Media Diet Week 30

Press: a quiet week for me until Thursday (although I did managed to blitz the 5-issue pile of Press Gazettes at some point). Then, on Thursday morning, Max Mosley won his privacy case against the News of the World and, like every other hack, I was crawling all over the internet reading the interpretations of the court ruling and what it might mean for journalism. Not a lot, really. It's another step towards a privacy law that will, I hope, stop the sleazier red-tops from invading people's private lives. And, fortunately, it won't prevent publication of genuine exposés into wrongdoing by government or corporations. I'm looking forward to the weekend press as I suspect there will be some lengthier reviews of the case.

Blogs: the blogosphere went a tad crazy yesterday after Giles Coren let rip at The Times. Film critic Andrews Collins was just one who commented. Otherwise it's been quiet out there. Must be the summer hols...

TV/radio: I'm still following Missing Top Model. In this week's episode there was a fairly robust argument between Sophie and Jessica about Jess's disability. Benefit Scrounging Scum wrote an interesting post about what happened. I was quite surprised by her take on it as I didn't see Sophie as bullying at all. Jess has ME (and a few other things too) - I can understand her struggle to have it recognised as I had ME for several years too. But Jess does use her ME as an excuse to avoid things and I think Sophie was right to challenge her about that. Yesterday, I watched The Making of Me, in which John Barrowman subjected himself to a battery of scientific tests to learn why he is gay. It was fascinating stuff and I'd have been happy to watch an hour of it. In particular, his interview with the man who cured himself of his homosexuality was way too shortand not detailed enough. I also tuned into episode 1 of Burn Up - finally, an intelligent drama that doesn't patronise or dumb down. And although it was issue-led rather than story-led, the 90 minutes slipped by almost unnoticed. I'll be watching the second half tonight.

Books: still reading Death Message. Top class, as usual!

Media Diet week 10

Running a bit late this week...

Press: so my piece finally appeared in a Sunday red-top. They used the most unflattering shot for my byline pic, in a bid to make me look miserable (to match the subject matter) and not only rewrote vast chunks of my copy but even changed some facts and invented things I felt or thought. What actually appeared was wildly inaccurate both factually and also in terms of my feelings. Lesson learned. I won't be selling my soul to the tabloids again - the money is good but I feel soiled.

Blogs: a while back I discovered Benefit Scrounging Scum and what a fine blog it is. If you want to know about the day-to-day reality of living with a disability, look no further. It makes having the occasional epileptic seizure look like a day in the park.

TV/radio: Torchwood was rubbish last week. It made no sense, I felt no desire to know what happened next and I was bored. I had a mini splurge on DVDs yesterday as the TV is so poor at the moment - I watched Control this afternoon. Fantastic. Only one gripe - of all the seizures portrayed, only the last was vaguely realistic. The one of him having a fit on stage showed him having a lucid conversation about 3 minutes after he was carried off stage. Tut. It just doesn't work like that.

Books: needless to say, I raced through Anything Goes. Fabulous, dahling. Laughed out loud every other page and finished it in just under 2 days. Which these days is very fast for me. I'm about 90 pages in to Water Like a Stone and getting twitchy. It took 70 pages before anything of note happened. Far too much faffing around scene-setting, far too many unjoined-up-yet characters and not enough bodies... Val McDermid is far better.

Media diet week 8

Press: my copy of Press Gazette arrived on time yesterday, thank gawd. Last week's issue still hadn't arrived by Monday so I had to phone PG to request another and of course they were out of stock. I've been promised a back issue though, so I can't wait to catch up on out-of-date news. Not yet had time to do more than glance at this week's, though. My favourite story this week was run in the Guardian, a hilarious and true story of a Turkmen TV station and a humble cockroach. Obviously, it's not funny for the poor 30 hacks and editors and other staff who were sacked as a result of the starring début of an insect. But really, you couldn't make it up...

Blogs: the main blog story this week has been the sorry tale of Max Gogarty's travel blog in the Guardian, which I refrained from commenting on at the time as the rest of the world was busy doing so. (Just google Max Gogarty for the whole story if you're desperate to know what I'm wittering on about.) Suffice to say that Charles Arthur, tech editor at the Guardian, has pretty much summed up my views on the matter. I'd only add to his remark about the Guardian's "duty of care" in that Gogarty should have been warned before publication that blog comments can be brutal. Announcing a duty of care after the event is lax, to say the least. It was still a crap piece of writing, though, and one that has damaged the Guardian's strong brand.

TV/radio: call me easily amused but I love Hotel Babylon, so I was glued to the screen when series 3 kicked off on Tuesday. I know it's escapist nonsense, but at the end of a hard day, sinking onto the sofa with a glass of wine and an episode of trash tv can sometimes be just the ticket. And Torchwood's still on, too - this week's episode had a shock ending that left me open-mouthed. I'll say no more, in deference to fans who have yet to see it.

Books: I ordered a huge stack of stuff from Amazon last week and it's all arrived. I now have 3 crime novels to devour (including one I bought on a whim as it's set in Cheshire), a book that used to be a blog (more on this when I read it, and yes I still live in hope that some kind publisher out there will offer me a deal for this wretched blog, not that it'll enable me to retire) and John Barrowman's autobiography. And while we're on the subject, is it me or are we seeing the start of the Barrowman backlash in the tabloids? The Sun's run two stories in two days - one on him kicking shit into a theatre audience and one on him exposing himself. Shurely shome mishtake? I'm currently racing through Ray Robinson's Electricity, which is brilliant. The anti-heroine has epilepsy, but it's incidental to the plot and while it's not "my" epilepsy, it's a damn accurate portrayal of life when your brain short-circuits...

Media diet week 7

Press: no Press Gazette this week, grrr! It's supposed to plop through my letterbox on Thursday. Occasionally it arrives on a Friday instead. So I was not pleased when the postie didn't bring it this morning (although I did get another, tiny, win on my premium bonds so I don't totally hate Royal Mail). PG had better arrive tomorrow. Or else. I'll catch up on the internet otherwise. But it won't be the same. I picked up a copy of Dare last Sunday while in Superdrug - it's their freebie mag. Have only had a brief flick through but it looks ok. Not sure I'd read it regularly though, it seems aimed at people at least 20 years younger than me. Surely not all Superdrug's customers are fashion victim 20-somethings?

Blogs: Sally at Getting Ink launched Getting Ink Requests, which I mentioned earlier in the week. But I'm happy to plug it again because it deserves it. And has already spawned an imitator over at Journalism.co.uk. Dave Lee, the nation's most famous student blogger, also blogged about Sally's experiment and caused a small furore.

TV/radio: I still miss Pandora. I'm struggling with Last.FM. Inputting favourite artists was so easy on Pandora but seems really difficult on Last.FM, which is neither intuitive nor user-friendly for the over 25s. And it keeps banging on about scrobbling, which sounds extremely painful but is apparently something to do with selecting music based on what you play on your PC. I hate the assumption that you have an MP3 player of some sort. I don't and am unlikely to ever get one, so scrobbling is lost on me. Sanity was restored with TV - EastEnders has been reasonably good this week, Torchwood is at last really developing the characters (especially Ianto), Mistresses had a rubbish ending but satisfied my need for some trash telly and, er, that's it. I don't watch a lot.

Books: I've read very little this week. I'm about 30 pages into Playing Away by Adele Parks, a ghastly chick-lit novel that came as a free cover mount on January's Eve and has failed to engage me so far. I'd throw it in the bin but I was brought up to revere books, so I'll give it to the charity shop instead. John Barrowman was on Front Row on Radio 4 this week, talking about his autobiography - normally, I'm too tight to shell out for hardbacks and am happy to wait for the paperback, but after listening to him talk about the writing of Anything Goes, I decided I couldn't wait. I ordered it from Amazon and it arrives Monday. So that's next week's book sorted.