The World Has Survived Because It Has Laughed. This odd message came to me from Stefan Furtonov. It came in the post on very thin grey paper.

A new element has been added to the judgment of literary worth. It is nothing to do with the elegance of the prose, the vividness of the dialogue or descriptive qualities. The main question to pose is "does the writer smoke?"

When I get the Sunday paper, I groan. There’s a whole wadge of extra bits I don’t want.

There’s a magazine, and a Food Monthly and supplement about the economic situation in Asia Minor, a facsimile of a paper printed at the time of the Boer War, a money supplement, a cookery supplement and a review of all the films that will never come round here. Everything you don’t want to know about the Stock Exchange.

Does The Apprentice give a view of the morality of modern Britain? Here we have young bright people, culled from the world of business. They are competing for a job with Alan Sugar. As Alan Sugar is probably the most unpleasant man in the country, it would make more sense if they were competing not to get a job with him. Because Sugar supports some of the most disreputable ideas, and has a set of ethics more suitable to a tribe of wolves.

One of the contestants said that she was uncomfortable selling something that was not worth the money.

Reflections on the imminent smoking ban in English pubs by a lifelong smoker, aged 84....

Careful Mr Ahmaninejad, in this latest, neocon-envenomed big screen stand-off, the figure-of-speech Spartans are onto your case. Well, three hundred of them at least—and the pan-Asian genocide they want to see beats Abu Ghraib hands down.. The rest of the Spartans—a metaphor for corrupt congress-people, East Coast liberals, reactionary palaeocons (terribly wrinkled), Nancy Pelosi--are relaxing back at home (and Pelosi’s going to Syria), fouling up the true patriots’ vision of what the film calls a ‘New Age of Freedom’.