Less than humble Keane a stark contrast to Johnston

NEWSTALK is the PPI national radio station of the year, and did we ever get to hear about it. On Tuesday's Lunchtime with Eamon Keane, you weren't allowed to let it slip your mind for a moment that what you were listening to was the PPI news programme of the year. Keane himself went on and on about it, and then guest after guest offered their congratulations. It was like being at some sort of Rotary Club social. "We were the first to report on the 1,000 HSE job cuts, " Keane reminded us, reviewing his programme's scoops. "Everyone rubbished it at the time but now they're all reporting it. Well, I'm glad to see they're listening at least." Hmm, tum-ti-tum, don't care.

This failure to be magnanimous in victory is beneath an award-winning national news programme. It's the kind of thing you'd expect on local radio, where people often get ideas above their station. Lunchtime has other things in common with local radio too, such as its conversational style, its incessant listener contributions, and its incongruous use of competitions. This week and next you can win a satellite navigation system on Lunchtime, sponsored by Ulster Bank, itself sponsor of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. So many corporate mentions! So many things being the Thing of the Year!

The question was, who is the governor of California? Not too difficult, even for people who don't listen to the news, but Keane gave us hints:

He's a former film actor; he was once the Terminator; he was known for saying "I'll be back".

I'm confused, and starting to drool a little. Is this a current affairs programme, or is it Mooney? That's it: most difficult-to-please radio critic of the year.

Kidnap victim of the year Alan Johnston spoke about his ordeal in a special edition of Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent on Thursday. The BBC journalist was seized by militants in Gaza last March and held hostage for 114 days. Johnston recalled his first conversation with the masked jihadi leader on the first night of his captivity. The voice emerging from the mask was "calm, even kindly", he said. He was told that he would not be killed but would be treated well, in keeping with Islamic codes of conduct towards prisoners.

"Crucially, he said that I would eventually be allowed to leave. . . When it was over, he said, I would write a book about my experience, and even that I would finally get married, " he said, suggesting that the leader was well acquainted with how things work in the West. He was able to ask for a plate of chips every day, and to request that his water be boiled. Eventually they even gave him a radio, from which he heard reports that he had been executed, and lay awake all night worrying that the announcement was premature. "I decided that my conditions could have been much, much worse.

Whatever else it was, my Gazan incarceration was not what Iraqi prisoners had been forced to endure at Abu Ghraib. It was not the Russian Gulag, and it certainly was not the Nazi death camps. I felt that I would not be able to pick up a book again about the Holocaust without feeling a sense of shame, if I were somehow to break down mentally under the very, very, very much easier circumstances of my captivity, " said Johnston. Brave moment of the year.

COURTNEY Cox is back on TV and this time she's so bad, she's horrid. In fact, she's a total bitch. In Dirt, coproduced with her husband David Arquette for America's FX cable channel, Cox plays Lucy Spiller, editor of Now magazine. The name Lucy Spiller sounds awfully like Bonnie Fuller, the real-life American magazine editor, who has turned around the fortunes of many a supermarket tabloid.

In a profile a couple of years ago, Vanity Fair mocked Fuller's frumpy style. Fuller is no Tina Brown. But that's what makes her interesting as a character study. She's a fashion outsider, somebody who rose to the top of the tabloid world probably because she never fitted in with the cool kids in school.

Unfortunately, Fuller's quasinamesake is played by Cox as an ice queen with glossy hair, chiselled features and tiny frame. Had Lucy Spiller been a woman approaching middle age who binged on KFC and, like Fuller, is raising a family while exposing celebrities' private lives, that moral ambiguity would have given her some depth. How, as a mother, could she reconcile printing a scurrilous story of the Olsen twins? Instead, single and lonely, Lucy slinks around seedy clubs like a cobra.

Dirt is also still flying too close to the Hollywood sign to justify its unflattering portrait of tabloids.

There's a developing storyline about a black baseball star who cheats on his wife a la Kobe Bryant and a closeted gay movie star. Cox could find herself dropping off dozens of Christmas card lists with that last storyline alone.

Lucy gets her schizophrenic photographer Don Konkey, played to the hilt by British actor Ian Hart, to find the dirt and she dishes it. His illness is portrayed by crude, edgy scenes with talking corpses. (I doubt his characterisation will be warmly welcomed by Schizophrenia Ireland. ) Action star Holt McLaren (Josh Stewart), who looks like Sean Penn's less successful younger sibling, agrees to be a "source" in return for positive PR. "You're an actor's actor, " Lucy says. "Isn't that just another way of saying chronically unemployed?" Holt replies.

Dirt is soulless, fast-paced, formulaic and filmed in dark blues, like nocturnal footage from TMZ. But I have a confession: earlier this year, I watched the first 13 episodes online. Despite its many flaws, some crap is also strangely appealing.

Ugly Betty has its own mental health issues: a split personality.

It doesn't know whether it's a schmaltzy family drama with flesh-and-blood characters or a slapstick comedy in a fashion magazine with cartoon characters. The only improvement from the first series is Betty's (America Ferrera) wardrobe.

That and a bigger part for Betty's gay teenage nephew Justin (Mark Indelicato). Justin is trying to cope with the death of his father by emulating his macho ways. Drinking from the carton and burping, a sad indictment on heterosexual males. Rebecca Romijn, a 5ft 11in platinum blonde former model, plays transsexual Alex/Alexis.

That's cowardly casting. A real transsexual would have worked far better. Anyway, fashion victim Victoria Beckham is due to make an appropriate cameo.

Something to look forward to.

I'm hoping the winner of Celebrities Gone Wild won't end up on the cover of VIP. But he . . .

assuming, at the time of going to press, Michelle de Bruin didn't win . . . probably will. Hosting are Aidan Power . . . doing his best Dermot O'Leary impression with face fuzz, bootcut jeans and a clipboard . . . and Anna Nolan, who looks utterly mortified to be there and says "fabilesss" a lot to cover it up.

Daithi O Se, who is a bit of all right, Katy French, Michelle, Tony Kenny, Victoria Mary Clarke, Mickey Joe Harte, Alan O'Neill and Michael Healy-Rae, who wears a cap like his daddy, cycle through the countryside for People In Need and so they can see themselves on the telly. It's like an aimless homemade YouTube video for Ramblers Anonymous.

They sit around the campfire, while we are asked to vote. For what? Nothing happens. Anna's literal narration tried and failed to inject drama: "It was tough for Tony. How will Michael fair?"

Worse, the director kept showing scenes of Michelle sitting on the beach at night while others had gone to bed, or swimming alone while everyone else had dried off. Anna said things like, "Michelle decided to stay up a little longer. . ." Fade to black.

There was obviously some kind of sneaky subtext here. Maybe they wanted to say Michelle's heart is heavy and she is seeking some kind of public redemption, but they didn't have the balls to spit it out. Michelle says she wants the public to get to know the real her. Why? (You're lovely as you are, Michelle, now bog off. ) Anna asked Tony how his "surprise" eviction will change the dynamic of the group. One problem: there was no dynamic. You'd find a more exciting dynamic with a bunch of publicity-shy squirrels hibernating in a tree for the winter. I have a theory: the boring parts were edited out and swept up from the cutting room floor but somehow got switched with the actual programme.

Jazz
Cormac Larkin
A month of happy Mondays for jazz fans at JJ Smyths THIS week saw the latest batch of graduates from Newpark Music Centre's Jazz Programme emerge from the cosseted world of formal education into the sometimes harsh reality of being a working jazz musician. Great, they thought, I'm a jazz musician now.

Great, thought the older musicians, just what we need . . . more jazz musicians. Newpark's achievement in establishing and maintaining a degree course should not be underestimated, nor should the excellent training the students are receiving there.

But it raises the question: if we now have more jazz musicians in Ireland than we ever had before, what are they all going to do ?

Are we producing any more audiences to listen to them ?

This is the challenge the Improvised Music Company faces every day. Alongside its high-profile and very successful promotions of visiting jazz musicians and world music stars, the non-profit, Arts Councilfunded IMC is also quietly working away in the background, sowing the seeds of jazz far and wide and gradually harvesting audiences. You're job, gentle reader, is simply to go out and listen to some good music. And here's your chance.

IMC's latest initiative to put new music and new audiences in the same room together is Made on Mondays. For every Monday in November, in the sepulchral surroundings of JJ Smyths, IMC has programmed a series of double- and triple-bills of new jazz, ranging from free jazz and electronica to traditional Irish and Argentinian folk music.

The series starts on 5 November with a few representatives of what is now the old guard of the Dublin jazz scene. Guitarist Ariel Hernadez, originally from Buenos Aires, has been one of the most welcome of the many visiting musicians who have made a home in Dublin and he takes time off from his popular duo with accordionist Dermot Dunne to form a new trio performing a blend of jazz and south American folk music. Then trumpeter Paul Williamson . . . another welcome arrival, this time from Australia . . .

leads a new band called Savage Monkey which incidentally also features bassist and master pedagogue Ronan Guilfoyle, to whom much of the credit for Newpark's degree course must go.

There's an equally promising and eclectic programme slated for the rest of the month. On 12 November, electronic guerilla Zoid squares off to traditional fiddler Caoimhin O Raghallaigh; a trio of vocalists . . . Dorothy Murphy, Sue Rynhart and Tuula Voutilainen . . . sing themes inspired by children's songs; and saxophonists Nick Roth and Cathal Roche open proceedings with an intriguing duo called Suparyse.

Monday 19th promises riches beyond measure for the free jazz inclined, with three groups: Clog, featuring pianist Rob Casey, percussionist David Lace and saxophonist Sean Og; the Laboratory, a trio comprising vocalist Regan O'Brien, guitarist/sitarist Dara O'Brien and clarinetist Alex McMahon; and finally Awkward Silence, a group with two of everything, inspired by the looping beats of Aphex Twin, featuring up-andcoming guitarists Simon Jermyn and Shane Latimer, saxophonists Sean Og and Cathal Roche and drummers Matt Jacobson and Shane O'Donovan.

The series ends on 26 November with saxophonist Sean Og (again), this time with Berlin saxophonist Christian Weidner performing Oversold, billed in the programme as "an affectionate deconstruction of the jazz tradition, Aebersold playalongs and playing out of tune". Then Italian pianist Francesco Turrisi, who, like Hernandez and Williams, has made his home in Dublin, will introduce a new piano trio featuring the considerable talents of bassist Dan Bodwell and drummer Sean Carpio.

All in all, it's a superb opportunity to check out what's new in Irish jazz and a welcome diversion for Monday nights, traditionally a good night for jazz.

So put Mondays in November in your diary and in years to come, people will think you are unutterably cool because you were there.

Rock

Keeping up with Jones Even at 33, Stereophonics' volatile frontman is as hard to pin down as ever, writes David Sinclair THAT Kelly Jones. What a lad. In the last few weeks he's been in the headlines for boozing and brawling in a London club, and the Stereophonics frontman is still nursing the result of a the latenight altercation with a bouncer that ened with the singer getting a two-inch gash in his right arm.

"In hospital they told me I'd slashed two muscles, " Jones says.

"They gave me stitches internally and said it would take six weeks to recover. I won't know until I start playing guitar again whether I have fully recovered."

Although some gigs and live TV appearances were cancelled because of the injury, the release of the new Stereophonics album, Pull the Pin, went ahead as planned . . . and duly hit the No 1 spot.

You'd think that, at the age of 33, Jones's streetfighting days would be behind him. Evidently not. Just a few weeks before the London incident, he and the Stereophonics bass-player Richard Jones (no relation), also 33, got into another scuffle in Moscow when the two Welshmen were accosted by a drunk. "We never back down, basically, " he explains. "I don't know if it's just the way we've been brought up or what."

It seems as good an explanation as any, especially considering the lyrics to some of the songs on the new album, such as the raucously rocking onslaught of 'Bank Holiday Monday':

"Dodging cars, new scars, fighting out in the road/ Knees me in the chest, my head and arse hits the floor/ Swallowed tongue, what we done, someone's hand in my mouth/ Got to pull it back out on a bank holiday Monday."

It's a pretty grim tale, even before you take into account the aggravated assault Kelly inflicts on the traditional norms of scansion, metre and rhyme. How often does this kind of incident happen to them?

"It used to happen every weekend when we were growing up, " Richard says, recalling the former pit village of Cwmaman, where he and Jones first got together and started playing in a group with the drummer Stuart Cable (who since left the band). "It wasn't so much that it was a rough place. It was more a proving ground, really."

Other numbers, such as 'It Means Nothing', inspired by the London bombings in July 2005, and 'Soldiers Make Good Targets' about the media's ambiguous relationship with images of war, find Kelly pondering events both global and personal.

Kelly has a knack for tapping into the troubled mood of the times with his songwriting. Earlier this month, Stereophonics won the Qmagazine award for Best Classic Song for 'Local Boy in the Photograph', from their first album Word Gets Around.

Tellingly, it was an award voted for by readers of the magazine, not the writers: respect from critics and taste-makers has always been grudging, at best.

This probably stems from the band's background. They come from provincial, working-class stock. Not for them the metropolitan insider's world view that informs the tastes of pop's fashion police.

"The first time I bought NME was when I was on the front cover. That's the truth, " Kelly says, disdainfully. "We grew up in pubs where we saw what people actually got off on. So that's what we knew how to play. We came up on the back of Britpop and, however many stages of music there's been in the last 10 years, we never fitted in any of those categories. We never needed a bandwagon. The songs did it for us and we can hold our own with anybody on stage.

Pull the Pin was recorded in Dublin, in a burst of creativity. It is the second album to feature the drummer Javier Weyler, who replaced Cable in the line-up after their 2003/4 world tour.

Javier (32) who was born in Argentina and brought up in Venezuela, became friends with the band and worked with them in the studio long before the possibility of joining them arose.

Weyler's presence has brought stability and a renewed sense of optimism to the group after the uncertainties surrounding the departure of Cable, who was sacked over commitment issues.

Although there were some rocky moments during that episode, Kelly insists relations with the band's former drummer have always been more cordial than is usually made out. "Generally when me and him are sat down, it's fine. I had a pint with him on Christmas Day."

Stereophonics are doing fine, too, provided Kelly Jones can keep out of trouble long enough to get the band's latest tour under way. The shows are selling fast and the singer is bullish about the album. "If you line up all six albums, each of them is slightly different, " Kelly says. "I try to make the band sound different on each one. That is what it's about."