THE EDITOR

WATCHING: On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Lazenby Bond film. Initially considered a flop, it's gone on to be claimed as one of the best, but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Lazenby clearly isn't an actor, and the plot meanders along until the last half hour, with the scenes in Blofeld's mountain hideaway more like a bad Carry On film than anything else. The ending is still impressive, but how much worse would OHMSS have been if it had ended as originally intended, after the wedding and before the murder (which would have been at the start of Diamonds Are Forever if Lazenby had still been Bond)? It's not a disaster, but if Connery had stayed on, it could have been so much better...

LISTENING TO: Mano Negra's debut album Patchanka. The French mongrel punks led by Manu Chao may have taken their lead from The Clash, but they throw in everything else they could possibly have thrown in, with styles from all kinds of genres and countries. Best example is the cover of Leadbelly's Rock Island Line that takes in Beastie Boy hip-hop, rockabilly and Alvin and The Chipmunks. Chao would go on to even better things in his solo career, but Patchanka is a classic album that sounds as fresh and adventurous as anything out there.

READING: For One More Day by Mitch Albom. Another sentimental tale from the writer of Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Albom's books are the equivalent of Frank Capra films. If you're overly cynical or cold, you'll sneer at this story about a suicidal former baseball player who tries to kill himself and fails, ending up at his childhood home where his mother is waiting to look after him. His dead mother. So far so good...

THE WRITER


WATCHING: Walking with Monsters. A frankly frightening TV series which may be a good few years old now but can still boast a spider the size of a human head pitting its wits against a giant millipede the length of a car. What more does a boy need? At the cinema I last watched The Illusionist, a love story with no chemistry between leads Ed Norton and Jessica Biel which looks, feels and sounds like a dreadful period-set ITV1 drama premiere. Very dull.

LISTENING TO: Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. What can I say about Arcade Fire's immense follow-up to Funeral that hasn't already been said? Both lyrically and musically it's a more expansive piece of work than its predecessor and songs like Ocean of Noise and No Cars Go will be remembered as modern classics as stunning as Street Spirit and Paranoid Android. A rare masterpiece in a music scene drowning in drivel.

READING: Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. It's a shame that this corking little title is marketed as a comic book for teenage girls, because it's actually one of the best Spider-Man books around at the moment. That probably says more about the dreadful state core line Amazing Spider-Man currently finds itself in, but Sean McKeever's writing exhibits a knack for teen dialogue rarely seen beyond Joss Whedon's work and Takeshi Miyazawa has a Manga-inspired and charming art style. A must-read if you're sick of all this Civil War crap.