Spiral Notebook: Lists # 4

Actual butterfly names that could also be symptoms of the strange disease caught on an exotic tropical holiday
Black veined white
Orange tip
Green hairstreak
Clouded yellow
Speckled wood

Kojak episode titles (true or false)
1. Die Before They Wake
2. Dead On His Feet
3. Dying To Meet You
4. Hush Now, Don't You Die
5. Cross Your Heart And Hope To Die
6. Deadly Nightshade
7. Life, Liberation And The Pursuit Of Death
8. When You Hear The Beep, Drop Dead
9. Died In The Wool
10. I Could Kill My Wife's Lawyer
(T: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10; F: 3, 6, 9)

Possible presenters for the new BBC programme, Perils In The Woodland
Jakki Brambles
Frank Thorn
John Nettles
Emma B
Sting
John Craven

Actual spider species that could double as terms of abuse in a particularly bitter divorce case
Starbellied orbweaver
Yellow bandied tarantula
Agrarian sac spider
Thin-legged wolf spider
Spined micrathena
Goliath bird-eater
Hammer-jawed jumper
Robber baron cave meshweaver
Mumbasa baboon tarantula

Inadvisable balloon animals
Hedgehog
Porcupine
Electric eels
Octopus

Answers to last week's Sudoku (in numerical order)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Actual types of toasters that could also be code words in specialist adult contact magazines
Percher
Pincher
Slider
Drive thru
Flopper
Pop-up
Flat bed

Billy Joel songlist as drawn up by a prisoner pleading for legal representation to revisit his case
You Can Make Me Free
Got To Begin Again
Ain't No Crime
Get It Right First Time
Honesty
A Room Of My Own
An Innocent Man
We Didn't Start The Fire

Review: Churchill's Wizards

NON-FICTION
Churchill's Wizards by Nicholas Rankin
Faber & Faber, £9.99
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
An accessible and entertaining study of the "the British genius for deception" that helped win two world wars

REVIEW
It was Winston Churchill who said: "In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity." He could equally have added: "And, at all times, a little trickery."

For Churchill was a most mentally dextrous foe, prepared to consider any means in his quest to preserve Britain and empire.

While he loathed war, there was no doubt that the Boy's Own hero was never more engaged and alive than bringing wit, subterfuge and inventiveness to its execution.

In Nicholas Rankin's fascinating and brilliant book, anecdote, fact and explanation jostle for attention as he lays out the years 1914-1944 as the triumph of the British garden shed amateur with wheezes, bluffs, ruses and deceptions that foxed their opponents.

They were brilliantly outrageous and outrageously brilliant. From camouflage, inflatable tanks and fake airfields, to propaganda and the good old double-cross, this comprehensive work chronicles the unknown warriors who, egged on by Churchill, turned papier mache into a weapon of mass deception.

The book has an air of a military history but it reads like an extended Ealing caper with wags, wizards and, at the heart of it all, the redoubtable Winston.

Review: Adam (12A)

FILM
Adam (12A)
2/5

IN A NUTSHELL
A loner with Asperger's syndrome and his new neighbour make a fragile connection in this off-beat New York romance.

REVIEW
Adam is a star-gazing loner with Asperger's syndrome. Teacher Beth has been scarred by life and is having a stab at solo flight. Flung together in a New York brownstone, this pair of winsome drifters collide in that awkward manner that lovers must do in Act One.

But here's the flaw in the big idea. Adam only appears to have Asperger's when it suits the plot. When a crisis is due, Adam comes over all Rain Man and starts cracking his head against things and banging his temples like a baboon dislodging Lego from its ear.

When the plot demands that Adam (Hugh Dancy) reaches out to Beth, he's suddenly that super-sensitive geek who takes his wounded paramour to see raccoons scampering around Central Park or spooning on their bed, "taking it slow". He's all cutesy smiles, thick brown jumpers and neat one-liners. ("I'm not Forrest Gump," he says when presented with a box of chocolates.)

And Beth? Well, there's nothing in Beth's (Rose Byrne) history to suggest that she would entertain the idea of becoming Adam's de facto mum just for some face time with a sweet guy. Especially when the face time is hallmarked by Adam's David Blunkett-a-like eye twitchery, as though he's forever tracing the flightpath of a mosquito on Magner's.

This is a slight tale, shot beautifully, using the burnished colours of autumnal New York and some stylish cinematography to good effect. Writer-director Max Mayer's movie is not without its interesting ideas and tender touches, not least because Dancy and Byrne make the most of wafer-thin roles by painting over the inconsistencies with daubs of sincerity.

But the overplayed subplots (a tacked-on tale of Beth's father facing fraud charges and Adam's hokey pal Harlan issuing life advice in handipack anecdotes) merely emphasize the paucity of genuine progress in the central romance.

So it's not Adam that has Asperger's (and shout if you've seen this coming) it's the movie itself, finding itself unable to engage, misreading minds and motives and preferring a sense of routine to exaggeration or excitement.

Spiral Notebook: Lists # 3

Things I'm not afraid of right now but probably will be at the appropriate time
Inuits.
Ebb tides.
Gravity.
Haunted mirrors.
Salmon farms.
Chess prodigies.

Freaked
(formerly known as UKTV Drugs)
8pm: Top Gear: Clarkson, Hammond and May test drive the latest turbo-driven steroids.
9pm: Rosemary & Thyme: Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris tear through formal gardens in search of a legal high. This week: Vita Sackville West's Sissinghurst Castle Garden.
10pm: Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Divvying up the stash, the foul-mouthed Scot sneezes and the candy goes everywhere.
11pm: Cash In The Attic. Ex-tennis star Pat Cash sees out a bad trip hiding from the bad men in the loft.

Things I thought would be cute but turned out to be really annoying
Your kitten.
Your mole.
Your piccolo practice.
Your familiarity with property law.

Things I thought would be annoying but turned out to be really cute
Your sister.

Proverbs and Sayings
Advice offered by Health and Safety Executive
- A rolling stone gathers no moss.
(Wear steel-capped boots in all vertiginous quarry situations.)
- A watched pot never boils.
(However, tepid tea leaves no scars.)
- Laughter is the best medicine.
(Medicine is the best medicine.)
- Trust not a horse's heel nor a dog's tooth.
(Avoid all roadside hot dog stands unless officially licensed by an appropriate authority.)
- Tall oaks grow from little acorns.
(Stand well clear and contact designated Risk Manager.)

The Beatles if Harriet Harman ruled the world
John
Paula
Georgia
Ringo

Just So stories, Rudyard Kipling never published
- How the cat developed a chip on its shoulder and plotted revenge.
- How the polar bear evolved a prosperous image rights consultancy.
- How the three-toed sloth grew weary of the constant derogatory comments about its application to the task in hand.

Things worth seizing
The day.
The moment.
The means of production.
The initiative.
The remote control.

Spiral Notebook: Lists # 2

Things that would work better marketed as a honey nut cluster
Tamiflu
Body Shop seaweed pore cleansing facial exfoliator
Sugababes
Emmerdale

Bob Dylan songs in the form of Jeremy Kyle programme themes
Abandoned Love
Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar
Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance
I Am A Lonesome Hobo
Only A Pawn In Their Game
The Weight
Ugliest Girl In The World

Areas of attention that my ex-girlfriend said may need some slight adjustment
Everything I say
Everything I do
Everything I eat
Everything I wear
That thing I do with my arm

Shapes that were rejected by Oxo before they decided to go for the x-shaped block and reasons for rejection
1. Tessaract. Not possible in the three dimensional world.
2. Dodecadhedron. Name wouldn't fit on the pack.
3. Widescreen. Oxo not HD ready.
4. Meerkat. We thought of it first, dammit.

Tony Soprano's morning routine
Wake up
Get myself a gun

Answers to the Rorschach inkblot tests
1. Devil
2. Devil
3. Devil
4. Devil
5. Former PE teacher Mr Graham "Handsy" Hanson.
6. Devil

Substances found on the surface of complimentary pub peanuts
Sweat
Urine
Beer
Korma
Blue Stratos
Turpentine

Things I might find in the Land Of The Lost
Umbrella
Sunglasses
Ambition
Direction
Respect of my peers
A belief in a benign force greater than myself whose grand vision
encompasses a not insignificant role for me.

Review: Walking With Dinosaurs, The O2

LIVE SHOW
Walking With Dinosaurs, The O2
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Full of life, grace and electronic wizardry, dinosaurs walk the earth again in the greatest show on prehistoric earth.

REVIEW
If I were my 11-year-old self I would want nothing more than to visit Jurassic era. If not, I would plump for Jurassic Park. If denied twice, third on my list would be to see Walking With Dinosaurs which would be far the most practical of the options, but no less awe-inspiring to a mind lassoed to a runaway imagination.

A ticket in my hand would see me quite unable to contain my excitement and my nine-year-old self would be frequently chastised for babbling incoherently about things prehistoric and charging chaotically around the house oblivious to the sharp edges of the coffee table.

I would camp out overnight for tickets. I wouldn't need to, because tickets would be available online, but my nine-year-old self would find camping out way more exciting. I would camp in the back garden, so it would not help ticket procurement greatly, but the shadows on the tent wall could be an unwieldy stegosaurus grazing on mum's daffs.

The day after I saw the show (ie, today) my nine-year-old self would dust down his masterwork The Lost Land of the Dinosaur and begin again where I left off, Part IV, Chapter 107 but, unable to contain my excitement at the magical spectacle I had witnessed the night before, and threatening to ruin the illustrations by colouring over the lines, my nine-year-old self would go into the garden and run round the rotary washing line for four hours until the adrenaline subsided.

The O2 was full of children, with their helium dino balloons and whirring dino colour fans, wildly excited, whipped up by parents asking them to gauge precisely how excited they were and would they sit back in their chairs as they were spilling their orange juice.

Spiral Notebook: Lists # 1

Hamlet's psyche test answers

1. To be.
2. Statement (b) is nobler than statement (a)
3. Fig (a) Hawk. Fig (b) Handsaw
4. Insania by Peter Andre

Captions from classic Punch pocket cartoons (1840-90)
"That'll be the third time the gaslight has flared on a Thursday,
Cecil. Do something."
"I only speak quickly, my darling, because time is not on our side."
"You may inquire, m'lud, but the ensuing confusion may bring
proceedings to an unscheduled halt."

Gordon Brown's favourite Kinks tracks
I'm Not Like Everybody Else
Ev'rybody's Gonna Be Happy
Where Have All The Good Times Gone
Dead End Street
You Still Want Me

Proverbs and Sayings
Things other than fire that you could fight fire with:
Water
Foam
Dry powder
Carbon dioxide
Angel hair pasta

Paul McCartney's early morning routine
7.30am. Wake up.
7.45am. Get out of bed.
7.50am. Drag a comb across my head.

Rampant Thesaurus goes to the movies
"Without beating about the bush, beloved, I'm not inclined to proffer
two hoots."
"Definitely returning, that's me!"
"Are you pursuing a conversation with the intention of engaging
myself? Are you pursuing a conversation with the intention of
engaging myself? Are you pursuing a conversation with the intention
of engaging myself? Because I'll be jiggered if I can identify
another soul to whom you could be directing your remarks."

Things you have mixed feelings about hearing from a complete stranger with whom you are trapped in an office lift.
1. "I only nipped out to go to the... uh oh."
2. "No, actually, this is good because we never really had a chance
to discuss what happened at Janice's party last year."
3. "I have an axe in my brief case if it comes to that."

– First published in The Wharf on July 30

Spiral Notebook: Those crazy teens

Giles Broadbent examines an alien lifeform

Teenager Matthew Robson, a Morgan Stanley intern who put together a paper about his friends' media habits, has the world agog. His findings include the news that teenagers don't use Twitter and that they find adverts "annoying and pointless".

The report has become the talk of a gathering of new media giants in Idaho where executives, apparently, have been stunned.

The Wharf also found a teenager and he also spoke in a way that was both clear and non-intimidating. A list of his exclusive insights into teenage attitudes that will surely shock society includes:

Other conclusions include:

- Teenagers prefer computer games to analyzing debt ratios of major financial institutions.

- They would happily devour burger and chips but would turn up their noses at a plate of wood shavings.

- They are more likely to watch TV programmes aimed at teenagers rather than documentaries on paper towels broadcast in Swedish.

- Fun is more crucial to their sense of happiness than Berkshire or Sellotape.

- Teenagers are more likely to get their news and entertainment from a PC in the bedroom than from snow.

- When they grow up, teenagers would rather be models, actors, writers and scientists but would snub a career as a trapped miner in China's Guizhou province, licking the wall to stay alive.

Scientists and anthropologists are poring over the findings in order to understand this new breed.

One futurologist, who did not want to be named because his conclusions were "early and untested", said he believed that teenagers preferred things that were free to things that cost money because "teenagers don't have much money" and their aversion to advertising is based on the fact that adverts "interrupt the music and teenagers, uniquely, prefer for this not to happen".

Generally, boring things were viewed by teenagers as "tedious" whereas interesting things were seen as "of interest".

He feared that without genetic adaptations to handle mortgage repayments and lace-up shoes, it was possible that this new breed would struggle in the modern world.

He said "only time would tell" if teenagers were capable of evolving into adults.

– First published in The Wharf on July 16

Review: One Day by David Nicholls

BOOK
One Day by David Nicholls
Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Catching up with Emma and Dexter on the same day each year for 20 years as their lives separate and collide.

REVIEW
From a blindingly simple concept comes a truly magnificent book.

Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation on July 15, 1988. "I can imagine you at 40," she says, even though it seems their paths are destined never to cross again.

The novel returns to them every July 15 for the next 20 years, as the under-achieving and listless Emma struggles to find an outlet for her intelligence and Dexter finds fame, success and their perils as a TV presenter.

They do meet occasionally but they do not figure greatly in each other's lives. There is a sense of inevitability about what will follow as they discover what they truly want and who they want to share it with.

In the hands of author David Nicholls, author of Starter For Ten, this is an amusing and touching nostalgia fest as well as a razor sharp depiction of the "friend zone".

From such light beginnings, then, it comes as a shock that the book gets under the skin, weaves its magic and becomes profoundly moving.

– First published in The Wharf, July 16

Review: Jerusalem, Royal Court Theatre

STAGE
Jerusalem, Royal Court Theatre
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
In Jez Butterworth's contemporary view of this green and pleasant land, waster Johnny Byron awaits eviction from his illegal encampment.

REVIEW
An empty Red Stripe can lies in the grass in front of Rooster Johnny Byron's dilapidated caravan in the woods of Wiltshire. Ginger (Mackenzie Crook) shakes the tin for dregs, drops in a sly fag butt and returns it to the undergrowth.

And yet these same littered woodland floors are trod by fairies, it seems, and yoked to ancient tales of giants. This green and unpleasant plot may contravene the Pollution Order 1974, but something lingers amid the grand old trees with greater potency than the enforcement agents of the Kennet and Avon Council.

In Jerusalem, director Ian Rickson marshals his 14-strong cast with discipline and verve and the setting by Ultz is compelling in its authenticity. But all eyes inevitably fall on Mark Rylance's roaring Rooster Johnny Byron as he plays out the last day of his idyll before the authorities plan to clear away his pile to make way for another identikit estate.

It is a day of epiphanies and revelations. Byron's last day is St George's Day, day of the Flintock Fair, the day before Lee (a delightfully vague Tom Brooke) ventures to Australia, the day Troy Whitlock (Barry Sloane) will have his revenge on the "Worzel maggot" he suspects of harbouring his runaway step-daughter.

Only Byron's not bothered. So he says.

Byron is one of those guys. Every rural town has them. The overgrown youth, the gippo, the amoral drug dealer who welcomes all comers, any age, to his crustie Eden just beyond the grasp of the law.

You like Byron and you loathe him. You want to be free of fluorescent tabards and Health and Safety as he is but you couldn't stand the grubbiness and the hangovers. You admire his particularly English brand of anarchy but you wouldn't want him camped out at the end of your garden.

In a mesmeric performance, punctuated by aching stillness, Mark Rylance captures all these contradictory aspects of this lord of misrule, stitching the opposing parts together with charm and a hypnotic burr in which he marinates tales that are either tall or true or both or none.

When he's alone, you think you'll witness his truth. But even then you're not sure. Is he an out-of-time semi-tragic martyr facing up to humiliation at the hands of clipboard pygmies, or a magical Jack-in-the-green capable of one last act of defiance?

It is that simmering tension that holds together Jez Butterworth's scattergun script, which is as rich and fecund as the Wiltshire woodlands. It is packed with belly laughs and profanities and contemporary resonances and, although it could survive a trim from its three hour length, it is never less than rambunctious.

A strong cast including Alan David as the befuddled Professor, Gerard Horan as henpecked Wesley and Lucy Montgomery as Rooster's former lover Dawn offer strong support.

But it is Rylance's agent of magic and mayhem who will stay long in the memory, like an age-old story that passes in fable.

– First published on wharf.co.uk on July 20.