Admittedly I have been a keen follower of the programme throughout its various forms, and have especially fond memories of Tom Paulin being very dour and Northern Irish on the original Late Review chaired by Mark Lawson. My interest dipped slightly when it became Newsnight Review and seemed like a kind of half arsed, tacked on addition to Newnight’s current affairs agenda. Thankfully the powers that be have changed up yet again and retitled the programme The Review Show, with Kirsty Wark and Martha Karney presenting.

One of the main differences between The Review Show and its predecessors is that it is now centred around a single theme like English identity or feminism in the post modern era, giving it a greater sense of coherence and a tool by which to reign in the previous scatter shot approach to arts and culture.

Let’s be honest, The Review Show is so middle class that it probably does the school run in one of those awful turquoise people carriers whilst making hummus with fairtrade chickpeas. But is that really such a bad thing? I personally enjoy having a few bottles of wine and talking with friends about music, films and art. If that makes me middle class then guilty as charged. And to be frank I think it’s more valid to wallow in bourgeois naval gazing than to engage in the kind of inter-class rubber necking on display in programmes like The Jeremy Kyle Show or Shameless.

Already the new and improved Review Show has had some classic moments; Bonnie Greer witheringly telling academic bossy boots Sarah Churchill that she was ‘bored’ of talking about race in America, a hilarious few minutes of Toby Young ripping the proverbial out of Girl With a One Track Mind author Zoe Margolis, and one of the blokes from Hot Chip extolling the virtues of American song and dance high school drama Glee.

What does Paul Morley make of some new show on at The Barbican? Is Martin Amis a misogynist? Does anyone really care? Not really, but as long as a group of haughty intellectuals get together once a week to talk bollocks about stuff no one really gives a shit about I’ll be there with bells on.

It’s with some amusement that I’ve witnessed people getting their knickers in a twist over what is being seen as Giggs’ glorification of violence and criminality. His proposed UK tour has been scrapped after police contacted the venues he was set to play and warned them off, whilst Trident even went so far as to ring up XL Records in a bid to stop the company signing him. All a bit over the top, eh?

Now maybe I’m both naïve and jaded, but I hear absolutely nothing shocking, controversial or offensive in Giggs’ music. His frequent dropping of the N-bomb, references to drug dealing and guns are simply a slice of life for someone who has grown up on the wrong side of the tracks. It’s not a pretty depiction of British inner city subsistence but it is an honest one, and the very fact that the authorities have so blatantly tried to scupper a young artists career speaks of an institutional contempt for those seeking to express these social realities.

Through his music Giggs is doing something positive and although his lyrical content may be shocking or unpleasant for the kind of people who live on tenterhooks just waiting to take offence at anything that challenges their perception of reality, it’s about time we took our collective hats off to artists like Giggs who refuse to pander to the outraged minority.

Boyle has courted plenty of controversy since first appearing on the show and if reports are to be trusted his charmingly titled new Channel 4 vehicle ‘Deal With This, Retards’ will continue the trend. It’s pretty disappointing that he seems to have burned his bridges with the BBC, as an unadulterated dose of his material is often hard to swallow. Case in point being a recent appearance on MySpace TV in which he cracked jokes about Ian Huntley and came across as a severely troubled individual.

The panel show set-up of Mock The Week was an ideal format for Boyle, allowing him to subvert the good natured mateyness presented by the other comics and present himself as the acerbic bad apple willing to step over the line into Lenny Bruce territory, leaving the likes of Russell Howard and Andy Parsons to mug for the camera and banter light heartedly about David Cameron.

It would be genuinely sad to see the end of Mock The Week and the host of great comedians that get to do their thing on a weekly prime time BBC programme. Seeing the likes of Hugh Dennis, David Mitchell and Stewart Francis cracking wise is reason enough for MTW’s continued popularity, but there is without doubt a Frankie Boyle shaped hole that needs filling if it doesn’t wish to be viewed as a watered down version of what it once was.

The delicate chemistry of these films is deceptively difficult to achieve. Ideally you want it to star at least three well known faces. First up you need a hunky yet wooden leading man from one of those overly earnest teen dramas they show on E4 in the afternoon, for extra points his character must have a troubled past preferably involving losing his family in a freak accident or mining catastrophe. Next up is the obligatory sexy young lady, once again it helps if she has been plucked from a well known American TV programme, and you know you’re in safe hands if she has been made up to look ‘geeky’ or tomboyish despite being so transcendentally fit that it takes every ounce of your will power not to furiously self abuse from the opening credits onwards.

The final spot is usually filled by a quirky sidekick character that is perhaps well known as one of the bottom feeders on a crap family based sitcom, or alternately a genuine genre legend like Lance Henriksen or Brad Dourif playing a wise old father, woodsman, shopkeeper or sheriff. Again there are definite bonus points if this character comes a cropper near the end when they are impaled on a spike or decapitated with a pair of really sharp garden shears.

Stay Alive somewhat ups the ante on the casting front, packing in enough familiar faces to make you feel like you’re sinking into a warm, cosy, yet slightly creepy bath (imagine the one that girl in the 1980s Cadburys Flake ad used to lie in and you’re getting there). There’s the kid who plays the title role on Malcolm in the Middle as a sideways-sun visor wearing tech-nerd, whilst the babe quota is supplied by Sophia Bush from One Tree Hill and Samaire Armstrong from The OC. There’s a tortured slice of man-cake in the form of Jon Foster, as well as a small role for Friends and Saving Private Ryan star Adam Goldberg. The gravitas is provided by Wendell Pierce playing a tough New Orleans detective that isn’t a million miles away from his character Bunk from HBO’s The Wire, and for good measure Jimmi Simpson from shows like 24 and Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia pops up as a bong smoking generation X cyber freak.

The plot of the movie is pretty simple – a computer game about the infamous Countess Bathory that kills everyone who plays it. This device allows for lots of enjoyable scenes of people dying in the same way as they copped it in the game; hanging, getting run over by a horse and carriage, being bled like a dressed down deer and all manner of other fun. Like a lot of films Stay Alive loses its way somewhat in the final third but still manages to retain its charm and high-falluting premise for its admirably brisk hour and a half running time, with enough blood and creepy digital ghouls wandering about to please fans of horror survival games and movies alike. Don’t get me wrong, it’s about as scary as a particularly bland episode of Countryfile and the chances of it going down in history as a notable addition to the horror genre is as likely as seeing a black face on River Cottage, but not everything can be Suspiria -know what I mean?

Stay Alive is an enjoyable and unchallenging chiller that is best enjoyed with your internal quality filter set to low, several alcoholic beverages of your choice and a family sized bag of Co-Op own brand Bacon Bites. A real recommendation in my book…

White’s seminal cook book White Heat has been cited by chefs like Anthony Bourdain as a totemic work that cut through the nouvelle cuisine fad of the 1990s like the proverbial knife through butter, so it’s not too much of a surprise that Knorr have chosen to use him as the face of their new weird looking jelly stock. But crikey the whole thing comes across like Fred West doing an ad for Asda, or Ian Brady trying to flog you Direct Line car insurance.

White is clearly at best a sociopath and at worst a psychopath. The look of cold, calculating menace in his eyes as he rustles up some grub for the brood of kids I assume are his children is frankly chilling. As his long dark locks fall about his menacing visage one can’t help but be reminded of Charles Manson, which makes the carefree frivolity of the bairns so unbearable. At one point one of the kids sort of nods at him as if to say “this is nice”, utterly unaware that any criticism would probably result in being forced to live in a cupboard for seven years. And perhaps worst of all is his monotone voice over which he delivers in the style of an oddly calm lunatic describing what he’s doing whilst amputating limbs from his still living victim. The whole thing is not simply awful but genuinely terrifying, so until the Suffolk Strangler appears on my telly making a nice bowl of stew with Myleene Klass I’ll stick with Oxo.

The genius premise of a day in the life of CTU agent and all round hard bastard Jack Bauer played out in real time never ceases to endure as a winning format, and the endless procession of baddies threatening ’democracy’ with nuclear bombs, vials of deadly viruses and massive rocket launchers show no sign of waning.

The whole thing is brilliantly implausible and could so easily in the wrong hands drift into pastiche or parody, but the factor that keeps 24 so damn good is that NOTHING is played for laughs. No-one is winking to the camera or dropping the nod to say, “hey we all know this is total cobblers but play along smart guy”, quite the opposite in fact. Legendary screen presences like Jon Voight, Dennis Hopper, Ray Wise and Tony Todd have all had big roles and wasted absolutely no time in chewing the furniture and acting their collective bollocks off in a fashion riper than an old sock filled with blue cheese. And by God it’s fantastic. The Fox Network are not merely demanding that you suspend your disbelief, they’re making you throw it in an industrial sized skip and set fire to it. More power to ‘em I say. Don’t get me wrong, realism when done well in shows like The Thick of It is highly effective and engaging, but there is something equally commendable about a bunch of hacks sat round a table churning out increasingly insane scenarios in which to place a cast of heart-warmingly two dimensional characters.

Another joy of 24 is spotting familiar faces from stage and screen. Practically not an episode goes by without saying “Hey isn’t that yer man from Buffy The Vampire Slayer?”, “Wasn’t he the bloke with stretchy arms in that X-Files episode?”, or “Jesus, Montgomery from Fame is really bald now”. One can’t help but feel that the intense body count racked up by Jack Bauer alone throughout the show is some kind of Actors Guild contract clause, allowing pretty much every jobbing actor in LA to grab a few minutes of face time before getting their asses capped.

So far the eighth season has been straight outta the top drawer, with notable appearances from The Shield’s Benito Martinez and The Wire’s Domenick Lombardozzi. But special mention must go to star of Slumdog Millionaire Anil Kapoor as President Omar Hassan. He plays a sort of Kofi Annan crossed with Ahmadinejad on valium character who has a Bollywood style coiffured pompadour that is so massive it doesn’t even fit the screen. Seriously go and watch the first episode of season 8, this playa’s hair is so fucking pimped out it doesn’t fit the god-damned screen – take that society! If anything happens to Kapoor over the course of the series I will be genuinely gutted to see the back of the most impressive barnet since Phil Spectre’s demented murder trial wig. Although to be honest it’s highly likely he’ll end up kicking the bucket around episode six, and there has even been a fair bit of internet buzz that Bauer himself will meet his maker in the final episode. Say it ain’t so Fox! Until then I’ll be tuning in every week to find out what those crazy terrorists have been getting up to, and to marvel at Mary Lynn Rajskub’s boat race which increasingly reminds me of a confused, angry duck doing a particularly challenging sudoku puzzle.

I for one literally cheered out loud when Jeffrey Combs appeared and exclaimed to no one in particular, “I can’t believe I’ve inherited a castle!”. I thanked the lord Jesus Christ for the flash back that divulges that he has killed his son and blinded his teenage daughter in a drink driving incident, a mistake for which his wife won’t forgive him. I was frankly ecstatic when Combs falls off the wagon and has some really creepy, pissed up sex with a local prostitute in the castle’s wine cellar. But nothing compares to the scene in which Castle Freak himself captures the brass from a comatose Combs and tries to have sex with her, only for it to be revealed in a sort of reverse Crying Game moment that Castle Freak has no penis! It is a scene that would be oddly touching and poignant if it wasn’t so hilarious, made more so by the fact that he seems to have a fully functioning pair of testicles – talk about adding insult to injury!

Everything about Castle Freak is perfect, from the bad dubbing through to the rushed and crudely edited ending. It also has one of those great, jaunty scores that makes you want to sing the title of the film along to the music #Castle Freak, Castle Freak, Here He Comes, The Castle Freak…#. Yes it’s absolute trash but it’s lovingly made trash that is under no illusions that it is anything but the demented offspring of a bastardised genre. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t enjoy a good old fashioned tale of a cock-less grotesque tormenting a disintegrating family in a gothic chateau?

Bourdain is also refreshingly honest, exclaiming, “I’m so depressed right now I feel like killing myself”, during an episode in which he ate a cheese toastie at an end of the pier diner in his native New Jersey. Even more endearing is his recent confession that he spends the majority of his travels drunk off his ass.

So in between smoking like a chimney, knocking back enough local booze to rival the late great Keith Floyd, and extolling the virtues of The Ramones Bourdain eats. My god he eats; seal eyeballs, dubious pork products, foetal duck eggs, blood soup, gelatinous bean curd stuff – basically if there’s a wild eyed native frying up a batch of something over a bin fire he’ll gladly pull up a chair and tuck in. Not that Tony’s enthusiasm is always rewarded, as in one hilarious episode in Mexico where is forced to stomach some badly cooked iguana tamales, and another in New Zealand where not only does he narrowly avoid death in a dune buggy accident but then has to endure a bunch of ropey looking meat pies in a trucker’s café.

The cable channel Shed is currently showing episodes of No Reservations and Bourdain fans have kindly uploaded quite a few episodes on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. If you have a penchant for travel or cookery programmes with a nice dollop of cynicism and debauchery then I would advise you to dig in immediately and gorge yourself on several helpings of Mr. Bourdain.

The badly dubbed opening scene of two sisters squabbling in a dilapidated hotel room brings to mind the giallo films of the 1970s and 80s but without the visual flair and sense of unbearable tension. Indeed, when a creepy looking ghoul pops through a crack in the wall and tries to snag a sleeping bairn in its crib with a wire coat hanger it becomes glaringly obvious that the viewer is in for a Z-grade, one star treat.

The cast of Lurking Fear is a hotchpotch of soap opera hacks and genuine horror movie royalty, including Hellraiser’s Ashley Laurence (incorrectly credited as Ashley Lauren) and Reanimator’s Jeffrey Combs. Laurence is one of the aforementioned squabbling sisters who upon seeing her sibling killed by the crafty coat hanger fiend turns, seemingly overnight, from a bookish nerd scared of firing a gun into a Lara Croft style kick ass babe in a vest planting dynamite and driving a truck. Combs stars as a bearded, booze swilling doctor who has a fag on the go constantly, even whilst performing medical procedures – (and you thought the NHS was bad!). And to be honest they’re both great and bring some much needed class to the proceedings. Yet sadly they are so weighed down by the appalling script and wooden supporting players that their presence is akin to a deranged homeless wearing a monocle and an Elizabethan ruff.

All the horror movie clichés are present and correct; a lameass priest spouting bollocks in the face of certain death, a heavily pregnant woman who keeps saying “don’t let them take my baby!”, a spooky graveyard in the middle of a rainstorm and a bad guy who sounds like David Bowie doing an impression of Dot Cotton. You can tell he’s bad straight away for several reasons. First of all he’s English, secondly he’s got slicked back hair and thirdly he wears a single dangly earring – the universal symbol for a right nasty bastard.

The plot holes are so massive that any attempt to address them would be an exercise in futility, and although the film attempts to exist within the Lovecraftian universe I am at a loss to remember any of Lovecraft’s stories that involve a tough ex-con and some sleazy Eurotrash scumbags hunting for a corpse stuffed with money.

Yet the most galling thing about this mess of a film is the continuity which goes out the window faster than Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist. We are told that the monsters feed on people but when they finally capture and kill one of the baddies they choose to throw him through a window instead of tucking into his tasty flesh. Furthermore, despite living underground, wearing rags and eating babies most of the ghouls have an admirable grasp of the Queens English.

In fact the continuity supervisor must have been smoking a fat one during the scene in which the under siege villagers spend ages fortifying a knackered church building only for Jeffrey Combs to open the front door and stand casually smoking a fag. But my favourite lapse has to be at the end of the movie when Ashley Laurence runs down a tunnel in a blue vest only to emerge at the other end in a white shirt, simply magnificent.

Like most things I enjoy Lurking Fear left me feeling cheap, ashamed, somewhat emotionally soiled and deeply satisfied. I can think of no higher recommendation.

The episode in question seemed to concern diet pills of some description that turned into little baby-like creatures made of fat, which made for lots of ‘hilarious’ scenes of tubby proles looking confused as their bodies appeared to melt. It was frankly utter shite. Which is fair enough, I have always viewed Dr Who as a children’s programme, and not even a good children’s programme. I’m talking about the kind of thing thick kids watch whilst eating spaghetti hoops and drinking coke from a three litre bottle. But rather disconcertingly there seems to be some kind of collective blindness to how bad it is, with even people like the usually sane Charlie Brooker extolling its virtues. How exactly someone can enjoy The Wire, Deadwood and Dr Who in equal measure is beyond me.

The problem that lies at the heart of Dr Who is much the same as the fatal flaw at the heart of Superman. There is no sense of dramatic tension, the Dr is immortal and therefore nothing is ever really gonna happen to him. The hacks that write the Dr Who scripts can feebly attempt to ratchet up the suspense by putting the hatefully unfunny Catherine Tate in some form of danger, but ultimately you know that David Tennant will show up with his sonic screwdriver and make time go backwards or something equally bollocks. The only conceivable way to ‘get’ the Dr would be to cut of his limbs, separate them out in to four separate boxes and then send them to alternative dimensions with atmospheres made of excrement and fire. But even then some half arsed space gizmo could probably put him back together again, allowing him to continue his smug space voyages alongside whichever intergalactic prag he’s picked up this series. I mean really, he should just keep a chained catamite and have done with it. Does Dr Who even have a cock? Well he has two hearts so maybe he’s got two penises. Now there’s a concept that would really liven up the Christmas special, and in years to come people could fondly reminisce about how they crouched behind the settee in fear of something other than the daleks. Until then I’ll get back to In Cold Blood.