinion I passed on to him, he only used two quotes. Hey, I know how these things work! So, for the record, this is everything I sent to him. It's the Q&A that didn't make the final cut (and his questions were really good). Nothing is wasted round here:

SD: NME has just announced its lowest ABC circulation figures ever, around 64000, 12% down on last year. Specialist mags like Classic Rock and Kerrang consistently sell more. Where did it all go wrong?

AC: Unfortunately, many of the indie artists it has hitched its wagon to in the last couple of years have become public property. Whether it's Arctic Monkeys or the Killers or Kate Nash or the Klaxons or even Pete Doherty, acts who might once have been ring-fenced as "alternative" or "underground" are now so quickly and comprehensively snapped up by the nationals and the music monthlies - and in Doherty's case, the tabloids and the gossip rags - it's harder for NME to find any blue sky between them and their competitors. The only thing that separates the NME awards, formerly the Brats, from the Brits, is the constant swearing, and the indifference of the audience to what's occurring on the podium. Indie is mainstream. They can champion someone like Lightspeed Champion, which is admirable enough, but it's not commercial. Unfortunately, NME doesn't really have a unique sales proposition any more. The very fact of being a weekly publication is now insufficient to keep up with developments in the world they seek to address. The kids can't be bothered to wait seven days to find out if a new record is any good or not, and why should they? A magazine that offers more to read can sell itself on analysis, but the NME is more about pictures and enthusiasm now than beard-stroking intellectual copy.

SD: Alternatively, is NME just a victim of its own success? After all, several generations of ex NME types (i.e. you) now rule the entire media kingdom like vengeful Viking warlords, from broadsheets to radio to TV punditry. Once a fairly lone voice, its style has been copied and disseminated and diluted all over the place. It also still punches above its weight as a "brand" with tours, awards, Cool List etc. Are falling sales for the print version really a problem?

AC: The NME is definitely a victim of its earlier success. Its tentacles now extend not from the pages of the newspaper but from the branded awards and tours and one-off gigs and festival tents. Aside from the occasional controversial Morrissey interview, which actually sparks media debate, the magazine has morphed into what is effectively a paper souvenir of all the other activity carried out under its brand umbrella. You could be an NME fan and just click on the website and go to the concerts and watch the TV channel, without ever flicking through the magazine itself. This was not once the case. I was giving a talk to some schoolchildren yesterday and when I mentioned NME there wasn't even a flicker of recognition. There's no new generation of NME readers, or, I suspect, NME writers, coming through. When the paper advertised for "hip, young gunslingers" and ended up with Burchill and Parson, it was an attempt to connect with a new generation. I fear that a similar advert now would elicit little more than a trickle of interest. If you want to write about Bloc Party in 2008, you'll have already set up a website and started doing it. You don't need the permission of Time Warner.

SD: Has the time passed when one magazine can shape a nation's music tastes? Does NME have a role now or has it simply been superseded by the proliferation of online critic sites and the MyTubeSpaceBookFace boom?

AC: Paul Morley once told me that his job at the NME of the late 70s was to provide a narrative. This narrative now comes from other media - especially the internet. If you want to know what a new single sounds like, you can go and download it, you don't need someone learned and wise like Morley to describe it for you. What was once his role is now redundant. NME writers now are just music fans with moderately better access to Bloc Party than you. I continue to read the NME because of its heritage, and for old times' sake, and because I'm actually too old to go to smelly pub gigs and sniff out the latest thing, and I'm certainly not going to loiter around MySpace at my age, so it offers me a shortcut to new stuff. But I am categorically not the NME's target audience, and I'm not going to keep it afloat on my own.

SD: What can NME do to save itself from oblivion? Could it? Should it?

AC: It is already doing the right thing: concentrating on the website. It could relaunch as an online publication. Its target audience don't want to read 1,000 words on Does It Offend You, Yeah? - I'm not sure there are 1,000 to write about Does It Offend You, Yeah? - they just want soundbites, Q&As, video clips, downloads, all of which can be better served up online than on paper. I would be sad to see the paper NME go, however. When it sets out to educate its younger readers with coverage of Tony Wilson's legacy, or even the heritage of the Manic Street Preachers as it did last week, that makes good use of trees, and should be available, lest entire generations lose touch completely with the ancient arts of reading and understanding.

SD: Optional question: Was it all much better in Our Day? (Arf!)

AC: An NME reader of 2008 would be astonished to learn that the NME I worked for in the late 80s was the size of the Financial Times and was mostly in black and white. It required a lot of concentration and time to get through. It was a literacy hour in paper form. Also, if All About Eve released some new tour dates and you didn't buy the NME or Melody Maker or Sounds, you wouldn't know what those tour dates were. And you wouldn't read an article about All About Eve in the Financial Times, which you might do nowadays. It's thus unfair to compare. Even though I think it was much better, yes.

Discuss. As ever.

Yesterday, I spent the day at Weston Favell School in Northampton, which, when I attended between 1978 and 1983, was called Weston Favell Upper School. (It has now expanded to take in two extra years, due to the death of the middle schools. My dad drove me past my old middle school, Abington Vale, whose wake I attended about four years ago, and it is literally boarded up, awaiting regeneration into housing.) I had been asked to speak to Year 7 pupils at Weston Favell, aged 11-12 (I still haven't got my head around the numbering of years) about my career, my time in Northampton, writing books, writing for EastEnders etc. What is now called "the main site" is where I spent those formative years, but since this building is being completely rebuilt and resembles something post-nuclear, Year 7 and Year 8 are housed at a nearby site, which used to be Cherry Orchard Middle School in my day. There is something a little temporary about the place (I'm assuming like my old middle school, it's effectively condemned), but for me there was something comforting about entering a building that is probably unchanged from the 70s and 80s. It was literally like going back to school.

My day involved three hour-long sessions, two in the main hall, one in the library (which has some new-fangled name involving the words "research" and "centre" but is actually still a library with some computers in it). For each hour-long session, I tried to connect with the kids by asking them what they wanted to be when they grow up, then revealing that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, and I took along a lot of ephemera, such as my childhood diaries and an EastEnders script. It was, for me, a mentally tiring day, but hugely rewarding, as I'd hoped. (You don't do a day's teaching for the money!) I met a number of teachers and staff, but my key contacts were Denise Moody and Elaine York, who couldn't have been more helpful. It was also a huge treat to see Jean Elderkin, or Mrs Elderkin as I knew her when she taught me A-level English 25 years ago and helped inspire me to one day become a 42-year-old man with no idea what he does for a living. It was truly an educational day for me. This is what I learned:

1. Kids today are brighter than popular perception would have you believe. Weston Favell is a "bog-standard comprehensive" (to use Alastair Campbell's hateful phrase from 2001). I have no idea where it sits in the league tables, because I despise league tables for schools and can literally see no good in them whatsoever. However, word in Northampton has it that Weston Favell is "not what it once was". After a day spent at the place, I can see that the facilities leave a little to be desired, but then again, this was a temporary holding-bay site, and I'm sure the new building will be top-class. The staff are brilliant - firm but fair, I saw them dealing decisively with individuals and groups, and it was clear who was in charge. (I fear things might be different at a London comprehensive, but I can only judge from what I have seen.) The three Year 7 groups I spoke to - about 80 or so in the first two sessions, less than half that in the library - were from different "sets", in other words, different abilities: top set, middle set, lower set. I was prepared to notice a difference but in fact, I found all three sets to be attentive, smart, witty in many cases, and remarkably perceptive. Certainly, one or two mucked about, but it really was one or two. And they were being asked to listen to a 42-year old bloke for an hour at a time with little more to show them than some old books and a couple of cartoons he'd drawn. There was a noticeable lull in the final session, but it was after lunch, an hour away from home time, and we were in the library, which is much stuffier than the hall. One boy in there was moderately disruptive and spent much of the hour with his head resting on his arms, as if asleep. And yet, afterwards, albeit prompted, he came up to me and apologised. I was taken aback by his politeness and thanked him. I realise why kids are "streamed" at school and put into these sets, but from the outside, I found each set to be as good as the other.
2. Kids ask questions. After my dispiriting experience at the University in January, where not one single degree student asked a question, I was inundated today. Now, these kids were primed to asked questions, and encouraged to do so beforehand by their teachers, but that's immaterial. You might not imagine that students in higher education would require priming. I took questions throughout, and at the end I was faced with - sorry to use the cliche - a sea of hands. Some questions were strange ("What car do you drive?" was asked in two sessions - how disappointing our Toyota Avensis must have seemed!), others typical of the age in which we live ("How much do you earn?", "Are you a millionaire?", "Do you have any famous friends?"), but most were sensible and well thought out. One boy, who seemed initially disruptive, a bit of a joker who was deliberately sat next to a member of staff at the back, asked the best question of all, one that showed he'd actually been listening intently: "What would you do if television asked you to write a comedy programme and the radio asked you to do a radio programme at the same time?" During the final session, one earnest boy kept asking me if I'd seen certain films and if I knew who wrote them. I couldn't actually tell him the answers but again, it was clear that he had been taking notice of what I'd been talking about. Never let anyone tell you that kids these days are self-absorbed and socially unskilled. It's a convenient myth. I didn't see any mobile phones (not even at break time), so I'm assuming they're not allowed at Weston Favell, which is a really good thing. I enjoyed telling the kids that when I was their age, we had three TV channels, no computers and no mobile phones. What a dull world that must sound to them, and yet, the kids I spent time with had no access to TV channels, computers or mobile phones, just a 42-year-old bloke talking to them, and they coped admirably.
3. Teachers should be left alone to teach. I am filled with admiration for what they do. The English department were, I was told, "running around like headless chickens," because they'd had an Ofsted inspection sprung upon them for today. I realise schools need to be monitored, but all this inspecting, and testing, and quantifying seems counter to what education should be about. I was knackered after three hours of "teaching" yesterday. Hoarse and drained. Teachers do the same gig for longer, and for five days a week, and they get homework. (Mind you, I was also inspired by what I saw, so you have to hope that this is the spark that still draws devoted individuals to the profession.) Let's hope the staff get hot meals at the new building. They shouldn't have to bring in packed lunches!
4. Kids today aren't so different from kids of yesteryear. Asking them what they want to do when they grow up was partly an ice-breaker, but also a useful straw poll. This what the kids of today want to be when they grow up: footballer, rugby player, vet, RPSCA officer, army mechanic, games designer, beautician, crime scene investigator, chef, "kung fu fighter". There was even a train driver, which is surely the kind of thing my dad's generation would have said at school. Nobody said, "famous," in case you're wondering. CSI should be proud.
5. If you want to connect with kids, you have to find a connection. One of the props I took along was a small tin globe I had as a boy, which, in 1978, aged 13 (Year 8!), I had filled with bits and pieces to form a time capsule. The idea was to open it in the year 2000. I actually found it a couple of years ago. What's inside is, effectively, rubbish (the hand off an injured Action Man, a plastic moustache, the woggle off my brother's Cub Scouts kneckerchief, a couple of painted soldiers etc.), but the magic ingredient turned out to be a Star Wars bubblegum card. I asked the kids if anyone liked Star Wars, and of course a number of them did. I was able to tell them about my excitement at going to see the first Star Wars film in 1978 (or Episode IV, as they know it), and I think I managed to get across how a seemingly mundane, everyday object - "rubbish" - can attain significance with the passage of time, and become a touchstone with the past.
6. A number of kids keep diaries. You might think that such a physical, potentially "boring" pastime would have died out in the computer age. Not so. If I prompted even one child to start a diary after my time at WFS, I'll be happy.
   

A couple of them asked me for my autograph, which was sweet, and I wrote my name out in full under my scribble, because I don't imagine they'll remember me in a week's time. (They were far more excited about the fact that I knew Harry Hill.) I was especially taken with the ones who stayed behind, into their precious lunch hour, to look at my diaries and drawings and ask further questions. Then a small group of about five of them took me to the library to show me where it was, and delivered me back to the staff room. I only wish I knew a few more of their names. (Two kids asked me if they could be in my next book.)

I showed each group this photo of myself when I was at Weston Favell and I was struck by how square and trussed-up I look in my stiff blazer, white shirt, v-neck and tie. Today's uniform is the much cooler polo shirt, no tie and monogrammed sweatshirt. The kids at WFS certainly look a lot smarter than those on, say, The Choir, with their ties halfway down their untucked shirts. Some things have improved. Also, they have another thing that we never had at Weston Favell Upper School in 1978: multiculturalism. What a fine, mixed bunch they, are how much more educated they must be than I was at their age.

I realise I may have had a sanitised view of the comprehensive education system - kids on their best behaviour etc. - but I still firmly believe that our young generation isn't as ruined before it's started as media coverage would have you believe. If there's anything wrong, it's not with individual schools, it's with the system itself.

... We are better than Mitchell and Webb*. And we're not being paid. (I know you probably think I am overreacting to our sudden ascent up the iTunes podcast chart - Richard Herring does - but I'm genuinely shocked. This is the general podcast chart, not the comedy one, and we seem to be at number 37.)

*And Steve Wright (not the serial killer) and Andrew Marr, and these people are backed by licence-fee cash and globally recognised branding. It's a victory of love over money, and idiocy over good sense.

A discussion over at The Urban Woo concerned the ace celeb photographer Nicky Johnston. I mentioned that Stuart Maconie and myself were once captured in light by the great man, in his studio, and here, after a quick rummage in some boxes, is the evidence, reproduced from the TV listings of the Daily Mirror, Friday March 7, 1997. I'd actually forgotten that the Movie Club was also on Paramount Comedy. This is why you must keep everything in boxes, as I do. (In case you can't read the copy, it says, "If you've noticed this programme popping up in the middle of the night on ITV but were too tired to watch it, here's another chance to catch it." It's on Paramount at 11pm and 2.30am - much more convenient!)

In yesterday's Sun, despite having the same MoD/Buckingham Palace/Whitehall propaganda as all the other newspapers, they managed to find their own spin on Prince Harry's adventure in Afghanistan, with the coverline: "Prince Harry Kills 30 Taliban." Well done, Prince Harry. (If you read more closely you'll find that had a hand in ordering three air strikes in Helmond Province which are thought to have killed "up to 30" Taliban. But this is a small quibble.)



Five days earlier, in the same newspaper, a poll found that "almost 100,000" Sun readers had called for the return of the death penalty, in light of the conviction, in short order of Mark Dixie, Steve Wright (ha ha, not that one), the teenage killers of "hero dad" Garry Newlove and Levi Bellfield. A "staggering" 99% of readers who responded to the paper's You The Jury poll said the Government should reintroduce it. The views of the bring-back-hanging mob are, according to the Sun, "backed by many of the families whose lives have been cruelly torn apart by killers now serving time behind bars." Well of course they are. It's not really fair to ask victims' families - they're in no fit state to comment. The Sun also crowed that Shadow Home Secretary David Davis "and some religious leaders" had joined in. Widow Helen Newlove, said: "For many, the death penalty is murder by another name - a chilling relic from an uncivilised past. Yes, the thought of bringing it back may be unpalatable. But the horrifying events of the past week have strengthened my conviction that the hangman is the answer."

What the fuck is going on? Former Home Office Minister Anne Widdecombe wants capital punishment brought back "as a deterrent." That's all very nice in principle, but it still means that murder would be sanctioned by the state, as it is in some parts of America, another apparently civilised country that wishes to spread its special brand of democracy around the world with a big stick. Presumably, jolly TV presenter Widdecombe is one of those who'd happily step forward to pull the switch. (I actually doubt that any of them actually would, when it came down to it.) Why do these people take what seems like such pornographic pleasure in images of "the hangman" and "the gallows" and "pulling switches"? How are we to take the moral high ground against anyone who kills if we are prepared to kill ourselves? Are Sun readers "and some religious leaders" really intellectually ready to draw up a list of "good" killers (Prince Harry, the hangman) and "bad" killers, and stand by it?

I personally admire Sara Payne, mother of murdered Sarah, who put the issue into some much-needed human perspective, saying: "I don't think anyone should be able to take another's life. It's one of our core values as human beings living in a civilised country that you do not kill."

What's that smell? I think it may be flaming torches. Or some Taliban on fire. Can't tell.