Jam!

It must be the silly season – jam’s in the news.

If you are, like me, an aficionado of the work of the great Eddie of Izzard, jam is indeed special. If you follow Mr Izzard’s example and use the internet to research your subject, you’ll probably know that jam was invented by Mr and Mrs Jam, who live in a toilet somewhere...and that the premise of jam is to get some stuff – strawberries, plums, chicken, mustard, whatever – and jam it into a jar.

That’s why it’s called a jam jar. It was originally made for 1950’s schoolboys to capture and imprison tadpoles so they can either wait for them to turn into frogs and die because they are all jammed together in the jam jar and can’t breathe, or to pour over their sisters to scare them.

Once the frogs have been scraped out though, the other stuff can be jammed in.

I think there is some culinary process involved too, by which you have to boil it in a saucepan, add yeast, let it rise and then prove it – which essentially means making sure it is jam because it is actually illegal to put one of those sticky labels on the jam jar saying ‘Strawberry Jam’ if the stuff inside isn’t.

Once you have proved it is really strawberry jam (best way, I think, is to taste a spoonful of it – but try not to do that just after it’s boiled unless you think a blistered tongue is a good look) then you can jam it in the jar!

As I understand it, apart from the jam jar, two things are needed to make jam: some foodstuff – and in this conservative country we tend to use fruit-based stuff – and sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. As much as you can jam into the jar.

And this seems to be the problem at the moment – some health-conscious officials want us to take the sugar out of the jam – or at least put less in.

So we have to ask ourselves why the sugar is there in the first place? Why not just jam a load of strawberries into a jar and spread it on your toast?

Because fruit goes off, that’s why! And who wants mould on toast for their breakfast?

So some clever person had the idea of adding sugar as a preservative – it used up the huge glut of fruit which would otherwise go off before you could eat it, it meant you could have fruit-based food for the next year – and it tastes good! All round winner.

You could spread it on bread or toast, on cakes, or get playing cards to make tarts with it – the obvious drawback with that being a male playing card would inevitably run off with the tarts, but that’s men for you – always on the lookout for a spare tart to cop off with!

Now, hundreds of years later, they want us to put less sugar in it to make it a healthier food. In the process, they admit, it will be a dull colour and taste awful.

Why not just ban jam totally – you might as well if you are going to enforce a dull, pale imitation of it.
Or – here’s a thought! Make ‘Reduced Sugar Jam’ and sell it alongside the real stuff – and see which one is more popular with the general public!

Oh – you’ve already tried that, and people prefer the sugary jam.

OK, why not advise everyone take to take 20 minutes’ exercise 3 times a week to use up the extra calories?
Oh, you’ve done that too. Well, it’s the nanny state then....... No sense in giving people the freedom to choose, is there?

Meanwhile, if you want me, I’ll be in the kitchen, tucking into homemade plum jam – because they can’t stand in your kitchen and tell you how much sugar to put in homemade jam....

...can they??

Pub Restaurants - a contradiction in terms?

Once upon a time (ie when I was a lot younger than I am now!) you knew where you were. There were pubs, which served drinks, and restaurants, which served dinner. If you wanted a sandwich or snack you went to a cafe and afternoon tea and cakes could be had in a teashop.


Then along came the fast food outlets, but they just added places where you could eat a burger for lunch or a kebab when you came out of the pub.


Now restaurants (and pubs) serve ‘traditional pub fare’ (or worse, ‘fayre’). Traditional pub fare is, surely, a packet of pork scratching with your pint! The only food choice to be made in our local twenty years ago was whether to go for cheese and onion crisps or salt and vinegar. If the establishment was really up market the landlord might even stock peanuts!


Now, they’d have us believe that traditional pubs have always served lasagne, shepherds pie and scampi and chips. I do remember chicken in a basket – introduced to keep punters at the bar downing drinks when otherwise peckishness would have sent them to the nearby chippie – and there was ‘Betty’s hotpot’ served in the Rovers Return at some time I seem to remember, but steak dinners and sticky toffee puddings were never part of the pub repertoire in my youth.


I am now confused as to what constitutes a restaurant, since so many pubs seem to serve more food than drink, and many restaurants have a bar at which you can drink before and after your meal... so where do you draw the line?


The only eateries which now seem to fully deserve the title of restaurant are those pretentious places serving the likes of ‘nouvelle cuisine’ which arrive at the table on a huge square plate on which is carefully and centrally placed a blob of some unidentifiable pureed vegetables of the portion size and consistency which I gave to my babies at four months old, topped with a sliver of fish or meat the size (and often the texture) of a postage stamp, the whole garnished with a twig of some herb or other and drizzled with a teaspoonful of some tasteless sauce. For which the mug – I mean diner – is charged three times the price of a huge plateful of shepherds pie at the local pub.


Suddenly, the thought of the pub restaurant doesn’t sound so silly – perhaps they were just filling the gap in the market!

To Autumn 2013

On this day in 1819 Keats wrote his famous ode.

But what would he have made of today's consumerism?

For the last few years I have been irritated by the Chrismas displays being wwheeled out before the summer holidays have even finished, so I have amended - a little bit - this famous poem to reflect what Autumn means 200 years on....



Season of mince pies and untimely Advent Calendars
Close bosom-friend of the grasping retail trade;
Conspiring with them how to load and pile
With tat, the trolleys that round the shops parade;
To bend with toys the Children’s Section floor,
And fill all aisles with chocolates and sweets;
To cram in every type of gift and card
For every family member; to set panic buying more,
And still more, food and drink we never need,
Until we forget warm days have not yet ceased,
For greed has o'erbrimmed their corporate plans.


Who hath not seen thee too early in the stores?
From September whoever wanders in will see
The tins of biscuits piled by the front door,
Turkish Delight, Yule logs, Christmas tree
Or if in the drinks section you may roam,
Drowsed with the fume of Cointreau, while the display
Groans with gin and whisky, Baileys and Cours;
Egg-nog and snowballs – when would we take these home
Except for Great Aunt Annie’s Yuletide stay?
And by the stock, with silver tray,
Staff offer little tasters, hours by hours.


Where are the Harvest celebrations? Or even Hallowe’en?
Think not of them, they make too little cash, -
A few buy apples and tins of stuff for the school assembly,
And trick or treat sweets and masks and all that trash;
Soon in a wailful choir Christmas adverts will begin;
The festive TV trailers, there among
The first Coca Cola advert assaults our ears;
And then we know we may as well give in;
Carols piped through all the shops decibels strong
We end up whistling Slade’s old song;
And celebrities tweet plugs for new CDs.

U turn if you want to - it might be a good idea!

Why do we believe what we believe?

All beliefs have some background, some point at which we experienced, or were told or shown something which shaped our thoughts on a subject. Many of the beliefs we have may have their sources back in a past situation which no longer has any relevance, yet the belief remains.

A few thousand years ago, a tribe of nomadic desert-dwellers made a discovery. They found that if they left cooked beef around for a few days before eating it, they came to no harm, yet if they ate three day old pork, they were sick. We now know that pork goes off more quickly than other meats if not refrigerated, but this was before they had Kitchens, let alone fridge freezers to put in them, and their understanding of biology was less developed.

So some wise tribal elder came up with an explanation, which also served as a deterrent to any hungry child to who thought that pork looked tempting. 

'God does not want you to eat pork,' he would have opined. 'So if you disobey Him, he will give you a tummy ache as a punishment'. Job done. People would avoid three day old pork and the resulting diarrhoea.

I wonder what that tribal elder would think if he could see the wholesale eschewment of pig meat in the 21st Century by two leading world religions? Does it make sense nowadays? But once God has decreed, it is apparently for all time. God appears to agree with Thatcher at least on the subject of U turns.

And don't get me started on rituals involving menstruating women....

Of course, some ancient religious beliefs are still valid, though not necessarily for the original rationale. Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim prayer involves a set of ritual movements which were, I presume, once presented to devotees as simply the only acceptable way to worship. Nowadays our greater understanding of the human body tells us that these postures stretch important muscle groups, help oxygenate the body and are conducive to calming the mind. The benefits we now attribute to health and well being were, I am sure, once seen as the godhead's way of rewarding the devotion of his followers.

So some old beliefs are of use, either for practical purposes or just to give us confidence. But what about those other ideas about ourselves, often inculcated in childhood, that we are for example rubbish at Maths, not good-looking, have fat legs or big ears - what are those beliefs good for, except lowering our self esteem? 

We can challenge, and defeat these baseless thoughts. Once we become aware of them and the damage they are doing us. And realise they are as pointless as refusing to eat meat because it made someone sick four thousand years ago.

Whether you believe in yourself or not, you're probably right...

Belief is a wonderful thing. Humans can believe nearly anything if they really want to. Often irrespective of facts, but almost equally often by twisting, even mauling, the facts to suit what they want them to prove.

What is fascinating is how society views beliefs: some apparently crazy interpretations of the available facts are, with reason, not accepted by the general populace and those who take those interpretations to their logical conclusions are sneered at. Like in the 1990s when I dared to suggest that the current government's failure to provide clear evidence to the public of the existence in Iraq of the much vaunted weapons of mass destruction, on which they were building a case for war, I clearly recall a colleague telling me that I had to have faith in the Prime Minister who was of course only able to reveal so much of the truth to the public. As it turned out, he revealed far less of the truth than my colleague assumed.

Why do we - or many of us at least - dismiss someone who believes in alien spacecraft and UFOs visiting earth as a looney, yet accept, even defend, those who believe a divine being visited the earth 2000 odd years ago on a mission to save mankind, and to this day has the power to affect what happens to you after you die?

Religious folk will tell you that their prayers are answered, and yes, that makes sense. Not because of some beneficent God (who alternately through history appears to have created miracles for the good of mankind and destroyed his creations through hurricanes, earthquakes and wars) but because of belief.

What the mind truly believes, the body takes on..

So if you go into a job interview truly believing that you will be appointed, that belief translates into confident body language: a firm handshake, a steady, positive voice, upright posture and good eye contact. All of which reassures your interviewer that you are a suitable candidate, and while your presentation of yourself may not guarantee success, it will go a long way towards increasing its likelihood.

Whether your self-belief comes from a conviction that Jesus will grant your prayer, a knowledge that your experience makes you the best candidate, some mental mind-games or pure delusion does not matter - the effect is the same. 

What most people do not realise is that we can choose what we believe, and can consciously shape our belief system to suit our purpose. The vast majority of us are at the mercy of beliefs that have been created for us, often without us recognising the process, by external forces. some of these beliefs may be of use (such as the belief that we should be kins to one another) but negative ideas about ourselves can destroy our self esteem and mar our happiness, so why allow them space in our head? 

Yes, changing our beliefs about ourselves takes work, but it can be done. You can programme your brain just as you can programme a computer.

King Richard III

So, it's really him! Exciting!

And of course, all the jokes have already started flowing - from how much he owes in car parking fees to 'I love it when a Plan-tagenet comes together'....

I have always had a great sense of history, particularly history connected with place: it's what underpins my interest in psychogeography. At the age of ten I was taken to the Tower of London and was found wandering up and down Princess Elizabeth's Walk in the Bloody Tower, transfixed by the thought that she once took her daily exercise in exactly the spot I was walking. I was lost in the trance of history.

And I love to visit the places associated with historical figures of interest and pay homage at their graves, whether Keats in Rome or TS Eliot in East Coker.

So the idea of finding the last resting place and seeing the actual bones of Richard III fascinates me. I went to the site of the Battle of Bosworth a few years ago and even that took me closer to the King and the events surrounding his downfall, and all the while the man himself - or hhis mortal remains - were lying only a few miles away, under a car park.

And that's another thing. It transpires that when he was buried, the area was a church, which was consecrated ground. Sacred land which all this time later is sacred only to the worship of the Devil's Horse. Nice irony there.

Much as I adore Shakespeare I have never really bought the villainous child killing hunchback of Tudor mythology. Too obvious a scheme to blacken the name of the last representative of the preceding dynasty - although let's not forget that Henry Tudor cannily married Richard's sister Elizabeth to underpin his extremely shaky claim to the throne - other than that, apart from distant connection through his mother to the royal family his main claim to kingship was the fact that he - or one of his henchmen - had killed the rightful king.

And the way the proof of who the bones belonged to, beyond reasonable doubt, through DNA and so on, is better than an episode of Silent Witness - and real!

Of course, over five hundred years after his death, it is now possible to be completely objective about the man and the myths perpetrated about him. We can now confirm that while he had curvature of the spine he was not a hunchback and was, if the facial reconstruction which bears a striking resemblance to existing portraits is to be believed, he was actually a delicately featured, handsome man. Not at all the way the Tudors had an interest in portraying him.

But because history is written by the victors, Richard's reputation has been severely dented by his immediate successors and it is wonderful that a more enlightened and scientific age has been able to right the wrongs done to him.

And maybe in five hundred years time, our more objective descendants will be able to finally piece together who Jack the Ripper was and why five women were murdered?

Do we need a Church of England?

So there is, as reported today, a back bench revolt against the Prime Minister introducing and supporting the idea of marriage being opened up to gay people.


Whatever your view on the actual issue, the MPs' objection seems to be largely that this was originally a Lib Dem policy with which David Cameron happens to agree, but that it did not form part of the Coalition agreement and there was no discussion or consultation with Conservative MPs before the bill was introduced.


OK, so much for inter-party warfare: I see their point, but that is between the MPs and their leader.


More importantly, the bill itself seems to be a huge mish mash in an attempt to placate everybody and offend no one.


Religion is always a difficult area, because our society traditionally accepts it as a genuine belief system. If I claimed that an alien had landed from Mars and ordered me to brush my teeth twenty times a day, I would be viewed with sympathy, indulgence and a measure of ridicule. If my claimed beliefs involved me refusing to carry out my job or displaying prejudice, I would be sacked, and possibly sectioned.


Yet the claim of thousands that their own particular Holy Scripture makes it necessary for them to denigrate people whose lifestyle is apparently condemned by that book, written hundreds of years ago, is considered in itself sacred.


Yes, the Bible - or a page in it somewhere -  may state that man should not lay with man, but other bits also say that certain meats are inedible (Jewish people still accept this, as do Moslems - so to quote Mr Minchin, 'why not, not eat pigs together'? But Christians, at the forefront of those condemning gay marriage, have conveniently forgotten that their parent religion forbids their bacon and egg breakfast and Sunday roast pork). 


Still other Bible passages label menstruating women as unclean, instruct them to keep to their homes and not mix with polite society until they have ritually bathed themselves once their period is over. Logical and hygienic when you are living in a desert-dwelling tribe four thousand years ago - as indeed is the notion of circumcision, but rather outdated in these days of tampons, flushing toilets and showers. 


So quite rightly, most Christians, and a lot of Jewish sects, view these instructions as outmoded, yet quote the Bible chapter and verse when it appears to support their own particular prejudice. Pretty easy, as a lot of the Bible is self-contradictory anyway. Other religious texts may be more or less so: I am not qualified to judge.


And the notion of accepting gay marriage for all English people, but then banning it within the state Church of England, sounds crazy. I accept the reasoning - an individual Quaker church is free to marry or refuse to marry any couple, while an Anglican parish church, by virtue of its status as the representative of the national religion, is obliged to marry any Tom Dick or Harry who requests the sacrament, irrespective of their personal belief or religious affiliation. As long as he is marrying any Thomasina, Diana or Harriet, of course. 


But the prospective ruling means that even if your local Anglican vicar is quite happy to perform a marriage ceremony for a gay couple - he or she may even be gay and in a civil partnership him/herself - this is strictly verboten. Yet if - however unlikely this may sound - the local Roman Catholic priest is not averse, he may perform the ceremony. Yet he must be male and celibate.



There is also the separate outdated law currently under review: that stating that those in direct line to the throne of England may not marry a Roman Catholic. At any time in the last few hundred years the way has been open for us to have a Queen or Prince Consort who is a Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist..... and in a way I am slightly disappointed that has never happened, for it would call into question this law. Yes, I know the history of the English fear of a Catholic monarch but would we be totally sanguine about the heir to the throne being brought up as a Buddhist, even though his destiny was to lead the Church of England?



And the answer to both the conundrums above seems to me obvious: dis-establish the Church of England. If the monarch is no longer the Head of the Church (ironically, the title the Queen still holds of Defender of the Faith was awarded by the Pope to Henry VIII in recognition of his defence of Catholicism!) then it will not matter two hoots whether the child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge espouses atheism or Hinduism and who he/she marries; equally, if the Anglican Church has the same status as the rest we can no longer demand to be married in it, and it will therefore have the right to accept or reject a request for marriage from a same sex couple.


Sinple, eh?

Is there a local branch of RA?

Ahem *stands up*

My name is Maureen and I am a bookaholic.

I have only just come to this realisation although the seeds go way way back. Addiction has been described as a compulsion which affects your everyday life: that describes my relationship with books perfectly.


You know how on Desert Island Discs the celebrity is asked to choose one book to take with them to their mythical island? One?? Panic is setting in even as I write this, with no threat of ever being put in that position – by the BBC or worse still, a plane crash. How could I possibly survive? My only chance is the existence somewhere of an anthology comprising the complete works of Shakespeare, Hardy, Wilde, Keats, Fry, Byron, Orwell, Kerouac, Self, Iain Sinclair.... the list goes on.


The best way to solve the problem, it occurs to me, is for my luxury item to be my Ipad, pre-loaded with all the above and just a few more books to keep me going. Would that be allowed under the rules I wonder? At the very least, it breaks the spirit of the programme.

So, at a pinch, I suppose I might just be able to cope by rereading The Book of Dave, Endymion, London Orbital, Dorian Gray…..

Like many addicts, I blame my parents. Dad especially. He was a connoisseur. He savoured books – wrapped them protectively in brown paper covers to protect the precious bindings, and handled them with the reverence of the wine buff. I have inherited his set of Arthur Mee’s ‘Children’s Encyclopaedias, a ten-volume work which I spent many happy childhood hours poring over. I wasn’t allowed to touch the books until I had washed my hands, and I still have the urge to do so before removing them from the shelf.

One of my earliest memories is standing in the village shop Dad kept, a copy of 'Bobbalink and Bunty' ( a story about an elf and a teddy bear - don't get me started...) propped on a chair in front of me, narrating the tale verbatim from the book for the delight and delectation of the elderly ladies of the village, who invariably marvelled to my Mum: 'Can she read??' I was three - and no, I couldn't: I had pestered for this story so often I could recite it by heart, turning the pages at the right time.

Mind you, another memory from around the same time is visiting my Uncle and rolling his cigarettes for him. Give me, aged four, a pack of tobacco and a few Rizlas and I was absorbed for hours... yet I've never been a smoker. Perhaps you choose your influences early.

By the time I was about ten my habit was so firmly established, it was already interfering with my normal life. Eating was a problem: I didn't hear Mum calling me in for dinner because when my head was in a book the rest of the world ceased to exist. Even when I got the message that food was on the table, it was difficult to eat with one hand propping a book open.

The habit took a back seat slightly during my teens as I found other outlets for my amusement: music, boys, that sort of thing. But my fate was sealed in my sixth form years by two things. First, a relationship with a poet. Not a famous one - just aspiring. But he wrote poetry for me and to me - and that was one of the most romantic things that had ever happened to me. The second was being introduced to a pantheon of writers I still love, which cemented my habit forever.

I don't know whether heroin addicts long to go to Amsterdam, Marakesh or wherever, but my equivalent is Hay-on-Wye, a town crammed with my own preferred type of dealer. I have to go there as often as possible.

When we bought our current house, the thing that really sold it to me was that it had three - in estate agents' speak - reception rooms: living room, dining room and - yes! a library! This room is now lined with bookshelves, floor to ceiling, mostly stacked two deep with books. Every place I have ever lived in has only felt like home once certain of my favourite tomes are ranged on shelves, and now I can wallow in the comfort of my sofa, surrounded by my literary heroes and friends.

This Christmas I received about eight books which are gratefully received even though I know I will have real problems finding somewhere to store them.

Throw some out? How very dare you!! I save and cherish books the way some people do stray animals, and with equal love. And I appreciate and adore my family and friends who feed my addiction. There may be a cure - there may even be a Readers Anonymous group I could attend. But as every addict knows, the first step to beating an addiction is the recognition of the need to break it, and of its negative effect on your life. And since the most negative thing I can find about reading is the occasional burnt dinner while I am absorbed in the latest tome, which fades into meaninglessness against the joy I derive from my habit, I cant see this addiction being broken any time soon.

Old Musicians Never Die - They Just De-compose...

The media has been - depending on which papers you read or websites you visit - aghast, fulsomely admiring, or just plain amazed that David Bowie has just released a new album and single at the ripe old age of 66.

OK, granted, he has had major heart problems, has not performed since 2006 or released any new music for nearly a decade, and is now known more for his reclusive lifestyle than for changing his hair and makeup evy other week, but still, is it so amazing that one of the most talented and in his day most prolific rock musicians of our age wants to make more music?

Even more extreme is the praise and opprobrium, about fifty percent each way, greeting the new single. It is alternately the worst song he has ever released, the product of a lost genius, a man deluded into thinking he still has what it takes; or the subject of laudation dripping with adjectives like elegiac, and phrases such as "like hearing King Arthur's voice from the cave."

Let's get this bit over quickly: having heard the song once, I like it: the words are poetic and the melody is haunting. But I have to say while it is undeniably and indisbutably Bowie, it is not his best work. Having said that, I am aware I am comparing it on one hearing to well known and well loved songs like Starman and Life on Mars. So I am quite prepared for it to grow on me on further listening.

But for now, that is my opinion - not worth the hype but not worth the insults hurled in its direction either.

More importantly, what I find difficult to understand is the media amazement that Bowie could have come out of what we had all assumed was a permanent retirement to record again.

Surely, music is, apart from his wife and children, the passion that has governed Bowie's life. He is a musician, first and foremost and is it therefore so surprising that he has one day got up, decided to jot a few Ideas down, come up with a few songs he thinks worth singing, then made his way - staggering on his zimmer frame if the media are to be believed, into the recording studio to warble the tunes into a microphone so that they can be preserved for posterity before he shuffles off this mortal coil?

Yes, there are those who are reading this foray back into the recording studio and the music charts as a swansong from a man who knows his end is near. Is he dying? they are asking, as if only the prospect of imminent demise would force him to release more music to be remembered by, or possibly with the foresight that his death would propel the album to the top of the charts and ensure maximum sales, thus providing his widow and daughter with a legacy.

But no, my view is he just wanted to share the songs he has written, like any artist - why DO people want to sing, dance, write? The creative impulse, which has beat unceasingly in Bowie's breast since the late sixties until he has (almost) reached his own late sixties.

And as for the idea that 66 is geriatric, I wonder if anyone has told Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan they should have given up the ghost at their advanced years?

The former is setting out with his compatriots on yet another tour, still strutting around the stage with his voice and physique in extremely good nick. The latter has just released another album, Tempest, which is worthy to be placed alongside any of his preceding work, and the last I heard he is still on his Never-Ending Tour. Without the aid of a Zimmer(man) frame. Sorry, just had to work that bad pun in.

I acknowledge that Mick and Bob have kept their careers going while Bowie has appeared to have left the music and performing world behind, but maybe that,s the mark of the great and talented artist - the music (or art, poetry, prose, whatever) keeps coming. And while some areas of the arts may demand a younger frame, such as dancing - though again Jagger seems to call that into question - singing, playing instruments and song writing are not solely the preserve of the young.

And the older songwriter has a message to convey that the younger writer cannot - not without the use of a high level of imagination anyway. They can speak of a long life, of looking back with nostalgia, sadness, joy or whatever emotion, on the past.

Bowie seems to be doing just that in his new song, as Dylan does at times on his new album. And it is wonderful to hear. Old musicians never die - they just keep singing till they can sing no more. Lets hope that day can be delayed as long as possible for these great talents.

Why we should listen to comedians

I have just read an article by Victoria Coren here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/06/jim-davidson-arrest-standup-comedy
She comments on the arrest of Jim Davidson and his resulting withdrawal from Celebrity Big Brother, and laments it: the context is that years ago there were two types of comedian: the old school such as Davidson who we knew were racist, sexist etc and the new young things who traded on being the opposite: she opines that everyone under 45 liked the latter, while over 45's preferred the former.

Nowadays, she says - apart from the fact that most of those under 45's are no longer in that age bracket (me included,sadly) - things are not so simple and cut and dried. No longer can we accept Eddie Izzard's comedy credentials only on the basis that he is an executive transvestite (his description). And Coren argues that bringing back the Jim Davidsons of this world redraws the boundaries between the goodies (no, not Tim Brooke-Taylor et al) and the baddies. But one paragraph keys into something I was thinking about yesterday and strikes a familiar chord, especially in the light of comedians turning inward on themselves and criticising each others' choice of target and material:

"Our era's spirit of disapproval has triggered a widespread blandness and terror of challenging consensus, in everything from mainstream political discourse to the ordinary workplace, which makes the comedian or jester's traditional duty to shock and shake up more vital than ever. Haranguing them for shocking in the wrong way might be a luxury we can't afford."

Amen, Ms Coren - it is indeed the comedian's duty to shock and shake up. But how many nowadays do? Most are more mainstream than the daily dose of soap opera and even less in touch with the topical issues to be debated: their stock in trade is still relatiosnhips with the wife, mother, children - delete as applicable according to age of comedian.

So when a few months ago the Daily Mail was - not unexpectedly - aghast that the politicians were speaking to comedians about important social issues and listening to their views, and claimed it was appalling that we had to descend to listening to Hugh Grant and Russell Brand telling us what to think about phone hacking and drug taking, I could not be other than amused. Quite apart from the fact that Hugh's phone was hacked and Russell has experienced drug abuse both from having been an addict himself and working with drug charities, their comments made far more sense than anything any politician had said on the subjects throughout the discussions.

Of course we should ask people who have direct experience of an issue what their viewpoint is, and listen to an ex-drug addict when he explains that the law is totally irrelevant to a drug addict: his one thought when he wakes is how he is going to score, not whether he is breaking the law by doing so. And since the addict, as opposed to the casual user, is almost certain to be using drugs to escape from other problems and issues in his life, let's support him and see if we can dael with the issues and then he might be able to lead his life sober.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

And a comedian - at least, an intelligent one - should have something challenging to contribute because if he (or she) can find something funny and entertaining to say on stage about life, it should mean s/he looks at life in a slightly different way from most people, and can take an objective standpoint, which are crucial abilities for anyone who wishes to address a problem in society.

And unlike politicians, comedians are free spirits: they are not linked (or bound) to any political party or shade of thought - a few, Mr Izzard and Kenny Everett come to mind - do publicly espouse party politics in some form, but most are devoutly apolitical and will happily lampoon all political creed and beliefs. So a comedian can say exactly what he thinks, without the chief whip - er - whipping them into line.

Which is precisely why some comedians are feared - and therefore targeted - by the media. Let's tell everyone how stupid this person is so no one bothers to listen to him. Let's print and draw attention to the odd ridiculous, or even unkind, thing he says, or the one person he has offended, and no one will bother to listen to the thoughtful, insightful and challenging things he has to say. And let's only listen to one or two words - or perhaps a phrase or sentence - and then take them out of context and use them against him.

You can understand why most comedians take the easy - and cowardly - way out and deliver bland jokes about the mother/daughter/local takeaway.

But that just makes me admire even more those who risk being vilified in the media for challenging our views, to shock and shake us up.

Sindy and Donny: Days of Innocence

Today is the birthday of an old friend from primary school, Maxine.

She was the child who owned the first fashion doll I ever saw - and it was Tressy, whose selling point was that her hair grew. It is only now as I type this that I have realised where her name came from - the tresses that supposedly emanated from her plastic head. I wanted Tressy with a deep desire only an eight year old girl can understand.

Only to be disappointed when I saw the actual doll itself. Instead of the expected tresses sprouting from the whole head, there was a key in the doll's back which operated a mechanism by which you could pull out a tiny section of hair on the crown of her head. It was only this little bit of hair that could grow to almost waist length, and the only way it could be made to seem that the doll had long hair was by very careful arrangement of the section.

I suppose in retrospect it was good training for those girls who in later years would sport extensions, but the fact that most of Tressy's hair remained not only resolutely short but also styled in a definitive sixties bob reminiscent of the hairstyles favoured by our mums meant she was a distinct disappointment. It was only in later years that dolls were marketed especially to be made up and to have their hair done, and they tended to be disembodied plastic heads which - although I had grown past the age for these dolls by this time anyway - I always found rather macabre.

So I ended up with Sindy. Not as she is now, not much different from a Barbie - who was of course a brash American. No, the sixties' Sindy did not have the jutting boobs which frankly would have made it extremely difficult for her to remain standing if she were real - she would have been continually falling forwards under their sheer weight! Instead, Sindy had a trim, willowy figure and - in the case of mine anyway - came dressed in a patriotic red white and blue striped top and jeans, anlthough my favourite outfit was her sober brown tweed skirt and blouse.

She had, I remember, a dog she could take out for walks and the brown brogues on her plastic feet were far more suitable for tramping through muddy fields than dancing the night away at the disco. By the time she acquired a boyfriend called Paul, a younger sister, a range of clothes and furniture and a racier image, I had passed her on to my younger sister, because my interests - and those of my compatriots, including Maxine - had moved on to real make up applied to real faces - ours - and boys. Ah, the make up: Miners lipsticks, heavy blue Rimmel eye shadows and block mascara which you were supposed to mix with water but we used to spit on to make a paste which we then brushed on to our eyelashes with mini toothbrushes - and shared with our friends, long before we had heard of a little thing called hygiene!

But while the make up was real, the boys we fantasised about weren't - at least, they were real people but were far removed from our little Norfolk village and we only knew of them via our TV screens and - even more importantly - the pages of the teen magazines we assiduously bought and pored over every week. David Cassidy and Donny Osmond were the main focus - Maxine adored David and I loved Donny. So much so that we papered our bedrooms with their images.

I envied Maxine because I was only allowed a limited number of posters on my walls, while she literally covered every inch of the walls and ceiling of her room with pictures of David. Her paricular favourite was positioned carefully right above her bed so David was the first thing she saw when she awoke each morning. The best I could do, in the face of my mother's fear that a poster on my ceiling might fall down in the middle of the night and suffocate me - was to stick a poster of Donny compiled from three separate double page spreads from Jackie magazine on the wall at the head of my bed so I could kiss Donny goodnight.

Looking back, those were innocent days: we wished for nothing more from our heroes than a chaste kiss on the cheek and to walk hand in hand through a leafy meadow or sunwashed beach. Perhaps it's just as well that we never attained our dream of going to a Top of the Pops recording and meeting them in person - the reality, as we now know, may have been somewhat different from our expectations....although I am sure that to this day I would be perfectly safe in Donny's arms!