WE ARE COMING (TO TAKE YOU AWAY) (HA HA) - Spoiler alert

I've been riveted to the screen at 10 p.m. every night this week by Torchwood, to which I must admit I was impervious up to now. As usual, I have managed to catch up with the bus just before it reaches the terminus. Russell T. Davies is a genius. Not only did he turn around Doctor Who and make it cult viewing, but he has devised a spin-off which stands up on its own merits and can knock many other Sci-Fi series into a black hole.

I was only watching with one eye until the end of Monday's episode, which ended on a bombshell - Captain Jack Harkness grabbing Welshman Ianto Jones for a goodbye snog. This was something new and unexpected. (I should point out at this juncture that I didn't start watching Dr Who until David Tennant took over so missed the earlier demonstration of Captain Jack's ambidextrousness). I was totally hooked from that moment on. Every episode has been packed with twists, turns, references to previous episodes (luckily an earlier series is running on Sci Fi channel at a different time, so I'm trying to catch up in the margins), and the quirky sort of humour we have been enjoying from the new improved Doctor Who, and each episode has ended on a cliffhanger that leaves you panting for the next episode. If this was going out weekly I would be climbing the walls. I had to record last night's final episode and won't have time to watch it till tomorrow, SO DON'T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS, RIGHT?

The big vomity alien, known to his friends as the 456, announces its arrival through the voices of all the world's children, who all start chanting "We are coming" in unison, in a scary way. Then they all announce "We are coming tomorrow". The next day they all chant "We are here". It transpires that "we" have been to earth before. Remember "We are a grandmother"?

She had a deep voice, and spent a lot of time hanging around MI5

BVA wants to kidnap 10% of the world's children for purposes unknown, and the British politicians are hatching a plot to bottom-feed from the sink estates and failing schools and thereby get rid of the next generation of the underclass as well as ensuring their own little darlings are safe. Torchwood have pledged to fight, which is really a bit daft, as BVA has promised to wipe out the human race if he doesn't get what he wants. I would have offered them Northamptonshire. I mean, who would miss that? I would also throw in all News International journos (Rebekah Wade first), the Taliban, bankers, hedge fund traders and Boris Johnson, the Isle of Sheppey, San Marino, the Belgian trade unions, the entire European Parliament, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Any other suggestions for the 456 appeasement package?

I shall be away in the country (I'm not saying which country) next weekend and the weekend after that, without internet access, so see you when I get back.


P.S. After assiduous research on YouTube, I have finally located the famous World War II episode which tells us all we need to know about Captain Jack Harkness.

THE DRUGS DON'T WORK

Nice to see the old people enjoying themselves

As every year, I've been watching highlights from Glastonbury. How nice that they had good weather for once. And with all those geriatric rockers on the stage, the spirit of Woodstock almost made a comeback. Crosby Stills and Nash were one of my favourite bands, and they did not disappoint. I noted with a quietly xenophobic smirk that the British one has aged better than the Americans. Although to be fair, David Crosby always looked like a fat truck driver, now he just looks like a white-haired fat truck driver. Stephen Stills "on the electric guitar" as Graham Nash quaintly introduced him - as opposed to what, the gas guitar? - can still play a mean solo, but his singing was pretty incoherent and tuneless and he looked like a wreck. His drug use was legendary, as was that of Neil Young, who appeared separately. He has not aged well either, which is a shame, as he was very cute in the days of "Heart of Gold".

"Rocking in the free world" may well be one of the great festival anthems of all time, but forty-three reprises of the chorus was threatening to wear out even the infinite patience of the Glasto crowd. And then came the proof that old people with a previous history of recreational drugtaking should be put to bed at a reasonable hour. Breaking his guitar strings and indulging himself in 10 minutes of Stockhausenesque free noise was really not becoming in an old git of his age. His nurse was too busy accompanying him on guitar and vibes to remember his medication.

Compare, if you will, with the eternally dignified Tom Jones, who does not attempt to relive his youth but somehow manages to remain attractive, in an avuncular way. Employing your son as your manager is an astute move. Jones Junior is not going to allow his old man to make a fool of himself. He looked quite delighted that the kids were enjoying his old tunes. He was interviewed on The One Show the next day, and questioned about drug use. It rang a bell with me when he said that he had never taken drugs because he didn't know what was in them. And this is surely the best argument against legalising drugs. If they were legal and properly labelled and attractively packaged and on the shelves in Tesco, we'd all have a go. Probably.

I was very surprised to learn in a documentary about Steve McQueen that he had gone a bit trippy in his later life. Nobody straighter, you would have thought. That was the secret of his cool - he didn't compromise, when everyone else was sporting flowing locks and psychedelic caftans and dropping LSD, he remained short-haired, focussed, soberly dressed. He did not mix with the hippies, he was more interested in cars and motorbikes. But no! When he succumbed to the hubris of fame, he sank into a welter of booze and spliffs and lost his dignity not to mention two wives.

And the moral of this story is, be you young or old, practice restraint in all things. Yes, Mrs Pouncer, that means you.








I'm always interested when two famous people expire within a couple of days of each other, as I imagine them escorting each other up to the pearly gates. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson made a nice pair, him liking a mature woman as he did. But Mollie Sugden and Karl Malden were lessons in growing old gracefully. I'm just surprised no-one ever cast them together as the romantic leads.

The Boss, wearing his own wellies

Finally, one old rocker from the other side of the pond who's ageing quite nicely thank you did a great set at his first ever Glasto. Sadly, there are no clips yet up on YouTube, but in honour of the national day of our American friends, and now you're back in the fold, I'll allow you five minutes of shameless nationalism. Welcome back guys. We missed you.

THE BIG ISSUE

"I'm dead, I'm dead"

The King of Pop is no more. I rather liked Michael Jackson's music, it certainly got you on your feet. I was working in an open-plan office once when the first bars of "Billy Jean" came on the radio. Nobody looked up, but one pencil started marking time. A foot tapped somewhere under a desk. A head started nodding in another corner. Within seconds the whole office were boogying in their chairs. It was like a scene from "The Office".

Mind you, I've always had my doubts about the extent of his involvement in the writing and production of his songs. Has anyone ever seen him play an instrument? Still, this is no time to speak ill of the dead. In a way I am relieved for his children who might start to live a more normal life now, and for Jacko himself, who has been a tortured soul all his life, and is now finally at peace.

Unfortunately the timing of his departure eclipsed that of lovely little Farrah Fawcett, who was the pin up girl of the 1970s thanks to her role in the original Charlie's Angels series, her marriage to Lee Majors and then her long relationship with Ryan O'Neal. But it is her hairstyle that she will be most remembered for. Babyliss should name the next model of curling tongs in her memory.


Rosie Boycott is someone who has nearly died on more than one occasion, but has survived in her uniquely British way and has been pimping her profile in a number of celebrity challenges lately. Have you noticed how all the contestants on these programmes are labelled as an ex-something? They should have called it the Ex Factor! Rosie was listed as ex newspaper editor but could equally have called herself an ex alcoholic.

I am particularly interested in Rosie because it was indirectly through her that I met my teenage paramour, comedian Arthur Smith. In 1972, Rosie and her co-editor at Spare Rib Marsha Rowe were the guest speakers at a sixth-form conference organised by Arthur and his school, to which I was invited. The subject was designed to provoke: "Will women ever be equal to men?" She went on to become Editor of the Daily Express which was a long way from her original feminist principles but hey. She has had her battles with the bottle and since a horrific car crash - which she admits was caused by drunk driving - she has taken up the cause of small-scale farming. I plan to read her book "Our Farm" in the idyllic rural cottage in France I have booked for my hols in a few weeks' time.

In that TV programme on BBC1 this week about homeless people, I think it was called "Celebrity Sleepingbag", she was one of the two celebs who did not embarrass herself by excessive sentimentality (Annabel Croft, who has "a lot of love" in her, she says), national socialist solutions (Bruce Jones, aka Coronation Street's Les Battersby, who thought all prisoners ought to be killed and the money saved given to the homeless) or complete tosspottery (Jamie Blandford). I think Rosie was the only one who didn't complain about the smell.

The argument between Singh Kohli and his rough sleeper "buddy" just started to scratch the surface of the real issues of homelessness. Whether it was better to leave a homeless person sleeping or wake them up to make sure they're still alive. At Brussels Gay Pride a few weeks ago I was standing next to a homeless person who'd fallen asleep in the street. I was close enough to see that he was breathing, and was just out for the count, allbeit in a rather busy spot. Only a couple of people stopped and looked more closely, and one lady seemed very concerned for his welfare. Somebody had left a paper cup of margarita next to him, which remained untouched. Later in the day I spotted him sitting up and enjoying his drink.

I found Celebrity Sleepingbag very moving and informative, and scribbled down the names of some Glasgow shelters for future reference. Rosie and Hardeep seemed to "get" the point of the exercise, which was to raise our awareness, not to find a quick fix so we didn't have to be confronted with it again. The problem's not going to go away overnight, but if the public at large have a more informed approach it might help some people to reintegrate society.

I was impressed by John Bird, the former rough sleeper and alcoholic who founded the Big Issue. I always buy at least one copy when in London. It's a good magazine, and the proceeds are in a good cause. I always try to exchange a few words with the vendor. Money, food, shelter are just sticking plasters. The real problem is their sense of not fitting in, not feeling "normal". We all pride ourselves on being liberal, non-racist, gay-friendly, tolerant, all-inclusive, and yet when it comes to mental illness or homelessness we are uncommonly squeamish. Myself included.

Rosie Boycott said that whenever she saw a homeless person on the street, she thought to herself "There but for the grace of God go I". If you think this fate could not befall you, remember - many of them thought the same thing once. A lot of homeless people are more compos mentis than Michael Jackson.

But, in a tribute to Jacko, let's remember him at his best:

GARDEN OF DELIGHTS

With the advent of summer, the garden has burst into life. I was careful to wait until the winter frosts were over to prune my bush. I have been back and forth to the garden centre to stock up with some leafy perennials to plug the holes in my herbaceous border: Fallopia, Clitoris, Cystitis ... not to mention Fuchsia. So many lovely bushes to choose from. I am having some trouble with moss in my cracks, that happens when they're not given a good scrubbing from one year to the next.



I am a bit of a green goddess, as you know. I even compiled the Gardener's Year Calendar for the Sunday Times one year. 1994 I think it was. Plants respond to me. I'm sure they're aware of a maternal presence taking care of them. When I moved in just over a year ago, the garden was sad and neglected, and a bit of a waste land. This summer, with very little extra work, it's been transformed into a bijou urban courtyard garden. The peonies have grown bigger and flowered earlier and more profusely than last year, after minimal pruning the climbing rose has joined the Ramblers' Association and gone off to explore next door's garden, and my fuchsia is about to bust out all over.

Is this Ena Harkness?

Although I don't have enough room to grow vegetables, I have got a busy little herb garden going. One pot of mint has turned into a small forest, and another trough holds a mixture of chives, parsley, basil, dill, coriander and rosemary all fighting to out-do each other. The aroma is delightful when you're sat out in the garden smoking a fag.

With the fallout from the financial crisis, growing your own makes ever more sense. Even Her Maj has got an allotment behind the coal shed at Buck House. You'd think her son would send her up an organic mixed bag from Cornwall once a week wouldn't you? I have just joined an organic fruit & vegbox scheme, for 11 euros I get a large mixed bag of produce, grown as nature intended in sunny Flanders and delivered to my office every Friday.


Gardening shows will perforce return to our screens, with hopefully some hunky new presenters. In 1996 I mourned with the nation's matrons when the saintly -- and yes, rather sexy (to women of a certain age) -- Geoff Hamilton went to the great potting shed in the sky. I never took to that ageing organic hippie Bob Flowerdew and his stringy pigtail. Monty Don had something of the dissolute aristocrat about him which I found strangely alluring. As for Alan Titchmarsh, his scone-like features and adenoidal whine on Ground Force were a small price to pay for the sight of Big Tommy Walsh in his boots and leather toolbelt, and his enigmatic silent helper, ponytailed Will ("Willie") Shanahan. Tommy's Willie was often in the background, but once or twice was allowed to say a few words. Being from the deep south of Ireland, he was incomprehensible. And of course there was that dimwit Kiwi bloke with the man-boobs, Charlie Dimmock, who I never really fancied.




My favourite gardener of all is that bit of posh totty Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.(oh dear, I just know this is going to elicit a harrumph from Aunty M, apparently he thrust a fish in her face once). I can't resist an Old Etonian in wellies, especially when he's got shares in Tesco. He doesn't fart about with decorative stuff and goes straight for what you can eat, but the way he broke down in tears over those chickens made me want to ruffle his hair and clasp him to my bosom. With his air of a petulant spoiled brat, and the bossy Matron in me, we could do things with castor oil that Enid Blyton wouldn't have countenanced. Bedtime would mean bedtime, and no mistake young Master Hugh.


But I must settle for Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4. I dream of waking up and finding Tommy and his Willie giving my bush a good seeing-to, or Hugh with his huge cockerel flapping in my cottage garden. Instead I find a pair of tartan long johns hanging out to dry on my lavandula.

HOME SWEET HOME

I posted early last weekend and hence forgot to give you a heads-up about the film "Home" which was going out via various media all over the world on Friday evening 5th June, World Environment Day. It was on a big screen in Trafalgar Square, but I don't know if it went out on British TV. Did you see it? If not, the full hour and a half is on YouTube here until 14 June.

French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand - he of the "Earth from Above" coffee-table book amongst others - has made a remarkable film, of breathtaking beauty, about our beautiful planet and how we are destroying it. The astounding pictures, all filmed from a God's eye perspective and accompanied by suitably heavenly music, get the message across much more effectively than boring old Al Gore on his podium, and the soundtrack is a weld-music lover's dream, featuring musicians and singers from Mongolia and Iran among others.

Dashing Frenchman Yann Arthus-Bertrand (YAB to his friends)

The handsome young Arthus-Bertrand, son of a wealthy Parisian jeweller, started off as a movie actor, and at 62 he still has something of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. about him. But he gave up acting to manage a national park, and after a few years in Kenya photographing wildlife from a hot air balloon, returned to Paris to start up an agency for aerial photography, which led to the UNESCO-backed "Earth from the Air" project. The photographs of this collection were displayed free of charge all around the world.


Independently wealthy, he has relinquished author's rights on "Home" so that it can be shown to as many people as possible via TV and internet. He has been awarded a number of ecology-linked prizes and various French gongs including the Légion d'Honneur and the Ordre National du Mérite which may even have been made by the family firm! If he stood for President of France right now, I reckon he'd be in with a chance, Carla Bruni notwithstanding. He is the natural successor to St.Jacques Cousteau, and his fizzog is now up on my pin-up board alongside Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama and Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

It was no coincidence that this film was released two days before the European elections. As a result, the green parties picked up a good chunk of the disgruntled vote in France and Belgium. If you must make a protest vote, make a useful one! Voting UKIP or - God help us - BNP, smacks of turkeys voting for Christmas.

Ou sont les neiges d'antan? Mt Kilimanjaro today

Arthus-Bertrand's own website has all his photographs from "Earth from the Air" and other books, which you can download as wallpaper. He also has launched a foundation called GoodPlanet.org which is worth a visit, even a donation if you can afford it. You know it makes sense.

Here's the trailer, to give you a taster. Watch it (in HD if you can). That's an order.

This was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Daphne Wayne-Bough Campaign to Get A Date with Yann Arthus-Bertrand.