arts and entertainment, Tag

Will you tackle this week's news quiz like it's a mission to a remote asteroid — or will we have to mute your microphone from now on?

Undoubtedly the most annoying word in the world – at least when uttered in the context of Shakespeare – is "relevant." Shakespeare is always relevant because Shakespeare is Shakespeare. But whenever a director...

Benefits Street, Channel 4's hit, fly on the wall documentary about a Birmingham street full of welfare claimants, is a gross distortion of reality. We know this because a group of charity heads has written to the Telegraph...

Here are the two best things about Sherlock. 1. The word clouds. Sherlock is, as far as I know, the first TV series to have done this and it works very well: it's a quick, clever, post-modern way – the visual equivalent...

Oh dear. PJ Harvey is guest editing tomorrow's BBC Radio 4 Today programme. In theory this oughtn't to be a bad thing: well, not in my book for I have adored the Dorset rock goddess for many years. (With Kate Bush, she is...

Yes, I know it was a few days ago now but I'm still recovering from the trauma. My kids are too. They found the mawkishness so excruciating they had to hide behind the sofa. Just why was this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special...

To see why Sir Elton’s complaints about vapid new acts don’t stack up, just look at Lou Reed Modern pop music is processed, “packaged crap”, says Sir Elton John...

Lou Reed, who is reported by Rolling Stone to have died aged 71, was the most terrifying rock star I have ever interviewed. Partly it was his look that was so unsettling: all those amphetamines in his rock n roll years had...

Before I flew up to Glasgow for my appearance (with AL Kennedy, Paul Morley and Martha Kearney) on tonight's Review Show (BBC4, 8pm), I promised myself that at no stage on the programme, however great the temptation, would...

Phew! What a blessed relief! The rumours that the next Doctor Who was going to be Peter Capaldi – previously best known, of course, for his role as fictional Songs of Praise producer Tristan Campbell in the Vicar of...

What was the reason you gave up watching the BBC's Late Review (or Newsnight Review as it then became) or the BBC Review Show as it now is? For me it was the regular guest called Ekow Eshun...

From Tuesday's Telegraph: The death of Richard Briers is a sad reminder of the humour and values of a gentler era Anyone who thinks the Seventies was a decade of misery, inexcusable haircuts, appalling taste and grinding...

Rowan Atkinson has been getting rave reviews for his performance in Quartermaine's Terms. It couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Or at least to a less irritating one. It is an unfortunate fact of life that most people,...

  JK Rowling says it made her want to cry, the scene in her first adult book The Casual Vacancy, where council-flat Krystal tells her little brother Robbie to eat his crisps before his Rolos...