PRODIGY STEAL THE SHOW AT READING

BBC DJ Steve Lamacq described Florence and the Machine’s performance at Reading Festival 2009 as a “life-changing” moment. To be fair, any artist that climbs up the lighting scaffolding unaided in a tent in front of thousands of people deserves a bit of praise, but she certainly wasn’t alone in putting on a good show. The headliners were Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead - an excellent trio who were supported by a diverse group of artists such as Jack Penate, Deadmau5, Delphic and Little Boots. I found some great new bands I’ve never heard of before - and also saw some shockers - but had an absolutely great weekend. So I thought I’d tell you all about it...

I got to see 23 bands in three days with a group of five other friends, and it’s difficult to pick out the major highlights as there were so many! But The Prodigy were most certainly the best. Their fast-paced dance and drum ‘n’ bass rhythms were a massive hit for the crowd, who absolutely lapped it up. It was surprising that a band of their style were the fans’ favourite at Reading, considering it’s primarily a rock festival, but I suppose this shows how much of a broad appeal they have. My particular highlight was Warriors’ Dance, from the new album Invaders Must Die, which is such a beautifully powerful and menacing song. So well done to The Prodigy - nevertheless, by the end I think most people were so worn out by the intensity of it all that Arctic Monkeys (who were on next) were a bit of a come-down. Although the Sheffield lads were on top form, they also weren’t helped by the fact that many of their songs were from the new album which few people have heard yet. But regardless of this, I enjoyed their set and pretty much everyone else seemed to as well.

The first thing that anybody said to me upon my arrival in Berkshire was “Hey, you - fancy a f***?”, which - as you can imagine - I was rather surprised by, as that’s not the sort of thing one is usually asked (considering the last four years I’ve attended a Christian festival, Soul Survivor, in the summer)! In fact, this was very much the theme for a group of 17-year-olds in the tent next door to me whose hormones were in full flow. I got just two hours sleep on the last night thanks to their late and loud discussions about what they’d love to do to each other. I suppose it’s their first time away from parents and they were at the experimental stage, but what’s the point in paying almost £200 to get in and then spending all of your time drinking, taking drugs and sleeping with each other? And keeping me awake? I saw over 20 bands so I’d like to say I spent my time more wisely and got my money’s worth!

The weekend would not have been complete without a near-death experience, and sure enough it arrived on Sunday evening. I had just been standing up for Vampire Weekend and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, in order to get nearer the front for Bloc Party with two friends. We made it to within five rows of the barriers and I was very happy with that. Bloc Party are probably my second favourite band behind Coldplay, and I’m seeing them twice in six weeks - next up, Sheffield in October - so I wanted to enjoy it. However the crowd started to surge as soon as Kele and the band kicked-off, and I immediately realised this was going to be a rough ride! I ended up on the floor after being pushed and falling during the second song - as did my two friends - but we managed to get up safely after that. I suggested that we could move back but we decided to stay forward together. Big mistake.

The moments that followed were a bit of a blur now, but from the best of my memory, all three of us ended up on the floor again with about five people on top of us who couldn’t get up. Cue lots of screaming ‘help!’, two people standing on my leg which felt like it was going to break, losing my shoe then finding it again in the melee, both of my friends getting squashed, and for about five or ten seconds it was pretty desperate. But eventually we all got pulled up and got ourselves out of the front as soon as possible. I suppose you play the game if you go up to the front, and nobody is likely to be deliberately trying to hurt you when there’s a crowd surge. It was even more intense than The Prodigy - and that was pretty mental as well. However I was relieved to get out of there without losing anything - including my friends!

Afterwards of course we had a good laugh about it, and everyone there seemed to enjoy the weekend as much as I did. Music is one of my major passions - whether it be watching a rock band in concert, singing in church or playing my saxophone - so I loved spending three full days watching brilliant bands and artists across the board. The great thing about music festivals is that (almost) everyone is there to enjoy music - and I was delighted to share that with a great group of friends. Highly recommended! Just don’t start me talking about the toilets...

PICTURES: Andy Whitton (NME), The Music FM, The Online Ticket Exchange, The Guardian.

ANOTHER (LONDON) ONE BITES THE DUST

The Observer = dying. The Independent = dying. thelondonpaper = dead (almost). News International announced last week that the end is nigh for the popular London freesheet, which has a circulation of over 500,000. Unfortunately it was making a loss and was no longer sustainable. The positives from this are a) less litter on the tube, and b) Murdoch failed in his bid to emulate Metro in the evenings - so maybe he isn’t as superhuman as we once thought. He’s still a top newspaper entrepreneur, no doubt about it, but the London free market never brought the dividends he expected. It’s always been a bizarre situation with the Evening Standard and London Lite competing against each other - despite being owned by the same company until an unlikely Russian got in on the act last year.

But despite the fall of any newspaper normally being no cause for celebration, I’m actually quite pleased with this news. The market situation of having two competing freesheets was never a good idea, and it would have worked much better had they merged. But Murdoch would never stoop as low as to join forces with Associated Newspapers, so it was always going to be survival of the fittest. Goodness only knows what will happen to London Lite, although I’ve always preferred it anyway as it’s the only one with a daily Southend United news section! But for advertisers, they will probably be pleased one paper has fallen, as they can still reach those same commuters - an elusive ABC1 group - by promoting themselves in just the London Lite. Most people read both newspapers if they read either, so it’s important to not get too pessimistic about the fall of thelondonpaper... keep smiling :)

* * *

Many congratulations to Dan Antopolski, the comic who won the ‘Dave Award for the Funniest Joke of the Fringe’ in Edinburgh, after winning 18% of the vote. Here we go: “Hedgehogs? Why can’t they just share the hedge?” Funny? Well I’m sure I could do better, but then again I’m unfortunately infamous amongst some of my friends for awful puns. Monty Python once wrote a sketch about a joke being so funny that it killed anyone who saw it - and whilst this was a very good sketch, I’m not sure mine will ever reach those heights. In fact, I sincerely hope not. However one of my favourites over the years was when I was at a Lapland UK attraction with my younger cousins and a girl dressed up as an elf accidentally bumped into a small child. I noted: ‘Hey, that’s surely an ‘elf and safety risk’.

* * *

I’ve got a good reason for why you should have paid more attention in French lessons at school. A British tourist in her early 30s spent the whole night in an Alsace town hall recently after she mistook the ‘Hotel de Ville’ sign to literally mean it was a real ‘hotel’. Whoops. She got locked inside after going to the toilet and could not get out until the morning when someone noticed a sign she had put on the door, saying: “Je suis fermer ici. Est ce possible la porte en ouvrir?” The local mayor said they would place English and German translations of the ‘Hotel de Ville’ sign on the front door. Probably a good idea, but I can’t imagine that many people would make the same mistake...

* * *

I can honestly say that I don’t really like cricket. I just cannot stand watching it - although I’m obviously very pleased that we’ve won the Ashes because Englishmen have shown they can win a sport we invented. So that’s great, but the less said about it the better. Onto more important and interesting things like...um...football. I’ve already got to 10 games this season since July - two Newcastle and eight Southend matches - and have really enjoyed myself so far. But despite my attendance at Newcastle’s superb win over Crystal Palace on Saturday, it’s Southend I want to focus on now.

According to my (reliable) sources, the Shrimpers hold the Football League record for the fewest draws in a season. I know, how exciting. It was three - a record set earlier in this decade. Well we’ve already failed to get anywhere near it this season after drawing our opening four games in a row. The Blues just can’t seem to win in the league, but at least they are hard to beat. Four draws has only been matched by Blackpool in the three divisions as yet, so it must be something to do with the sea breeze... but hopefully Steve Tilson will have a better excuse than that after we get trounced by Hull City tomorrow night.

NEXT WEEK - Reading Festival 2009: My Review

EXAMS AIN'T WHAT THEY USED TO BE

I remember opening my GCSE and A-Level results very well. I was so concerned about the whole thing that I just couldn’t go into school to pick them up and decided to open the letter in the privacy of my own home. They all came out alright in the end and got me into university without any problems, but the annual ‘dumbing-down exams’ debate has come round again just at the time when everyone is panicking over whether they will get the right grades. I suppose it’s topical, but shouldn’t we be celebrating excellent exam standards rather than criticising students every year? Nevertheless, maybe these critics have got a point.

Now, I must explain that I saw a question in a Maths A-Level that you’ll enjoy hearing about. It was a box-plot and whisker diagram question on the subject of orchestral musical instrument weights, and there was an upper outlier. The question was: “Suggest an instrument for this value.” Ummm, a ‘harp’? That’s what I went for - although this question stumped the most intelligent brains in the class, and I found it quite funny that my knowledge of classical music had come in more handy than any quadratic equation from the past - in a maths exam! My friend who got 100% in almost every maths paper wrote down a ‘cello’, which may well have got him a mark, but I doubt it. OK, so the ‘dumbing down’ evidence is out of the way.

However I’m still a bit disappointed with the Metro newspaper this morning saying A-Levels are so easy that ‘even monkeys’ could be trained to take them, according to a teacher survey. Now come on, that’s just silly. It is true that students are finding out more and more about qualifications before they take them, so they are better prepared, and this has problems. If you’re taught the syllabus and sample questions, you’ll remember it for the exam and then forget it all soon after.

That’s exactly what happened for me in A-Level maths. I got 96% but would struggle to get an ‘E’ if I was to sit any of those papers now. But whilst the preparation for exams is better, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re easier - and we should be thinking more about congratulating students than criticising their achievements. If pass rates fall, we’ll be slamming the education system. If they rise, we’ll be saying it’s easier. But either way, there will always be a picture of two of the most beautiful blonde girls the papers can find posing outside a college clutching their pieces of paper. That’s a certainty.

* * *

Well done to the Daily Star, Daily Star Sunday and The Sunday Times - the only three national newspapers to be recording a circulation rise during the recession, based on last year. Richard Desmond’s Star titles went up by 15% and 1% respectively, whilst Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times was up 2%. I like to highlight the positives here, as every other national daily and Sunday has seen its circulation fall over the last 12 months. The reason for the Star to be doing so well can primarily be put down to the price decrease (it now costs 20p Monday to Friday), but also to the fact it is being brought more upmarket by the editor, with less naughty pictures of women on the front-cover and more proper Sun/Mirror-type tabloid stories. The Daily Star Sunday has been doing quite well for a few years, since it started giving away free DVDs - although The Sunday Times seems to be selling itself on good quality journalism for the moment, which is encouraging.

On the other hand, you’ve got papers like The Independent (down 17%) and on Sunday (down 22%) which could well be out of business in the near future if they show no sign of improvement. However, for The Independent, this figure must be realised in the context that their cover price went up from 80p to £1 over this period. So in terms of revenue from newspaper sales they won’t have suffered that badly - and the Daily Star will be losing revenue but gaining ground on competitors. In the long run, that might just be more important. It’s good to see the Star doing so well, as although it’s far from my paper of choice, it is a British newspaper. And if somebody’s doing well, then there’s still hope for everyone else!

* * *

It’s shaping up to be a fascinating season in the Football League after the second matchday of the season, with Coventry City being the only Championship side to have registered two wins so far. It’s been a solid start for Sheffield United and Newcastle United (I’m extremely surprised at the latter!), but these are just two sides who could have a good campaign. The league is so open this year that anybody could go up, and it will be consistency and strength-in-depth that will secure promotion in my eyes. An outside bet for the top six could still be one of last season’s League One sides - such as Leicester City or Peterborough - but there’s plenty of twists and turns still to go.

I hope my prediction of 16th for the Toon will be proven wrong by Shola Ameobi (since when was he capable of scoring three goals in a season, let alone a game?) but am not getting carried away just yet. There are plenty of good players who could still leave the Magpies before the end of August, and we could still be left with youth-teamers filling up the numbers. But hopefully not. I’m off to Crystal Palace this weekend to see the Magpies in action, and am sincerely hoping that it turns out slightly better than their last visit to London - a 6-1 defeat which I witnessed - in E10. If we ever play Leyton Orient again, I think I’ll be hiding underneath the covers...

THE END OF THE OBSERVER?

Comment is free but newspapers aren’t. Strong rumours are now beginning to circulate that the Scott Trust is looking at closing The Observer. It seems that there is some distance in what is being said, as the oldest Sunday newspaper in Britain is proving to be a financial strain on Guardian Media Group and they could well do without it during a recession. There are plans to maybe produce a weekly supplement in Thursday’s Guardian called ‘The Observer’ to maintain its legacy, but this is a far cry from a Sunday newspaper. I’m a big fan of The Observer (mainly because it’s the only Sunday paper which does a student discount!) and would be sad to see it go. Two weeks ago I wrote about the potential closure of another national title, The Independent, but the first title to go from that stable would be The Independent on Sunday. So we could be looking at a situation where by the end of the year we will have lost two Sunday quality broadsheets.

Whilst Rupert Murdoch might be pleased by the closure of competitors, his paper The Sunday Times is doing very well and is likely to be the first national title after the Financial Times to charge for online content when it’s website is re-launched soon. I’m working for the paper next spring, and it’s going to be very interesting indeed. It also cannot be forgotten that some of the Sunday tabloids - such as The People, where I worked in 2005 - are still making money. So it’s not all bad news, but the loss of two Sunday broadsheets would not only be terrible for the journalists working on them, but also for plurality in our nation. The Observer has been around for hundreds of years and been a benchmark of quality journalism over this time, but it could well be the end soon. I’ll be disappointed for sure if it goes, but we may well see the launch of a Guardian on Sunday in the future, which does seem pointless if you close The Observer, but it could happen. One thing’s for sure - only the fittest will survive.

* * *

Five News has always been a benchmark in alternative news, and has done this very successfully over the years. Now I hear from Digital Spy that the much-hyped ‘Five and Friends’ news show concept is going to be launched as ‘Live From Studio Show’. This idea for a magazine show was first cited by Channel Five controller Dawn Airey in a Media Guardian interview a fair few months ago, so I’m pleased it is finally coming to fruition. But the line-up for the early-evening show, billed as a competitor to The One Show on BBC1, is what has raised eyebrows the most - Kate Walsh from The Apprentice, football pundit Ian Wright and the wonderful Melinda Messenger. It’s going to be produced by Sky News - who currently produce the output of Five News - and could well be a great success.

All three presenters are much-loved figures on television for different reasons, but Five themselves have been very good at connecting with a younger audience and bringing news to people who never watch news on any other channel. It’s bright and fresh, and has featured such great presenters as Natasha Kaplinsky and Kirsty Young over the years. I’ve had the good fortune to work for Five News, and they are an absolutely fantastic team who are genuinely succeeding in trying to do something different. The alternative graphics and presentation of their bulletins is exceptionally thoughtful and is something to be proud of. I’ve loved spending time with a superb team. But I think I should leave the last word to Ian Wright. He said: "Melinda and Kate are great girls and I love the banter we already have. I struggle to get a word in when those two get going!" Can’t wait...

* * *

It was certainly an interesting opening weekend across all three divisions. Starting in League Two, Notts County opened with a 5-0 win over Bradford City, suggesting the influence of Sven-Goran Eriksson could well be more than just for good publicity. His ambition to get them into the Premier League may well eventually happen, although it’s important they don’t get carried away just yet. Elsewhere, in League One, Norwich City suffered an absolute shocker at the hands of Colchester United - losing 7-1 - and it was 5-0 by half-time. When we heard the score come in at Roots Hall during the Southend game, nobody could believe it and everyone was checking their phones for verification! Gillingham also had a good start, beating Swindon 5-0 in the early kick-off, so they would have been disappointed not to finish the day top of the league.

The Championship is shaping up to be a fascinating season this year, with almost every team able to get promoted if they put a good run together. Even newly-promoted Peterborough’s manager Darren Ferguson said he’s not there to stay up but get his side into the Premier League. I remember when Southend said that after back-to-back promotions and we ended up going straight back down. Newcastle started better than most people were expecting, with a solid 1-1 draw, but there’s a long way to go yet. However, I was certainly convinced by Sheffield United’s performance on Friday night, and reckon they should make it up this year. There is a lot to play for in the Championship this season at both ends of the league, but after the first 10 games we should have a better idea of how it’s going to work out...

FOOTBALL'S COMING HOME

I am so ridiculously excited about the new football season that I can’t quite put it into words. But I will try. Last season I spent £590.65 going to see 36 games and this season I expect that figure to go up. But the fortunes of the three clubs I lend my support to - Newcastle United, Southend United and Sheffield United - could all be very different. One has player revolt, another has got no money, and a third has lost its best players. Well, in fact, you could apply most of those labels to every one of those clubs! So here we go...

NEWCASTLE UNITED
The 6-1 humiliation to Leyton Orient which I wrote about last week marked a new low, and I’ve been relieved that our last two friendlies since then have created just two goals and we haven’t lost either. There is a hope that somehow the tragic death of Bobby Robson last week could actually galvanise the players and remind them of what a great club Newcastle United is. It would be fitting that they go out at The Hawthorns this Saturday and play for the shirt, forgetting all of the backroom turmoil. But keeping that going throughout the season might be a bit trickier. The loss of players such as Obafemi Martins, Michael Owen and Mark Viduka has created gaps on the frontline, and nobody has come into replace these forwards. The defence is still weak - which will be punished at any level - and the midfield is too easily getting found out in games, rendering the whole team helpless.

There is one thing that has to be sorted out promptly, and that is the manager. I would like to see Alan Shearer return, but most Geordies have wanted to see that since the end of last season, and nothing has happened. I do appreciate Mike Ashley is trying to get a good price and then leave the north-east for good, but he has simply taken too long. He tried to sell the club last year but failed primarily because of the recession, but now has little excuse. At £80m it’s a good-buy if you can get it back in the Premier League. But it’s a good-bye if nobody comes back in. I honestly think Newcastle are going to have a terrible season because the players don’t want to be there, no players want to go there, the fans are rightly disillusioned and the club has become a laughing stock once more. It would be a miracle if they got immediate promotion back to the Premier League, and I don’t think it’s going to happen.
VERDICT: 16th

SOUTHEND UNITED
Southend might have brought in three more players than Newcastle, but they are all on loan, one was at Roots Hall last season and the other two are from Colchester United up the road. The side is pretty much the same as finished last season, but there are three notable exceptions - none of which have been replaced. These are Peter Clarke and Theo Robinson, who both moved to Huddersfield Town, and Dorian Dervitte who returned to Tottenham Hotspur after a superb loan spell. A few years ago Southend were a real force in the lower leagues, gaining two successive promotions and appearances in the LDV Vans Trophy final, and the team was going places.

But now it seems the chairman is happy to sit for a few years in League One whilst the new stadium is built. I am happy to take no progress for three years in order to get a Championship-quality stadium and build on that, but the ground has been delayed so many times and nobody is quite sure when it will be finished. It was originally supposed to be ready for the start of next season, but that is never going to happen. The team we have got is good enough to keep us up, but the management have never replaced our best wingers of recent years in Mark Gower and Jamal Campbell-Ryce, and without width you will get few goals. So a bunch of average defenders, midfielders, forwards and an average goalkeeper. An average season on the way - unless the chairman decides he wants to challenge for promotion. It’s up to him really.
VERDICT: 12th

SHEFFIELD UNITED
It was horrible for the Blades to go all the way to Wembley last season and then lose in such nonchalant fashion against hoof-ballers Burnley. It had been a great season with some notable submissions from Kyle Naughton and Greg Halford. Both have now gone, although there is still much quality in the side from the likes of Chris Morgan and Darius Henderson, and the manager has brought in some decent acquisitions which should help.

I have no doubt Sheffield United will finish the highest out of my three supported teams, and I fully expect them to be challenging for a top two spot. But this must be matched with two Steel City derby wins, as we cannot have what happened last season repeat itself! But it would be great to see both United and Wednesday finish in the top six - and what a play-off final that would be. But I think the Blades will have enough quality to make second spot this year.
VERDICT: 2nd

ABSOLUTELY OFF THE RAILS

MPs have got it wrong more often than not recently, so credit where it’s due, the committee who brought out a report today on the state of Britain’s railways got it spot on. I have written beforehand on this blog about our ridiculous railways, and although the central issue is of price, the problem is twofold: a) tickets are too expensive; and b) it’s too difficult to buy the cheapest ticket and too easy to overpay. By careful planning and meticulous research I estimate to have saved myself around £500 in the last year when purchasing tickets - and that is no overstatement. I spend around 15 weeks a year commuting to London, travel between Southend and Sheffield about 10-15 times a year, and then go to countless football matches by rail.

Sometimes it’s easy to work out the cheapest deal - when a return from Sheffield to Barnsley is £2.50, or £4.95 to Huddersfield. But I have literally spent hours trying to find out the cheapest ticket on long-distance journeys, and once made it from Sheffield to Hereford for £21; a massive £15 saving, and they were still walk-up fares. The lower price was achieved by split ticketing, where you purchase different tickets for each leg of your journey. This is a good way to get the best value, although a good port of call is also the National Express East Coast website which gives you the cheapest possible ticket combinations for your journey. The future of this online service could be in doubt when that particular line is nationalised.

I’m certainly no train enthusiast, but by building up a knowledge of how the ticketing system works, I save myself around £70 a month when commuting because I know the cheapest method. The system is so ridiculously confusing, however, that train franchises are threatening to halt the superb increase in railway use over the last 10 years. This has been not only down to more green-conscious passengers, but also the increase in advance tickets, which get you a much better deal. It costs me £31 return from Sheffield to Southend, buying around a month in advance, which is much prettier than the walk-up return fare. So what should be done about it? Just make there one price for an advance fare, up until three days before, and then one price for a return fare. And ensure the cheapest way to get from A to B is to pay to get from A to B. Simples?

* * *

I do feel sorry for The Independent to some extent, but after reading possibly the worst typo in the history of British national newspapers this morning, I’m starting to get worried about its future. In ‘Dozens fall victim to side effects of swine flu drug’, underneath Jeremy Laurance’s byline, it said “MUST KEEP FINAL PAR!!!” before going into the story‘s main text. The final par in questions was about some statistics from the National Pandemic Flu Service, which may have been of some importance, but not so that the editor lets the reader know this at the start in screaming bold type. Ouch. It was removed after the first edition went out, I should say.

This all ties in nicely to the fact that I read in this morning’s City AM that “Independent News and Media could go into the Irish equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection”. Oh dear, it’s not looking good for The Independent, and I very much expect the end may be nigh. It’s been running on an increasingly lower circulation over the last few years like the rest of the industry, but looks to be the first to fall as it simply has not got enough cash reserves and hasn’t raised this sufficiently even through raising its cover price to a whopping £1. I must say it’s the most boring of the ten UK national dailies, although usually well-written, so I won’t shed too many tears if it were to go. But I would rather it stayed afloat for the sake of the journalists working there, and for better plurality in the UK press.

* * *

If you thought it wasn’t looking good for The Independent, then just take a look at the shambles that is Newcastle United FC. I went along to London E10 on Saturday to watch them get utterly smashed at Leyton Orient, 6-1. It was beyond embarrassing - a shock result for sure, but one that Orient merited. The quality is still there in the Toon Army’s side, with the likes of Obafemi Martins, Damien Duff and Steven Taylor still at St James’ Park, but the passion, commitment and effort is not. That was clearly the problem on Saturday - the players just did not want to be there, full stop.

Everyone seems to agree on what should happen - install Alan Shearer as manager, let him buy some new players who actually want to wear the black & white (or yellow) jersey, and just change the atmosphere surrounding the club. Recent months have brought a catalogue of comedy from the Magpies to give football fans a cheer: the ‘deckchair’ yellow away shirt (I did enjoy the ‘bananas in pyjamas’ chant at the weekend), Joey Barton’s indiscipline and 3rd / 4th / 5th chances, not being able to sell a club for the same value as Cristiano Ronaldo, being stopped from travelling to Holland by The FA because Sunderland fans were going too, and then losing 6-1 to a League One side instead. The list goes on. I’m sure you could add your own comedy moments. Relegation’s a funny one too - I forgot that. But whatever happens, I will always stand by the Toon Army. I’ve gone to far with them up until now anyway!

ALASTAIR SHOULD SHOW SOME RESPECT

Alastair Campbell is an interesting chap. The former press secretary of Tony Blair is widely renowned as an exceptionally intelligent man who masterminded Labour’s image in the late 90s and early 00s, and this is certainly true. But when I announced to one of my Tory friends that I was reading his book, The Blair Years, she scowled and said: “I wouldn’t touch anything that man wrote with a barge pole.” Fair enough coming from a right-winger, but I still thought his 756 pages deserved my attention.

It’s a great read, no doubt about it, and I now understand much more about how a government and prime minister work behind the scenes. It’s fascinating to read how Blair coped with 9/11, Princess Diana’s death, foot & mouth, petrol shortages and ongoing tensions in Northern Ireland. But it’s Campbell’s tone towards journalists that I’m not so sure about. He was one himself at the Daily Mirror, but the stern condemnation in his book of the likes of Nick Robinson (BBC), Matthew Parris (The Times) Paul Dacre (Daily Mail) and especially Andrew Gilligan (then BBC now Daily Telegraph) is somewhat unnecessary.

It seems that every journalist he mentions is referred to as an awful human being, but the ones I’ve listed above are all excellent in my opinion. Yes, Gilligan may have made a big mistake over the notorious WMD war dossier claims, but he is a very good investigative journalist and has since won awards for his great work exposing Ken Livingstone. Campbell is a hard-nosed man who put in a tremendous amount of good work for Blair, and it’s interesting to read how he was so good at staging events that when things happened like Cherie announcing a baby was due, and the Queen Mother’s death announcement, people thought he had carefully timed them too. I suppose that’s the price of his success, but I just wish he would congratulate some of the journalists he mentions rather than ridicule them.

* * *

I was at The Guardian a couple of weeks ago for a special live recording of a podcast I listen to every week called Media Talk. There was a very interesting discussion on the future of newspapers, with the general consensus being that the internet does everything newspapers do but better - as long as you can get people to pay for it. And that’s the catch. But all of the panellists seemed to be united in the theory that online is better than print. I disagree. The thing is that I commute to London every day and always buy a paper to read on the train. I enjoy getting a different paper every day and looking at the design and pictures as well as the text. You just don’t get that same feel online, and I actually very rarely read newspaper websites.

I listen to lots of radio, watch a bit of television and read newspapers. But I just don’t like reading news online. The web has evolved into something which people use with a very short attention span. I spend 45 minutes reading a paper, but I can’t remember a time when I’ve spent more than two minutes on a single news website. By reading a newspaper from start to finish I get all of my news in one go. And instead of getting early reports that can be conflicting and confusing as citizen journalists exchange facts on Twitter, I can read a properly-sourced and checked report in the newspaper. I would rather wait that extra time to get a better quality output, and that seems to be one thing that the internet lacks. In the words of the Press Association: ‘Get it right. Get it fast, but get it right.’

The Guardian Readers' Editor, Siobhain Butterworth, today explained that someone wrote into her saying: "I know I can go to your website for the information but I want to see it in print over breakfast, and I certainly don't want to bring my computer to the breakfast table." Got it in one - sometimes it’s just better to see things in print.

* * *

I’ve been away for the last week in the Canary Islands - specifically Fuerteventura - and enjoyed the sun, which explains the lack of blog last week. Apologies about that. Anyway I’ve got a bone to pick with Thomson Flights after I experienced possibly the least amount of leg-room in the world on a form of transport. I’ve flown with EasyJet, Flybe, Ryan Air, EgyptAir, Polish Airlines and British Airways in the past - but never have I experienced having to stick my legs out into the gangway for the whole flight! This is the problem when you’re 6”5’, but I’ve never had such a major issue on any train - and I travel on trains a lot - or an aeroplane. So just to warn you, if you’re over six-foot tall, prepare to be squashed if you travel with Thompson! It’s a perfectly good airline, but just needs a bit more leg-room for people like me...