Critic Cal

"Prison changes a man". Except, it seems, it all-too-often doesn't . Research reported in this 2010 article , for example, found reconviction rates of 70% or more in 14 UK prisons. Here's not to dwell on the statistics though -- they can be misrepresentative and/or misrepresented and besides I've no desire to get drawn into the science or politics of the prison system. Suffice to say, the seemingly well-established fact is that incarcerating a troubled (drug dependent? alcoholic? mentally ill? socially marginalised? embittered? abused? self-deceiving? desperate? unemployable?) person is unlikely to relieve them of their troubled state and may well serve to exacerbate and further entrench the patterns of damaging behaviour that got them in there in the first place. Enter Gordon Ramsay. *Sigh*. Channel 4's ' Gordon Behind Bars ' is the latest in a string of 'famous chefs solve major societal problems' campaigns, and, for all its good intentions...

It is probably a good thing that I find telly increasingly boring. I've  always watched too much, and to have that temptation removed by restlessness is much easier than to have to resist it through discipline. But I quite miss the days where I was at least capable of sitting down for more than 20 minutes at a time and genuinely enjoying something without feeling like it was stealing a chunk of my life. So now, whenever I do find something that successfully keeps me entertained enough to not count the minutes, it's quite satisfying. One recent such discovery has been 'Cracker'…they were repeating it on one of the ITV channels last year and, thus inspired, we've managed to pin down a generous-hearted friend with a boxset. It is gripping stuff… Mr W says it's a program for ladies, cos it's all about a man who understands you perfectly, and that's what ladies like. He could be right. Most programs for ladies don't have so much violence, depravity a...