Join Hélène Mulholland for rolling coverage of the fallout from yesterday's elections as the UK votes to maintain the first-past-the-post system

Good morning. It's the morning after the night before, when opponents to replacing first-past-the-post with the alternative vote to elect MPs to Westminster resoundingly won the day in the referendum.

Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have said now that UK voters have had their say, it's time to "move on". Easier for some than others. The local elections returned disastrous results for the Liberal Democrats, a stronger than expected performance for the Conservatives, and a fairly disappointing one for Labour. Ed Miliband's party failed to make a breakthrough in the locals, narrowly failed to secure an overall majority after winning half the seats in the Welsh assembly and badly in the devolved Scottish elections, whereas the Scottish National Party had every reason to be on cloud nine after sweeping to power.

I'll be blogging the latest on what yesterday's results will mean for the respective political parties, as well as covering the latest results in Northern Ireland, where the count for the Stormont elections continues. Counting there (which began yesterday) has been extremely slow – election workers in Fermanagh/South Tyrone were using hairdryers on ballot papers that got rained on.

So far, we have the results for just 41 seats out of 108 in an election where the UUP faces being pushed into fourth place. The DUP currently has 18 seats, Sinn Féin 14, SDLP 3, UUP 3, and the Alliance party 3. Peter Robinson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, was elected to Stormont a year after the loss of his Westminster seat.

Little or no progress has been made on majority of environment policies analysed in Friends of the Earth report

Progress on the prime minister's pledge to make the coalition the "greenest government ever" was heavily criticised today by environmental leaders.

The former government adviser, Jonathon Porritt, said the likelihood of the government living up to the promise made almost a year ago was "vanishingly remote".

In a report commissioned by Friends of the Earth, Porritt said ministers were failing to deliver on key environmental pledges, and policies had been watered down, delayed or even abandoned.

In the wake of the report, the Friends of the Earth executive director, Andy Atkins, warned that without "real political courage", Cameron's green ambitions would be simply hot air.

From proposals to sell off public forests to a review of feed-in tariffs for small-scale renewables and the decision to scrap a £42m marine renewables development fund, the government has failed to champion green issues, the report claims.

According to the research, little or no progress has been made on three quarters of 77 environmental or sustainability policies that were analysed.

Porritt said the review of the policies showed that the "bad and the positively ugly indisputably outweighed the good", and that growth at all costs had won out over efforts to create a green economy and thousands of low-carbon jobs.

He said Cameron had not been personally visible on green issues, the Treasury had been hostile to environmental policies and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was being "trampled all over" by other Whitehall departments.

And the "big society" and the localism agenda is being driven by the ideological priority to shrink the state, rather than delivering improvements in people's local environment and lives, he claimed.

Porritt was chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, which was set up to hold the government to account on its policies on sustainability but which was scrapped last year in the "bonfire of the quangos".

In his new report he warned that in the last year, most of the "important battles" on the environment had been lost, including the Treasury's refusal to let the green investment bank borrow funds until 2015, which he said would reduce its ability to drive investment in the low-carbon economy.

But the report did flag up a number of green initiatives which it said were positive, including scrapping plans to expand airports in the south east, announcing the world's first incentives to promote renewable heating and agreeing to roll out smart meters to 30m homes by 2014.

Porritt said: "The prime minister's own credibility is at stake here – as is that of the Liberal Democrats who have clearly failed to use their influence inside the coalition to ensure a better performance on the environment and sustainable development.

"It's certainly not too late, but things are going to have to change dramatically to make up lost ground."

Atkins said: "Confidence in David Cameron's boast to run the 'greenest government ever' is fading fast.

"Rather than creating a green and safe future, his government has steadily dismantled pledges and policies that would help him achieve it.

"David Cameron could be building a prosperous low-carbon economy out of the rubble of the old, creating new jobs and industries for recession-hit Britain – but green development is continually being sacrificed in favour of growth at any cost.

"Unless the prime minister starts to show real political courage and leadership on the environment, his green ambitions will simply be more hot air."

Last month, green campaigners and business leaders attacked the government's environmental record, with one investor saying the coalition's actions threatened to "choke off the lifeblood of the green economy."

The values of the Middletons' class – hard work, respect for property and insular family life – are actually at odds with those of the aristocracy

Wake up. The honeymoon is over. Back to reality. Even princes have to go to work like normal people. And Kate, who has opted to be a full-time RAF officer's wife, can wave him off, as she is now living the dream on Anglesey. The dream means running her husband baths, watching him play polo and attending the odd charity bash with him. Apparently, she wanted this old-fashioned role, which some call wife, but I call "lovely assistant". Indeed, despite the palace's plea for privacy after the nuptial glut, it may well be impossible for Kate to "work" because of the huge amount of attention on her.

It has to be said, though, that up until now, Kate's jobs have seemed fairly token. Has this woman ever been financially independent? It seems rather she has spent her time being groomed to be a wife. That such grooming allows "a commoner" into the royals represents a triumph for the bourgeoisie. Last week's entrenching of establishment values, amid middlebrow mores and faux militarism, was lapped up by some. Many were indifferent. Few were stirred by pure republicanism, which remains abstract, but nonetheless we were repeatedly addressed as though we were all avid royalists. Royalists needed to pimp their romantic fantasy alongside their tea towels 24/7. The fantasy is that romance is always transformative. Mermaids get legs! Girls from the home counties get castles! The problem is that we know too much about the Middleton background to pretend this all happened naturally.

The Middletons were on full display; a small business compared to the firm, but there is something rather corporate and manufactured about them.

We have been invited both to sneer at them for social climbing, and to identify with them for their hard work and "ordinariness". Their back story represents almost a primer in the history of social mobility. From mining stock, Carole Middleton became an air hostess. She met her husband Michael while he was working as an air steward. They set up a family business selling party bags online. They made enough – we don't know how much, as their company is run as a partnership, so we don't see how much tax they pay – to send their three children to Marlborough College.

As is always the way, it's the woman, Carole, who is seen as socially aspirational and pushy. Her girls, Catherine and Pippa, have been called "the wisteria sisters", as they are adept in social climbing. It is a recurring motif from Austen to Osborne that women are the schemers who dream of an upwardly mobile escape.

It is Carole, too, who is said to have made the "gaffes"; saying the wrong thing to the Queen, chewing nicotine gum at Sandhurst. It is Carole's prawn-and-cottage-cheese diet we know about. It is Carole who was laughed at when she was finally invited to Balmoral. There she was, laying flat out in the damp grass with a ghillie to instruct her in deer stalking. Nothing could signal the gap between the Middletons and the aristocracy more than this. The Middletons may like the races and have shares in a horse, but they don't kill large animals for fun.

Blood sports are the province of our ruling classes, from our Queen to David Cameron. The bourgeoisie simply have to accept this is the way things are done.

The values of the Middletons' class – hard work, respect for property and insular family life – are actually at odds with those of the aristocracy, who don't work and inherit wealth. But the wedding achieved a sleight of hand in its illusion of harmony. Thus, the Middletons were the stars of the show. Carole was deemed to have dressed well enough. Pippa, upstaged by her own backside, is the new top totty. James, who until now was known mainly as a cross-dressing cake-maker who liked posting pictures of himself naked on Facebook, has been reinvented as a speechifying young blade. Indeed, the Middletons, in outfits and behaviour, were conservative enough. It was the royals who wore what they bloody well liked, with Beatrice and Eugenie cleverly suggesting Spiker and Sponge from Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach.

The dress, which was said to melt the hardest of republican hearts (really?), was a McQueen effort, with any radical edge softened, and unsurprisingly retro. Nothing to frighten the horses. Kate looked suitably demure. Except for the double nipple effect that this couture provided. The pretence of virginity is part of the facade, after all.

The prince's mother, as if we could forget, was sacrificed on that altar. This wedding served to remind us, though, that the Diana moment is long gone. Since about 2002 the royals have got their PR in order. The success of their press operation is manifest in the uniform nature of the fawning coverage.

Consent was assumed: we were all, we were repeatedly told, thrilled by this occasion. Hegemony was secured as Harry grinned at Pippa. The boring bits of the service, or the shots of most of the congregation unable to sing any of the hymns, were glossed over.

The celebration of reactionary values was duly achieved, by assuming we are all bound up in them. No wonder the Labour politicians – at least those invited – looked so out of place. This was the ruling class en masse, preening itself for letting in "a commoner". Us commoners should be duly grateful.

This young woman and her family may have got what they wanted, and they may give the monarchy a sheen of modernity. But there is little modern going on. The world of this wedding is that of a regressive culture in which women express their individuality by not wearing a hat, women are still unironically "given away", a good marriage is the sum of female achievement.

As was made clear, and indeed taken for granted by those who should know better, we all think like this, except a few crazed republicans. The institutions of Christianity and patriarchy are unquestionable. Well, it's a wedding! Don't be grouchy. Yet there is another world out here where supreme indifference was not borne out of any hostility to the couple, rather a disdain for every convention on display.

The bourgeoisie always presents its way of life as the only way to live. But there are others less stultifying. The fantasy that we may escape class, one at a time, through marriage, remains. The system on display last week is as rigid as it ever was. The acceptance of the Middletons by the monarchy was not some great moment of modernisation; it is simply a deal to ensure everything carries on as it always did.

Our consent to this deal is sewn up by the continuing narrative, which assures us that every girl wants a prince. And a fairytale wedding. Whatever we say. Mindless babbling about the intricate lacework on a dress will stop us from seeing the straitjacket stitched into its structure, surely? And the conservative heart that beats within.

Turkey shows we would do well to remember the dwindling art of hospitality

As I walked along the European bank of the Bosphorus, a small group of fisherman were coming to the end of their dinner. They called me over, offering me grapes and raki, and I explained in my smattering of Turkish what I was up to. "Londra, Istanbul," slap legs, mime walking. "Sekiz ay" ("eight months").

Throughout my whole journey I had been offered hospitality to an extent I could never have imagined before I left. I had been invited to sleep in people's homes, in bars, in barns, in churches and in mosques. I was fed in restaurants and at mountain passes. I was given friendship and support at times when I really needed it.

Yet I assumed I would have been anonymous in a city of 13 million people. But as we finished eating they told me proudly that the only way to see their city was from the water, and invited me out in their boat. For Muslims, they told me, the duty of hospitality is not a duty only to the stranger, but one to God.

One intention I had when I began, 3,500 miles earlier, was to challenge the culture of fear, the distrust of strangers, that seems to be a given in a world where we are increasingly denied the opportunity to interact with the unknown. With its speed and its fear, our culture robs people of the very chance to offer hospitality. Walking through villages, I felt like a rare beast and found people almost eager to invite me into their houses, to hear my story and to tell me theirs.

As I walked I came to see that under this modern, paranoid veneer, beyond the oxymoronic idea of a "hospitality industry", there is a core of hospitality which is very much alive. Sites on the internet that offer hospitality are increasingly popular – CouchSurfing now has more than two million members. Yet the opportunities to connect with strangers on their journeys are few, and they are decreasing. I know of no better way than a pilgrimage, secular or not, to remind us that we are dependent upon strangers.

In the Bible, the word often translated as "hospitality" is the Greek philoxenia, a love of strangers. And this goes both ways, for in a hospitable relationship each is a stranger unto the other – it is about recognising both the other within oneself, and oneself in the other. The exchange feels to be something reciprocal in a way that is hard to pin down. We share a conversation, a friendship, the age-old human act of two people connecting over a gift. Furthermore, it does not feel to be a one-off exchange but more the continuation, or a recommencement, of a circle of hospitality which increasingly needs refreshing to maintain it.

Certainly hospitality is full of contradiction – turning your home over to someone else, the risk that entails. But as Jacques Derrida explored in his work, it is this very impossibility of defining its parameters that maintains it as an act which is vital and open. It is not an intellectual concept – it has meaning only in the doing.

We no longer seem to speak of good risks, of risks worth taking. Instead we attempt to control as much as possible. We do this, perversely, by destroying practices like hospitality that truly keep us safe. We can never know where the act of hospitality will lead us. As it says in Hebrews (13:2): "Forget not to shew love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." We would do well to open our doors more often.

A look back through Seve Ballesteros's career: including his three Open wins, two Masters wins and several notable Ryder Cup appearances

My documentary about the Diana inquest will be shown everywhere but the UK. Here's why

The internet is a global lavatory wall, a Rabelaisian mixture of truth, lies, insanity and humour. I felt its power and madness this week, when an excerpt from my new film, Unlawful Killing, was leaked on to YouTube and seized on by US conspiracy theorists, who immediately began claiming that the CIA had murdered Princess Diana, thereby allowing others to dismiss my documentary as mad.

Deriding its critics as mad is an age-old British establishment trick. My "inquest of the inquest" film contains footage of Diana recalling how the royals wanted her consigned to a mental institution, and the inquest coroner repeatedly questioning the sanity of anyone who wondered if the crash was more than an accident. His chief target was Mohamed Al Fayed, a man I once profiled for a Channel 4 documentary. Before I met him, I'd half-believed the media caricature of him as a madman, driven nuts by the death of his son, and wildly accusing the Windsors of having planned the 1997 crash. However, I found a man who was sane and funny but frustrated that Britain wouldn't hold an inquest into his son's death. Michael Mansfield QC thought it unfair too, and fought for one to be held; which was why the longest inquest in British legal history eventually began in 2007.

Long before the inquest started, the eminently sane Mansfield had persuaded me that there were suspicious circumstances surrounding the crash, and signs of a cover-up by the authorities. Many journalists agreed, but as the inquest drew near, I noticed that British newspapers (several of which had regularly run "Was Diana Murdered?" pieces) suddenly fell into line, and started insisting that the inquest was a waste of time. They raised no protest when virtually all the key French witnesses refused to participate, nor did they find it odd that not one senior royal was ordered to appear, even though Diana had stated in a lawyer's note that the Windsors were planning an "accident" to her car. Nor did they raise the issue of possible bias when legal proceedings involving the integrity of the royal family were to be heard in the royal courts of justice before a coroner who'd sworn an oath of allegiance to the Queen.

I felt the need to raise it, so I asked every major UK broadcaster (BBC, ITV, C4, Five, Sky) to commission a TV documentary about the inquest. But they refused even to contemplate such a suggestion, so Associated Rediffusion and I began filming and financing it ourselves. Shortly before the inquest began, Fayed offered to fund our project, so we could make a feature-length cinema documentary instead. We agreed, on condition that we would report events in the way we saw them, and the deal was struck.

Unlawful Killing is not about a conspiracy before the crash, but a provable conspiracy after the crash. A conspiracy organised not by a single scheming arch-fiend, but collectively by the British establishment – judges, lawyers, politicians, police chiefs, secret services, even newspaper editors – all of whom have been appointed to their positions because they are "a safe pair of hands". Just as compass needles all point north without being told to, so these people instinctively know what is expected of them when the state's interests are under threat and they act accordingly, quietly suppressing uncomfortable evidence or undermining the credibility of witnesses whose evidence contradicts the official narrative.

Consider just a fraction of what transpired. Over 100 significant witnesses were not called to the inquest, or refused to appear. Blood tests allegedly proving the drunkenness of the driver Henri Paul were deemed "biologically inexplicable" by a toxicologist. A British crash expert found that Diana's seat belt had not been working. And so on.

Strangest of all was the media coverage of the verdict. Inquest evidence showed conclusively that the crash was caused by an unidentified white Fiat Uno and several unidentified motorcycles, vehicles that were certainly not paparazzi, because uncontested police evidence confirmed that the paparazzi were nowhere near the tunnel at the time of the crash. The jury understood this, bringing in a verdict of "unlawful killing" by unidentified "following vehicles"; yet within seconds, the BBC was misreporting that the jury had blamed the paparazzi, and the rest of the media meekly followed suit. Which is why – three years on – barely anyone realises what the jury's troubling verdict really was.

Why is the film being premiered next week at Cannes, three years after the inquest ended? Because British lawyers insisted on 87 cuts before any UK release could be contemplated. So rather than butcher the film, or risk legal action, we're showing it in France, then the US, and everywhere except the UK. Pity, because at a time when the mindless sugar rush of the royal wedding has been sending British Rrepublicans into a diabetic coma, it could act as a welcome antidote.

Is his poetry any good? The answer for anyone who can't read Bengali must be: don't know. No translation is up to the job

Rabindranath Tagore was born 150 years ago today. This weekend festivities and seminars are being held in his honour across the world. In London, the BFI is hosting a season of films inspired by his work; last night his fellow Bengali (and fellow Nobel laureate) Amartya Sen gave a talk at the British Museum; a two-day conference at the University of London will, among other things, examine his legacy in the Netherlands, Poland and Germany.

I consulted two dictionaries of quotations, the Oxford and Penguin, to check the most memorable lines of this poet, novelist, essayist, song and short story writer. Not a single entry. They skipped from Tacitus to Hippolyte Taine as if there was nothing in Tagore's collected works (28 thick books, even with his 2,500 songs published separately) that ever had stuck in anyone's mind, or was so pithily expressed that it deserved to; as if what had come out of Tagore's pen was a kind of oriental ectoplasm, floating high above our materialist western heads, and ungraspable. In fact, I could remember one line clearly enough, and vaguely remember a whole stanza. The first is how he described the Taj Mahal: like "a teardrop on the face of eternity". The second is the inscription Wilfred Owen's mother found in her dead son's pocketbook: "When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable." But I owe this knowledge to (a) a tourist guide in Agra, and (b) to a biography. Reading Tagore himself had nothing to do with it.

True, writers can't be ranked merely by their quotability, but Tagore's neglect is extraordinary. No other language group reveres a writer as 250 million Bengali-speakers do Tagore. Shakespeare and Dickens don't come into the picture; the popularity of Burns in Scotland 100 years ago may be his nearest equivalent in Britain. Every Bengali will know some Tagore, even if they can't read or write and the words come from a popular song or the national anthem (those of both India and Bangladesh use his verse). The visitor to Bengal can easily find some comedy in the mass adoration. Years ago, trying to penetrate a layer of Kolkata bureaucracy, I spent hours listening to bureaucrats on the subject of Tagore – "his translations into English are like embroidery seen from the back," one said – while getting nowhere with the unrelated topic I was meant to be investigating. Then again, love of literature can slide into fetishism, and from there, obscenity. When Tagore died in 1941, the huge crowd around his funeral cortege plucked hairs from his head. At the cremation pyre, mourners burst through the cordon before the body had been completely consumed by fire, searching for bones and keepsakes.

It's hard to think of any other writer anywhere who has aroused this level of fervour, but Tagore might still be seen as a purely local phenomenon, a curiosity and irrelevance to the world beyond Bengal. Except that he wasn't. In 1913 he won the Nobel prize for literature, the first non-European to win a Nobel. The story is well known. In 1912 he sailed from India to England with a collection of English translations – the 100 or so poems that became the anthology Gitanjali, or "song offerings". He lost the manuscript on the London tube. Famously, it was found in a left luggage office. Then – decisively – WB Yeats met Tagore, read his poems and became his passionate advocate (while pencilling in suggestions for improvements).

Events moved at breathtaking speed. Tagore had arrived in London in June, he had his anthology published by Macmillan with an introduction by Yeats in the following March, and on 13 November 1913 he was awarded the Nobel. Before he left Kolkata he knew one person in London, the painter William Rothenstein. Two years later he was a global phenomenon. The notion that literary prizes secure reputations and sell books is modern publishing wisdom, but nothing compares with what the Nobel did for Tagore a century ago. Gitanjali found a vast audience in its many editions. In the tremulous months before the first world war, as well as during the war, its spiritual message and reverence for the natural world struck a chord. It contains the lines Owen wrote in his pocketbook, and soon had translations in many other languages, including French, by André Gide, and Russian, by Boris Pasternak.

The success turned everyone's heads, including Tagore's. He became the most prominent embodiment of how the west wanted to see the east – sagelike, mystical, descending from some less developed but perhaps more innocent civilisation; above all, exotic. He looked the part, with his white robes and flowing beard and hair, and sometimes overplayed it. Of course, the truth was more complicated. The Tagores were among Kolkata's most influential families. They'd prospered in their role as middle men to the East India Company, whose servants named them Tagore because it was more easily pronounced than the Bengali title, Thakur. The west wasn't strange to them. Rabindranath's grandfather, Dwarkanath, owned steam tug companies and coal mines, became a favourite of Queen Victoria's and died in England (his tombstone is in Kensal Green cemetery). As for the poet himself, this was his third visit to London. On his first, he'd heard the music hall songs and folk tunes that he later incorporated into his distinctive musical genre, rabindra sangeet.

More than anything, what Tagore stood for was a synthesis of east and west. He admired the European intellect and felt betrayed when Britain's conduct in India let down the ideal. His western enthusiasts, however, saw what they wanted to see. First, he was an exotic fashion and then he was not. "Damn Tagore," wrote Yeats in 1935, blaming the "sentimental rubbish" of his later books for ruining his reputation. "An Indian has written to ask what I think of Rabindrum [sic] Tagore," wrote Philip Larkin to his friend Robert Conquest in 1956. "Feel like sending him a telegram: 'Fuck all. Larkin.'"

Is his poetry any good? The answer for anyone who can't read Bengali must be: don't know. No translation (according to Bengalis) lives up to the job, and at their worst, they can read like In Memoriam notices: "Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark" is among the better lines. Translator William Radice thinks that Tagore's willingness to tackle the big questions, heart on sleeve, has made him vulnerable to "philistinism or contempt". That may be so – see Larkin – but perhaps the time has come for us to forget Tagore was ever a poet, and think of his more intelligible achievements. These are many. He was a fine essayist; an educationist who founded a university; an opponent of the terrorism that then plagued Bengal; a secularist amid religious divisions; an agricultural improver and ecologist; a critical nationalist. In his fiction, he showed an understanding of women – their discontents and dilemmas in a patriarchal society – that was ahead of its time. On his 150th anniversary, we shouldn't resist two cheers, at least.

As the Queen starts making her own Windsor wine, the industry enjoys a record year

✒ It's been a tremendous year for English wine with our vineyards producing an amazing 4m bottles, a record. And it turns out that the Queen is going to start making her own wine at Windsor, though you won't be able to buy it for three years and will, of course, have to wear a ridiculous hat while drinking it.

I popped along to English wine's annual show this week and tried as many as I could without falling down. The days when a French vigneron could say to me "yurr English wine, eet tastes of rain" are long gone, and some of the sparklers are now quite exceptional – far better than champagnes selling at the same £20-24 mark. In fact, some, such as Camel Valley, Ridgeview and Nyetimber, strike me as being just as good as the premium brands from famous names being sold to footballers and rock stars for more than £100 in shops and at even sillier prices in clubs and restaurants.

It's a matter of prestige. People still feel that for really special occasions, the wine must have the word "champagne" on the label. Soon, however, I'm sure people will say: "We're laying this aside for our daughter's engagement; it's from Cornwall…"

✒ I really enjoyed the royal wedding. I know most people didn't – the viewing figures were comfortably less than half the population – but I saw no point in leaving the country as some did. You could always keep the telly switched off.

But here are the seven worst things about it, aspects of the event that were actually quite annoying:

• Tony Blair and Gordon Brown not being invited. Whether Blair "cashed in" on Princess Diana's death (he didn't), or because Cherie refused to curtsey, or because Blair's memoirs said too much about his dealings with the royals, the snub was to all of us and to democracy. And it gave what should have been a national celebration a nasty, class-bound, party political tinge.

• Beatrice's fascinator, or "repulser" as it should have been called. As if Medusa had gone to Nicky Clarke.

• The fly-past. A miserable six planes! A real, eardrum-rattling, fly-past would have looked like an RAF raid on Schwenningen.

• Prince Harry's speech. Obviously we only have press reports, but a proper, traditional best man's speech would have been packed with disgusting jokes and filthy allusions to the groom's previous girlfriends. That is Prince Harry's role in life and he let us all down.

• John Rutter's specially composed anthem. Sounded like Coldplay.

• Elton John's hissy fit when he asked to be moved to a more prominent seat. Calm down, dear, as we say these days.

• The kiss. Call that a kiss? A bit of tongue, please, Will.

✒ Why does the BBC insist on calling the soldiers and police employed by various tyrants in the Middle East and north Africa "security forces"? For example: "In Syria, security forces are said to have killed up to 60 demonstrators…" Security is the last thing these people provide. The Beeb wouldn't say: "A bomb planted by IRA freedom fighters has caused at least 10 deaths…" Just say, "government troops".

✒ I've been watching some of the host of new cop shows on TV. (The BBC says it has scrubbed Zen because it wants more women detectives. Well, many of the women I know think that Rufus Sewell is quite all right to be going to on with. You might as well say: "Men aren't interested in watching Scarlett Johansson. They want to see burly chaps pouting on TV…")

The new crop of women detectives are real people, damaged and with problems. If they get on well with their male deputies, then they have a terrible relationship with their male superiors. As my colleagues in the Guardian have pointed out, the more realistic the cops, the more fanciful and improbable the murders. And the cliches remain the same, whether in Vera, Lewis or Case Sensitive.

Here are some more recent ones I've spotted: the first murder is usually the weirdest and is unexplained at the end. Any group of children having a boisterous outing will always stumble on a body. All mobile phone calls come at the worst possible moment. When the sidekick searches for a crucial clue on the internet, he invariably finds it immediately, usually with a cry of "bingo, boss!"

✒ Labels and notices, continued: Suzan Carter bought a pack of "whole almonds" from Sainsbury's: "allergy advice – contains nuts". David Voas also went to Sainsbury's, for a steak. The label gives instructions for cooking rare: "2 ½ to 4 minutes each side… Always check that the product is cooked throughout, and no pink colour remains." Thanks, paranoid lawyers!

Les Herbert bought some fish in his local posh supermarket, the one that pushes up house prices by just existing: "plaice fillets in a bespoke Waitrose crumb". A bespoke crumb? Sounds like a very annoying tailor's assistant in Jermyn Street.

Vic McLellan photographed a sign mounted on a fence by a stream near his home: "Kew Angling Society. Strictly No Fishing."

A reader who requested anonymity to spare his wife encloses a leaflet for the Estring brand vaginal ring, used to replace oestrogen for post-menopausal women: "The Estring vaginal ring is not recommended for use in children," it says. Into what bizarre mind could that warning have wandered?

Linda Paramor bought some limnanthes seeds for her garden. "Handy tip," it says on the packet, "plant carefully as they can be evasive." I love the idea of the flowers coyly hiding when anyone tries to admire them.

I didn't love the leaflet that came with Dick Tuckey's penicillin prescription: "Unwanted side effects can include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and black hairy tongue." No, please!

✒ David Scott startled me with a tale of a merciful guard on, of all services, Virgin. He was on a London to Manchester train sitting near two Norwegian tourists. One of them said he had lost his ticket and the ticket inspector let him off! "I won't tell you which train it was," David says, "because he would be sacked."

The Don's grand tour is small on horti and big on culture

One of the side effects of middle age is enjoying gardening and staying in on Friday nights. And every other night for that matter, though that's beside the point here. So an hour with Monty Don spent traipsing around other people's rather large gardens is never less than a pleasure, as Don is one of that rare breed of presenters who doesn't allow his ego to take centre stage; his enthusiasm and knowledge underpin the narrative and the pictures, rather than vice versa.

After taking us round Florence, Rome and the south of Italy, Don ended the series in the north of the country. And in the best traditions of the 19th- century grand tour, Don's journey has placed the emphasis on the cultural rather than the horti- in horticultural. If you want to know how to grow the best tomatoes, watch Gardener's World; if you want to know that tomatoes are non-native to Italy and that it took the Venetians years to realise you could actually eat the fruits of these strange plants that traders had brought back from South America, then stay tuned.

Starting in the Orto Botanico in Padua, the world's oldest garden dedicated to the study of plants' medicinal properties, taking in the Villa Pisani in Stra, the estate in Lucca annexed by Napoleon for his sister Elisa, the multimillion-euro lakeside villas of George Clooney and Richard Branson and winding up on the Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore, last night's episode was a lesson in Italian history from the Renaissance to the present day told through its gardens.

Fascinating as it was to see how the Italians assimilated both exotic plants and landscaping influences from around the world into their own distinct garden identity, the most remarkable thing for me personally was how Don managed to make me see the beauty in box hedges. Normally one glimpse of a formal layout with neatly trimmed hedges – Don showed us one that two gardeners spend four months a year cutting with scissors – has me wanting to run, but I found myself coming round to the idea. Is this the onset of old age for me, or am I just another to have fallen under Don's spell?

How much progress is Britain making on gay rights under a Tory-led coalition? Comedian Rhona Cameron, one of the first out lesbians on TV, takes on gay Tory MP Nigel Evans

Over the past few weeks, doubts have been raised about how far gay equality has really come: a male couple were thrown out of a Soho pub for kissing, it was revealed that no data had been collected on the Conservative election promise not to deport gay asylum seekers, and the ban on gay men donating blood may be lifted only if they haven't had sex for 10 years. Emine Saner brought together comedian and author Rhona Cameron and Nigel Evans, Tory MP and deputy speaker, who came out in December, to discuss. First, they talked about reports this week that kissing between same-sex couples on television could be banned before the watershed following a review.

Rhona Cameron: I know the review is about any sexual scenes before the watershed, but when it gets this "gay" focus in reports, it's very worrying.

Nigel Evans: It's sad that it was portrayed in that way. I don't think David Cameron would agree to only banning gay kissing before 9pm, but not heterosexual kissing. On equality legislation alone, it would simply not happen.

RC: The Conservative party does, as it stands, have more out gay people than other parties. It must have been difficult for you, or anyone who had to live a life that wasn't true to their heart, and I'm very pleased for you that you came out and are able to be free in what you are.

NE: I get asked what impact it's had on me, and I would say none, really.

RC: No, there will have been in your inner world …

NE: Yes, definitely.

RC: You couldn't have come out 20 or 30 years ago.

NE: It would have been a lot more difficult. I asked Gareth Thomas, the rugby player who came out, to give me some advice. Chris Smith [the former Labour MP], in coming out when he did was groundbreaking. Or someone like Peter Tatchell. I have huge respect for him the more I've read about him, and about how he has been pilloried for the battles he has fought. For me, being something like the 22nd or 23rd openly gay MP is not brave at all. I helped only a small number. Look at the fact that [cricketer] Steven Davies came out the other day, and Anton Hysén, the Swedish footballer. Sport remains a problem.

RC: There are no out lesbians in major league sport.

NE: If only we could get some gay footballers to come forward, that would help. It's daft to say there are no gay footballers in the premier league – of course there are. Every one of them who could possibly find the courage to come out would help so many people.

RC: I was one of the first out lesbians on British television, and I've often been the one who has had to represent the lesbian thing. It must be nice not having to mention it.

NE: I'm not a poster boy for gays, either.

RC: That's a title, isn't it!

NE: I'm too bloody old.

RC: When did you join the Conservatives?

NE: At 16, in the mid-70s.

RC: It does stun me that you can be gay and be in the Conservative party. How did you feel as a young person knowing you were gay, being involved in a party that put into force draconian measures like section 28, and the legacy of that? The reason people like me were bullied at a young age, which affected me for the rest of my life, was because we grew up in a climate of persecution and oppression. Are you telling me that when you heard the beginnings of section 28, you didn't take a hit for that, you didn't feel something in your heart?

NE: No, because I was going through denial, and what I would describe as my Neanderthal phase. It was just stupid, I clearly wasn't thinking. I probably thought, wrongly, that this is what the public want and we should concede it [Evans backed section 28, and once voted against lowering the age of consent]. Of course, I was completely wrong. I said it when I came out, I showed absolutely no leadership, whereas David Cameron has. When you say you can't work out how there are so many gays in the Tory party – David is hugely instrumental in that, because of his approach to gay issues and equality.

RC: There was some embarrassment around his interview with Martin Popplewell [Cameron made several gaffes when interviewed by the Gay Times in the run-up to the election]. He didn't look too comfortable then, did he?

NE: No. There was a hiccup there.

RC: Sometimes what they say isn't really what they feel, and when they're caught out, they say what they feel. To be fair, Chris Grayling [the Tory MP who said before the general election that B&B; owners should be allowed to bar homosexual guests] was dealt with, and I have to applaud that.

NE: He's been rewired.

RC: How do you feel about the news that the ban on gay men giving blood may end? Even though it only applies to men who haven't had sex for 10 years.

NE: Because of my position as deputy speaker, I'm not allowed to express an opinion, but what I can say is that a lot of my gay friends feel very unhappy. Equality is basically the rule of thumb, and that's what it should be irrespective of what the issue happens to be. If you have distinguishing elements between gay and not gay, you have a problem.

RC: It's ludicrous. There are so many heterosexual men who have unprotected sex and give blood. The Anthony Nolan Trust takes bone marrow from gay men. Do you feel your party are sticking to their promises on equality?

NE: As far as I can see, yes. Irrespective of what you're saying about the Martin Popplewell interview, David is very much at the forefront of opening doors, and there being so many openly gay members of parliament has helped the issue. There are still some people in all parties who are gay and haven't come out yet for whatever reason, and I suspect there are homophobic people in all parties. But things have moved on to a fundamental degree.

RC: Homophobic bullying is still one of the major reasons for suicide and self-harm among young people. I acknowlege and congratulate certain steps forward. But on the other hand, we can't sit here and make out it's all OK and easy to be gay.

NE: We're still getting gay people being beaten up in the streets of London, which I find incredible.

RC: I got an email recently from a 15-year-old girl struggling enormously – in this day and age. Something like 90% of teachers have said there is homophobic bullying. Seven out of 10 teachers have said they received no support when they reported it. What the Tories did was swore a pledge to help tackle homophobic bullying in schools, and yet those percentages have not come down. And there has been an increase in homophobic attacks. There are people who are demoted at work, and those who are still living sad lives of lies, who can't be themselves. If a party goes into power promising things – equality, tackling homophobic bullying, more support for gay asylum seekers – they should stick to that.

• Official website confirms golfer died at 2.10am Saturday
• Five-time major winner was 54

Seve Ballesteros, the legendary five-time major winning golfer, has died after losing his fight against cancer.

The news was confirmed by a statement on the golfer's official website which said: "Today, at 2.10am Spanish time, Seve Ballesteros passed away peacefully surrounded by his family at his home in Pedreña.

"The Ballesteros family is very grateful for all the support and gestures of love that have been received since Seve was diagnosed with a brain tumour on 5th October 2008 at Madrid Hospital la Paz.

"At this time the family asks for respect and privacy at such a painful time. Thank you very much.

Ballesteros, 54, a five-time major winner, had been recuperating at his home in northern Spain after a series of operations since being diagnosed with two malignant brain tumours in 2008.

His condition worsened on Wednesday, at which point he was admitted to hospital; rumours had swept Spain last week that Ballesteros's situation had taken a rapid downturn. On Friday, Ballesteros was under heavy sedation, with his family and friends understood to be preparing for the worst.

In an unfortunate coincidence, the Spanish Open – the last competition Ballesteros won as a professional in 1995 – is currently taking place in Barcelona.

José María Olazábal, the golfer closest to Ballesteros and inspired by him since childhood, was too emotional to speak to the media in the aftermath of his Friday round in Barcelona. "I can't talk," Olazábal said. "I can only wait, and cry."

Another Spanish golfer and Olazábal's playing partner, Miguel Angel Jiménez, was in tears upon completion of his second round. Olazábal, Europe's Ryder Cup captain, recently stated his dream that Ballesteros could be alongside him for the meeting with the United States in Chicago next autumn. The pair met a fortnight ago, at which point Ballesteros was in a wheelchair.

Olazábal's manager, Sergio Gómez, reported that Ballesteros's daughter had passed on details of her father's condition on Thursday. "Seve's physical condition was not good when José María went to see him, but they talked about golf and everything," Gómez said. "Then came the call yesterday to tell him that Seve was in a critical condition."

Ballesteros's illness initially came to light after he collapsed at Madrid airport in October 2008; during the intervening period, he has rarely been seen in public. Since his first surgery, which lasted 12 hours, he has undergone almost continuous chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In 2009, after his fourth chemotherapy course, Ballesteros labelled it "a miracle" he was still alive.

In 2010, during his last television interview with the BBC, Ballesteros spoke of fighting cancer. "You can't have it all in life," he said. "One day you feel fantastic, the next you never know what is going to happen. You just take a look at how many days of glory I had before. It has been a fantastic life and this, what has happened to me, is what I will call destiny; one test that God is putting on me."

Ballesteros, who retired from professional golf in 2007, was earlier regarded as a pioneer for the European game overseas. He had turned professional at the age of 16, in 1974, finishing second to Jack Nicklaus in the Open at Birkdale only two years later.

He was the first from this continent to claim a Masters title, in 1980, a feat he repeated at Augusta three years later. Ballesteros was the winner of the Open in 1979, 1984 and 1988. Besides winning a total of 87 titles in his career, Ballesteros played in eight Ryder Cups, claiming 20 points from 37 matches. He also captained a successful European team, fittingly on his home soil in Valderrama, 14 years ago.

Ballesteros had not been deemed well enough to make a planned trip to St Andrews to say a farewell to British fans at the time of last year's Open. At the Masters last month, Phil Mickelson dedicated a Spanish-themed champions' dinner to the absent Ballesteros, the man he credits with his own decision to start playing golf.

The Italian has seen enough big games and dealt with enough demanding owners not to be fazed by Sunday's showdown

A man as well balanced as Carlo Ancelotti has no business being a football manager. Certainly not in England's Premier League, where managers are expected to argue among themselves and snipe at referees as a matter of routine.

Not Ancelotti. Even approaching a weekend such as this, when he takes his Chelsea squad to Old Trafford on Sunday knowing that a win would put them level with Sir Alex Ferguson's team at the top of the table, nothing shakes his equilibrium or disrupts his air of knowing geniality as he wanders in from the Surrey sunshine after a training session to ponder on the problem of Wayne Rooney or to praise the match referee, Howard Webb. Not even the knowledge that his destiny is under discussion in two countries.

His team, fresh from winning the Double, started the new season with a rush. But the winter months saw a six-point lead transformed into a deficit of 15 points to Manchester United, the new leaders. And until the west London side climbed out of their mid-season slump, putting together 11 wins in their past 14 matches, the man who arrived in England two summers ago appeared to be heading for the exit.

Had Chelsea's season continued to disintegrate, the turning points would have seemed obvious. The first was the abrupt and unexplained dismissal in November of Ray Wilkins, Ancelotti's No2, an old friend of whom he said: "We wouldn't have won a thing without him." The second was the appearance in January of Fernando Torres, a £50m striker whose arrival forced Ancelotti to modify his preferred formation and who took 10 games to score his first goal.

The whims of powerful men, however, are nothing new to Ancelotti, whether they be Gianni Agnelli, Silvio Berlusconi or Roman Abramovich, and from his present vantage point he can argue that the real turning points were quite different.

"Manchester United against Arsenal last Sunday, and our win against Tottenham," he said. "If Arsenal hadn't won, it would be a different atmosphere around our game against United." Another one, he said, had come last month at the Hawthorns, just after their Champions League elimination, when West Brom scored first but Chelsea fought back to win.

On Friday he received the manager of the month award – "for April," he emphasised, implying that the fates should not be tempted. But no one knows whether a second league title, or even a near-miss, combined with a second consecutive failure to progress beyond the last eight of the Champions League, would be enough to persuade Abramovich to allow him another year at Stamford Bridge.

"It's not the moment to speak about my future," he said. "I would like to stay, but I am very quiet and calm. At the end of the season, the club will take the decision. If they decide to change the manager there is no problem. I've tried to do my best. If they consider my job good, I will stay. If they don't, they can change."

The unexpected turnaround of the past couple of months will have done his claims little harm. "Nobody thought we would be able to fight for the title," he said. "We were talking about qualifying for the Champions League. Fifteen points behind United was too much of a gap, but we closed it because we did really well for two months. Last year we built up a very good relationship with the players, and this atmosphere helped us to maintain good control of our confidence."

He has a perfect record – three wins out of three – against Ferguson in league matches and last year, after the victory at Old Trafford that took Chelsea to the brink of the title, he and Wilkins went into Ferguson's office for a glass of wine, only to find the United manager preoccupied by the racing on television. That match represented United's last defeat at home.

"I know," Ancelotti said. "Thirty matches, only one draw. Obviously they are the favourites as they have three points more. If they win, they will win the title. If we are able to win, then goal difference becomes important, and we have very difficult games against Newcastle and Everton, so nothing would be decided. But it would be important to be at the top of the table, after such a long time."

He spoke of the threat of Rooney and of Ryan Giggs, whose passes destroyed Chelsea in the two Champions League ties last month. But mostly that of Rooney. "He is a key player for them. It's difficult to stop him. His position is not so easy to control – he moves a lot, he comes back and works for the team. Obviously we have to do something. We never put one player against him, because it means changing our philosophy too much and we want to play our football. But it will be important to stay compact and keep our midfielders' and defenders' lines very close."

There has been one definite change of policy during the season. At Abramovich's behest, and with the forthcoming rules on financial fairness in mind, a group of young players – Daniel Sturridge, Gaël Kakuta, Jeffrey Bruma, Patrick van Aanholt and Josh McEachran – were among the substitutes during the first half of the season but have not been seen in the side in recent weeks.

"When we decided at the start of the season to use more players from the academy, it was a good decision," Ancelotti said. "We began really well, we were top and some of them played, although not many games. But when we had a difficult moment it was not easy to give them that responsibility. So we gave some the chance to go out on loan in January. We will decide at the end of the season if they come back or not."

Whether or not he will be around to influence those decisions, Ancelotti is intent on making the best of the last weeks of his very mixed second season. "Our bad moment was too long, I think. We could have done better. But now destiny has helped us to fight for the title again. We are excited and very happy. The season has not gone, as everyone suggested. This team is still alive."

'The way to treat cellulite is with smoke and mirrors'

It's that time of year when I'm inundated with press releases fanfaring new wonder cures for cellulite. My love affair with beauty momentarily stalls, my recycling bin overflows. A topical product – whether cream, gel, lotion or serum – can't possibly cure the orange peel dimples that occur naturally on almost every woman.

These indentations are simply the outward manifestation of fat cells. Cream can't dissolve fat, just as miracle bust creams can't produce it. I want to ask why, if a product really has the power to burn or grow fat, it is not being prescribed on the NHS to treat the morbidly obese or save severely premature babies?

In short, I believe cellulite creams are a nonsense. Furthermore, they create an extra neurosis for women where there needn't be one. I have never known a man who would be capable of identifying cellulite if his life depended on it.

The way to treat cellulite is with smoke and mirrors, or at least exfoliant and bronzer. A good body scrub, massaged on to dry skin (damp, if sensitive), then showered off, will remove dead skin cells to give a smoother texture, the illusion of firmness and a more radiant appearance. Here are my favourite scrubs. Bronzers, their partners in deceit, come next Saturday.

Sun Believable Scrub Me £18/200ml, sun-believable.com
If you hate the smell of marzipan, avoid. If you don't, feast on this super-fine, easy-rinse exfoliator.

Mama Mio O-Mega Body Buff £23/200ml, mamamio.com
Fantastic. Micro-fine particles in a moisture-rich base. Deflakes without a scratch, leaves skin glowing.

Garnier Body Tonic Sugar Scrub £7.14/200ml, boots.com
Smells like summer. Works fast and, unlike cheaper scrubs, has a dense grain.

Nuxe Fondant Body Scrub £16/200ml, bathandunwind.com
I love this natural, pampering scrub, which smells incredible and leaves a subtle sheen on glowing skin.

Ole Henriksen Rub n' Buff Salt Scrub £44/794g, beautybay.com
A huge pot of coarse salt that smells like lemon sweets and shifts every last flake. Use dry.

Liz Earle Energising Body Scrub £12.75/200ml, lizearle.com
A thorough scrub. Good on ingrown hairs left from waxing. A little goes a long way.

Professional garden designers have a trick up their sleeve - they inject colour into the permanent structures in their gardens...

Gardeners work their green fingers to the bone trying to coax colour from plants, but as anyone with a few grey hairs will tell you, sometimes nature needs a little help. So why not add some permanent colour or a few highlights to liven up your outdoor space?

As with so much in design, less is more, so sticking to a single colour will give the garden a sense of unity. It pays to purchase sample pots and paint old offcuts of wood. These can be placed around the garden to judge the effects of light, weather and associated planting, all of which can change how colour performs.

Colour on render and wood

One effective way to use paint is by taking a leaf out of interior design's book and creating a feature wall. Bricks and concrete will be transformed with masonry paint which you can have matched to almost any colour, even picking up the tones of a favourite feature plant. (Try Dulux masonry paint, from £24.98 for five litres.)

For easy maintenance it's best not to clothe the wall too heavily in plants. Grow climbers up galvanised steel mesh grids which can be lifted off hooks on the wall and laid on the ground when a repaint is needed. Masonry paint can also be used to revive old stone and terracotta pots, tying the scheme together.

If this sounds like a maintenance headache, there are other answers. Garden designer Jo Thompson is a fan of ready-coloured render. "I love the subtle tones with this effect and, best of all, because the colour runs right through the material, there's no need to keep reapplying." (Download a colour chart at k-rend.co.uk. It stocks a classy powder blue or pale grey.)

Of course there can be a place for brighter, stronger colours. A bright yellow bench, say, makes an eye-catching feature but can be put away in winter. (For wood try Cuprinol garden shades, from £19.98 for 2.5 litres; for metal check out Rustoleum CombiColor, from £23.50 for 2.5 litres.)

Perspex screens

Render or woodwork are obvious candidates for an injection of colour, but more unusual materials can help add a different flavour. "Coloured Perspex sheets are incredibly effective and I often use them as part of a screen to hide any ugly areas or create divisions," says designer Katrina Wells, of Earth Designs. "They have a funky, modern feel and they don't block out as much light as a solid divider." (Try Trent Plastics; from £1.47 per A4 sheet of coloured acrylic.)

Outdoor fabrics

Colour can come in softer materials, too, with the range of outdoor fabrics increasing year on year. (Try Osborne & Little's Zancudo outdoor fabrics, from £46.79 per sq m, at Curtain Up.) Exterior fabrics are UV resistant to keep colours fresh as long as possible and, although ideally taken in during winter months, can survive longer outside if you select those treated with an antibacterial agent.

Re-covering existing seat pads will freshen up a dining area and adding scatter cushions in a highlight colour can brighten neutral seating. To make a bigger statement, use a larger expanse such as a shade sail or even outdoor drapes hung from a pergola frame.

Material can also help tie together house and garden, as designer Lizzie Taylor points out. "Many of my clients have large areas of glass to link their living areas on to the garden. Soft furnishings are a really effective way to bring these two spaces together and sometimes it's as simple as picking up a key interior colour in some outdoor cushions."

Garden artwork

Taking this indoor/outdoor theme further, Taylor has also used artwork to inject colour into a garden. "Exterior prints can be pricey, but a simple trick is to take an interior canvas and paint it with yacht varnish for instant weatherproofing." (Try Ikea canvas printed pictures, from £25, and B&Q; for 1 litre of Ronseal yacht varnish, from £13.48.)

Arabella Weir added a cutting comment about someone in an email … then accidentally copied them in

Probably some of the people I've slept with – but I won't go into those murky waters since, incredibly, they're all still alive. And perhaps if I hadn't turned down the offer to translate my Saturday job at M&S; into a full-time retail management course when I was a teenager …

But the boob that haunts me is a recent one. I was organising a party of high-profile media folk – for my own self-aggrandisement, naturally – and particularly wanted one big name to talk to another big one while they were there. I emailed Big Name One beforehand to ensure that they got together and, as I couldn't remember how to spell Big Name Two, I typed it into the cc box, so that auto recognition would remind me.

Then I forgot to delete the cc before sending, so Big Name Two received a copy. It wouldn't have mattered except, that is, for the perky PS I'd written "You'll find he has the worst breath you've ever smelled." I thought I'd have to kill myself, but the person dealt with it stylishly, merely returning the message with the comment: "Don't think this was meant for me."

I asked a friend if I should beg for forgiveness, but they reckoned I should never mention the incident again to anybody, including myself, and apologies would make it worse.

Luckily, the injured party does not appear to bear a grudge, but the mortification made me reconsider the whole business of being mean about other people to raise laughs.

I started to think long and hard about how I take the sort of criticism I might mete out to others.

It also taught me never to email gossip when you're pissed (I'd had a couple of glasses). But it hasn't halted my phenomenal indiscretion. If you play with fire you'll get burned, and I'd rather get into trouble occasionally than play it safe. As Oscar Wilde said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. So the next time someone elects to amuse themselves by shouting out that my bum does look big in that, I shall react with elegant serenity.

Arabella Weir is taking part in Tesco and Cancer Research UK's Race for Life.

From private detectives to phone, email and internet monitoring, today's workforce is under constant surveillance

Andrew Cross doesn't wear a trench coat and a fedora. He hasn't got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he's not hiding behind a brick wall with a pair of binoculars. He doesn't resemble Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlowe or Jack Nicholson's JJ "Jake" Gittes – the iconic Hollywood private eyes – in the slightest. In his short-waisted grey jacket and black denim trousers, Cross, a private investigator with the London and home counties-based detective agency Answers Investigation, is suitably inconspicuous.

Another misconception about PIs is that they earn their crust tailing straying spouses, occasionally shinning down the next-door neighbour's drain pipe to snap the extramarital frolics through the window. In fact, the majority of Answers Investigations' business comes from corporate clients who suspect employees of malingering, theft or fraud. "They get tipped off about someone on sick leave, who may have a part-time job or be seen playing football," says Cross. "We carry out surveillance and provide evidence."

From "mystery shoppers" to swipe cards, from CCTV to phone, email and internet monitoring, today's workforce is under constant surveillance. Although often justified on the grounds of health and safety, customer relations or regulatory obligations, the real purpose is for personnel and performance monitoring.

Andrew Crudge, an employment solicitor at law firm Thomas Eggar, says surveillance at work can "raise the possibility of breaches to an individual's right to privacy, enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights and, effectively, incorporated into UK employment law, and of the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 on processing personal data".

Nevertheless, we can't reasonably expect total privacy at work so it's worth knowing how we're snooped on – openly and, especially, covertly.

To grant workers some privacy, law-abiding employers comply with a code of practice issued by the Information Commissioner (which enforces data protection laws), permitting them to monitor solely for valid business reasons, and only after they have informed employees of their monitoring policy. "It must also be reasonable and proportionate to the business need," adds Crudge. This rules out things such as cameras in staff changing rooms.

Although the code discourages them from doing so, bosses may snoop without our consent when checking for violation of company policies, quality control or evidence of business transactions. To get private investigators on board to check up on us secretly, they must have grounds to suspect criminal activity or serious misconduct, such as abuse of sick leave. But "the more intrusive the investigation, the more likely it is to be a breach of the employee's right to privacy", says Crudge.

Absenteeism is a big headache for British bosses. According to the 2010 Absence and Workplace Health Survey – commissioned by the Confederation of British Industry and Pfizer – of the 180m sick days UK workers took in 2009, around 27m were not genuine, costing employers an estimated £2.5bn. "We caught out one guy, too unwell to leave his house, playing five-a-side football," says Cross. A "broken ankle" didn't stop another from labouring at a building site. "People just don't think they'll get caught," he adds.

Fraud is equally widespread. According to the annual Global Fraud Survey by the risk consulting company Kroll, 88% of companies worldwide suffered from some form of it in 2010. In Europe, it's an inside job in 50% to 60% of cases.

Kroll's results show a striking increase in the theft of corporate data (detected in 27.3% of businesses, up from 18% in 2009), particularly in the financial and professional services sectors. Cross recalls a recruitment consultant who went it alone with – as his ex-boss suspected – a little help from his former employer's client database downloaded on to a memory stick: "They had no software preventing copying of confidential data."

Cross posed as a start-up sandwich seller and got himself invited to the consultant's new offices. "I taped the guy talking about starting a business and hinting at the 'good old database'," he says, "and filmed the client names on his whiteboard." He pulls out a packet of Sovereign Black cigarettes from his pocket, pointing to a tiny camera hole.

Internal financial fraud is less common, but it still occurred in 13% of the companies Kroll surveyed. Cross secretly filmed a manager in a pie manufacturing company, who was signing for more meat than had been delivered and pocketing some of the supplier's payment.

Footage was also unexpectedly captured of the man viewing pornography on his work computer. "With mostly manual workers and few computers, the company hadn't installed software detecting and blocking flesh-coloured pixels coming through from websites or in emails," says Cross.

Most large and medium-sized organisations do use such filter software, often with activity monitoring software that logs all user actions: applications and web pages accessed, all mouse movements, print requests, keystrokes and memory stick insertions. This technology facilitates a monitoring policy which employees sign, usually with little knowledge of how the policing works in practice.

Recording everything employees do at their desktop is not a "Big Brother" approach, says Francis Carden, founder of OpenSpan Inc, a software provider to the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and Vodafone. "The goal is to improve productivity."

No wonder: a recent survey by MyJobGroup.co.uk suggests that more than half of British workers access Facebook and other social media on company time – one-third for more than 30 minutes and nearly 6% for more than an hour a day. Social networking sites are also increasingly targeted by cybercriminals drawn to their huge user bases, putting employers at risk. Many employers block access to social networking sites altogether.

We also conduct our social lives from nine to five by email and phone. The Human Rights privacy law extends to the workplace, which means we have the right to a "reasonable" amount of personal correspondence and calls. However, it doesn't mean we have the right to use work email and phone for this purpose.

Employers can read our business emails. Although opening personal messages is off limits other than by exception, they can monitor our email usage for anything unreasonable or inappropriate. Most install software that searches for offensive or violent keywords indicating private or malicious traffic, as Tim Brown*, a former reporter on a regional newspaper, found out to his cost.

"I emailed a friend about two senior executives in my office having an affair, calling the woman a 'pissed-up hooker'," he admits. Two days later his editor threatened him with the sack for abusing the newspaper's email policy. "I got away with a warning, but I was made redundant six months later by the woman I'd been rude about."

While workers usually apply common sense when emailing friends from work, company phones can be used more freely. Bosses cannot eavesdrop on or tape calls without a business reason and must tell employees first, unless they have some evidence they are playing dirty with a competitor.

A recent survey by management solutions provider MDS found that employees use business landlines for personal calls and fail to disclose private calls on work mobiles in 79% to 90% of businesses. To counteract this, many employers use tracking software to monitor phone usage and spend. "The system can flag calls to specific numbers or destinations, or users charging more than £200 a month," says Drew Rockwell, chief executive of MDS.

Smartphones with global positioning systems offer employers another way to keep tabs on workers. It was recently revealed that iPhones record and store data about their owners' movements, while firms such as Crystal Ball sell mobile-phone monitoring apps that allow businesses to keep tabs on their employees' whereabouts and phone usage. "These are tough times and we need staff to be as productive as possible," argues Crystal Ball's managing director Raj Singh, who uses the app on his own employees but points out that a privacy option lets them become undetected at the end of the day.

What if employees find their right to privacy is being abused? "Mention the Information Commissioner's code of practice to your boss," says Becky Boston, a human resources specialist at Emphasis HR & Training. "If this doesn't work, you can raise a formal grievance." In 2007 the European Court of Human Rights awarded more than £6,000 to an employee of Carmarthenshire College in Wales, who had her emails, telephone and internet usage secretly checked.

Has Cross ever sailed close to the wind and bugged company premises? He shakes his head: "Normally, you can monitor use of company property – vehicles or computers – but eavesdropping on people is a legal minefield."

Corporate investigations remain rife, although not as rife as 18 months ago when people were less worried about losing their jobs. Cross investigates two or three new cases a week and, eight times out of 10, he has "seen it all before". Now he's off to catch a moonlighter, and no, he won't be lurking in a van with blacked-out windows.

"A fluorescent jacket takes you straight into a building," he says simply.

*Name has been changed

Staying under the radar

Human Resources expert Becky Boston offers the following tips:

• Be aware of any monitoring policy at work. Check your contract of employment, staff handbook or anywhere else your employer might keep it. If you're not sure a policy exists, ask.

• Ask what is considered fair usage. You may be allowed to use the internet for personal use during your lunch break, though sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube may still be blocked.

• Be smart. If you would not use your computer in the same way in full view of your manager, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

• Be aware of using company property after work. Use of company computers and mobile phones outside working hours may still be monitored.

• Don't use work email for personal messages. Set up a personal email address and only access these emails in your own time.

• Stay away from computer games. They can be addictive, so don't be drawn into playing those that require your attention throughout the working day.

• If in doubt – don't do it!

'I really wanted to write a chaper in epic verse, because I thought epic verse and PowerPoint in one novel, come on. Irresistible!'

When Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad was first published in the United States, it got great reviews and sank like a stone. The publishers wondered if the title was a problem; what is a "goon squad"? It might be off-putting to women, they thought. Egan despaired. "It felt like a potentially colossal lost opportunity." A year later, Goon Squad is a bestseller, has been bought by HBO for TV adaptation and a few days after my interview with her, went on to win the Pulitzer prize for fiction. "Are you Jennifer Egan?" asks the waitress in the (very booky) part of Brooklyn where we meet for lunch. There is such a thing, says Egan, as over-exposure. "If I was a person observing it I would be, like, when will she stop?"

In person, Egan is slight, modest, at odds perhaps with the force of her prose, which is lit by a casual brilliance and so compacted as to be almost tangible. As well as the Pulitzer, she has won the National Book Award (beating Jonathan Franzen's Freedom), a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and yet, she says, "I've never been that confident. I don't tend to think, swaggeringly, I'm going to ace this. It's just not who I am."

Goon Squad is Egan's fourth novel. It breaks with the genre of her previous novel, as did the novel before that and the one before that, as is Egan's habit. Every time she starts a new project, she says, she is itching to relieve the exhaustion of the previous one. After her first novel, The Invisible Circus, a coming of age story, she wrote Look At Me, the satirical story of a model who loses her looks in an accident, and then a gothic novel, The Keep. It probably loses her readers. The Keep was enthusiastically received by people whom she suspects won't identify with Goon Squad – which is loosely set around the music industry, although don't let that put you off. Egan is guided only by what interests her at the time of writing. "I'm kind of looking for thrills, honestly. That's what it's about."

The new novel is broken into 13 interrelated stories, each focusing on a character seen out of the corner of one's eye in the previous chapter. If it sounds irksome, it is saved by pace and sheer readability. Egan is so swift and funny, so light on her feet, that her reputation lingers on the borders of chick-lit, which might explain her omission from the Orange prize shortlist in favour of more earnest titles. It's an absurd oversight, although Egan won't, of course, allow it as such. "The only thing I feel bad about is that it would have made my publishers so happy," she says. She is a great fan of Emma Donaghue's novel, Room, the favourite, which, she says, "is seriously good. It may be partly that I'm the mother of two boys, although I'm not generally interested in books that are about motherhood; I run a mile from that kind of thing. But I just found . . . it walloped me. I was in awe of what she pulled off."

Egan's writing habits are shaped by necessity. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, a theatre director, and their two young sons. Before she picks up the boys from school she strives for five to seven pages a day, by hand. "And that can happen really quickly; I can be done with that in an hour or two. But I sometimes spend a lot of time avoiding doing it, taking four hours to do what I could've done in one. I try not to write more than that, even if I'm tempted to, because if I go too far I'm really drained for the next day. I can't do more than seven or maybe eight without jeopardising the rhythm."

The desire to become a writer struck suddenly and without warning when she was a teenage backpacker in the early 1980s, traipsing across Europe, lonely and depressed, missing her family. This was the era of queuing for the public phone box: "There was a kind of intensity to the isolation of travel at that time that's completely gone now. You had to wait in line at a phone place, and then there weren't even answering machines. That feeling of waiting in line, paying for the phone and then not only having no one answer, but not being able to leave a message so that they would never know you called. It's hard to fathom what that disconnection felt like. But I'm actually very grateful for it. Because it was extreme. And that kind of extreme isolation showed me that I wanted to be a writer."

Why?

"I wish I knew the answer. I don't know. I think there was a kind of clarity to being reduced to myself in this extreme way. I was also really scared. I kept having what I think we would now call panic attacks. This would've been the summer of 1981 and I just thought I was flipping out. Somehow in that extreme state, I wrote constantly; harrowing journal pages where I'm narrating my own panic. 'I don't understand why I can't make it stop' – trying to understand what I was scared of." She smiles. "And I suppose the essentialness of writing for me was revealed in that experience." Egan eventually got hold of her mother on the phone, who told her to come home to California, which she did.

She could, I suggest, have written an early version of Eat Pray Love. Egan makes a face. (Reviewing that book for the New York Times, she wrote: "What's missing are the textures and confusion and unfinished business of real life, as if Gilbert were pushing these out of sight so as not to come off as dull or equivocal or downbeat.") She is a big fan of Gilbert's, she says, although not of that book.

Before leaving for Europe, Egan had had thoughts of being a medic, like her grandfather. "I loved the idea of being a doctor – plunging into the lives of different people – but also the investigative aspect of it. I was a sciency kid; I loved chemistry." Medicine fell by the wayside when she developed a squeamishness about blood in her teens. Then she wanted to be an archaeologist. "It was at that time when the Leakeys were making a lot of discoveries and it felt like archaeology was really in the headlines. My fantasy was 'wow, reconstructing lives from previous times using tiny artifacts'." She laughs to acknowledge the greater truth in this. But, "then I payed to go on a dig in summer, and found it to be kind of hot and dusty and not really what I had in mind. I realised that my fantasy had literally nothing to do with the reality."

She returned to southern California at a difficult time; her mother and stepfather had just split up; the house was sold and a lot of her stuff was gone. "I've always felt really sad about that. I'd saved so many things, for years and years. I know it's silly, but, all of my Barbie dolls with all of their clothes, preserved. It had been a terrible situation and they'd sold their house and my mother was in this apartment, and I didn't even want to be out of the room from her. I would call to her from a different room, that's how upset I was. But I recovered fairly quickly and went to college in the fall."

She used experiences from her trip around Europe for her first novel, The Invisible Circus, about a girl whose sister commits suicide on her gap year, and who retraces her steps to find out why. It's the most conventional of her novels. "It's the kind of book that makes some people cry. It's the kind of book that people say to me, gosh, when will you write another book like that?"

The idea for Goon Squad came to her after her reading group got stuck into Proust. It took them about seven years to plough through In Search of Lost Time, during which she became obsessed with how to represent entire lifespans, non-sequentially and in the way people actually experience them, that is as a constant negotiation between reflection and anticipation. Like the best satire, much of what Egan writes has already turned into reality; one of her characters is a hapless PR, employed by a dictator to rehabilitate his image: after the book came out, it was revealed Gaddafi had done something similar. (Public relations, in Egan's landscape, has come to manipulate human behaviour so egregiously as to be considered a branch of particle physics.) And she is experimental. The most arresting part of the novel is the chapter written in PowerPoint, by a teenage girl in the near-future, writing her online journal.

"I had a few chapters that I couldn't make work," she says. "I really wanted to write a chapter in epic verse, because I thought epic verse and PowerPoint in one novel, come on. Irresistible! But the problem is – I'd been reading Don Juan, which is just so fun and rollicking, very postmodern in that 19th-century way, where Byron is interjecting commentary about local events, making little digs at his enemies, then effortlessly flowing back into Don Juan's adventures. I thought, God, if I could do that it would be amazing. Of course, he was one of the greatest poets ever, that's why he could do it. And I'm not a poet at all. I got a couple of stanzas into that one and thought, this is a disaster."

The PowerPoint chapter manages, somehow, to be very moving and only works, she says, because the medium underlines a structural point she was trying to make about brevity: specifically, the awkward, silence-imbued relationship between a boy and his father. It's not merely a gimmick, although it looks startling on the page and I wonder that her publishers didn't protest. Yes, she says: "I thought they might say, no, this is too expensive, or too far out. And I was perfectly prepared to have that chapter be an url." She filed the first draft of the book without that chapter, and only slipped it into the final edit. "I did it sneakily. They were expecting light revisions. But I thought, all I'm going to do is make everyone frightened by telling them I'm writing in PowerPoint. And I was really possessed by the need to make it work." Inevitably, when she sent it to her agent and editor, neither could open the attachment and she had to print it out and fax it to them. She laughs. "They did not follow my instructions. My agent immediately called for technical support."

Partly as a reaction to this, Egan imagines that her next novel will be much more conventional. She's not fully into a new project yet – is at what she calls that "dangerous point" of fending off starting. Most years, she writes a couple of long magazine stories for the New York Times, and the two forms, the insularity of novel-writing, and the external movement of journalism, cross-fertilise, although she is wary of using the journalism as a displacement activity. "I always feel like I don't want to do it, and that it's getting in the way of what I want to do. I used to be able to do both at once when I didn't have kids, because I worked so much, but now I really can't. It feels like a bigger sacrifice, so I don't do quite as much journalism. But the two interact all the time. Being forced out in to the world is huge for me, it really broadens the possiblities of what I can write about."

Egan can accommodate the various roles in her life with relative ease. The difficulty she says is in the transitional moments. "When I first had a child I really had a hard time trying to figure out how it was all going to fit together. Because I felt like, when I was with him, I wanted to be writing and I should be writing. And when I was writing, I felt like I should be with him, and wanted to be with him. So I was unhappy a lot. But over time that conflict seems reduced. I can't quite explain it. They seem to intermingle more easily. It's often just getting from one to the other which is where the discomfort still lies.

"I'll walk to pick them up at school, it's 15-20 minutes, listening to music as I go, and often as I'm walking I'm uncomfortable. Miserable and depressed. But then when I see them I transfer to the other world. And their concerns are so immediate, which I find wonderful. As a writer, I'm not very interested in domesticity. But as a human, it's fantastic, because I find it so freeing. Accomplishing little domestic tasks can really give me satisfaction. I will be thrilled for having worked out some minor logistical problem with our schedule."

She finds publicity onerous. She used to be very bad at public speaking, she says, to the point where even holding the table at a dinner party would make her anxious – "six or seven people all listening to me; I didn't like that feeling of separation from them." This improved over time and she can address an audience, these days, with only occasional trouble, although in a limited way she finds fear can be useful. Working from a position of light pessimism is the thing that drives her, the thing she gets from starting each novel in a totally new genre. After Goon Squad, she is thinking around the possibility of historical fiction, a more straightforward form of storytelling, because "I'm tired of the fragmented approach, and crave a centrality."

Nonetheless, it will be new to her. "In a way, I'm always trying to do something I'm not qualified to do," she says. "So I feel that lack of qualification. And I'm scared. And I have a tendency to think things may not/probably won't work out. That's my basic mindset." It is one that, this week at least, will be difficult for Egan to maintain, although of course it's her job as a novelist to occupy multiple points of view simultaneously. She smiles. "I think the one thing that's changed over time is that I've come to realise, as a fiction writer, the fact that I don't think it will work out, doesn't mean that it actually won't."

• Serb wins 6-4 4-6 6-3 to set up semi against Thomaz Bellucci
• Roger Federer faces Rafael Nadal in other semi-final

Novak Djokovic came through one of the toughest tests of his unbeaten season to date to extend his extraordinary winning streak to 30 matches and book his place in the Madrid Open semi-finals.

Djokovic needed two hours and 27 minutes to see off the home favourite David Ferrer, a finalist in consecutive recent events at Monte Carlo and Barcelona, and set up a last-four clash with Brazil's Thomaz Bellucci.

The Serb's win was all the more impressive for the way he bounced back from the disappointment of losing his serve to drop the second set, before eventually marching home 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.

Djokovic's crucial break in the deciding set came in the fifth game, nudging him into a lead he never looked like squandering. He broke the fading Ferrer again to close out the match in style.

The unseeded Bellucci, however, shares Djokovic's confidence after the conqueror of Andy Murray continued his giantkilling run with a 7-6, 6-3 win over Tomas Berdych.

Prior to Djokovic's win, Bellucci said: "I think I can beat any player. Djokovic and [David] Ferrer are very good players and they are in a very good moment for themselves. But they are not invincible."

Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal and Federer will go head-to-head in the second semi-final after both men came through their respective last-eight clashes without dropping a set.

Nadal, the world No1 and reigning champion, showed no rust after his previous round walkover against the injured Juan Martín Del Potro as he dismissed Michael Llodra 6-2, 6-2.

Nadal lost only eight points on his own serve in the 75-minute rout and said: "It was quite good, especially here at the altitude. It's a bit more difficult on serve but I felt quite good on court and served well."

Next up is Federer, Nadal's opponent in each of the past two finals, after the Swiss world No3 got the better of a tough clash with double French Open runner-up Robin Söderling 7-6, 6-4.

After nudging through the first set tie-break Federer faced break points in the sixth game of the second set but survived and grabbed the crucial break in the penultimate game of the match before serving out to win.

In the women's event, Victoria Azarenka continued her superb run of form by beating Lucie Safarova 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 to move into the semi-finals and within one more win of boosting her world ranking to four.

The fourth seed, a winner in Miami and Marbella in recent months, showed no ill effects from the shoulder injury which recently forced her out in Stuttgart as she wrapped up victory in just under two hours.

Azarenka will face Julia Goerges in the last four after the German – who defeated world No1 Caroline Wozniacki in the previous round – beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-4, 6-2.

China's Li Na ended the encouraging run of unseeded American Bethanie Mattek-Sands with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 triumph and will next face 16th seed Petra Kvitova, who came from behind to beat Dominika Cibulkova 3-6, 6-3, 7-5.

Tell us what you think

I was shocked, stunned, upset and moved by Liz Seccuro's recollection of her college rape and bravery in pressing charges years later. Phew, I thought, luckily that wouldn't happen these days – the law is on the victim's side and cover-ups to protect the reputations of proud institutions are things of the past. Or are they?
Nicola Davies
Uley, Gloucestershire

I, too, was raped at university, by my ex-boyfriend, who offered to walk me home and attacked me at my flat. Like Liz Seccuro, I told my friends. Some were very kind, but we were only 20 at the time and others thought it wasn't really rape. I could not bear to see him around campus, so I left uni soon after. Seccuro is right – rape shapes everything you do and takes you on a journey that you don't want to go on. There is always an underlying fear for me that I will be raped again. Life does move on, but it is very hard to live with.
Name and address supplied

Lucy Mangan says, "It's weird to be growing a penis inside me". No, Lucy, it is weird even to think like that, let alone publish it for all to see.
Roy Lee-Faulkner
Stalybridge, Cheshire

Thank you, Lucy Mangan, for the brilliant pregnancy article – the first sensible, non-strokey, earth mother thing I have read in ages. Not very Guardian, but I loved it.
Ellen Colefield
Sheffield

Listing "five to avoid" in popular culture, Stuart Heritage includes "Natalie Portman's quality control" as topping the list of Oscar-winners who make bad subsequent project choices. Why didn't he consider similarly successful male actors who made wrong turns in their careers? It's not as if there aren't many examples – Ben Affleck, say, who got his Academy Award for screenwriting, which should have made even clearer to him what was wrong with Armageddon or Pearl Harbor.
Bryn Hughes
Wrexham, north Wales

Anything for the Weekend, sir? How about Tim Dowling? He's from the States (do love him, though). How about Dear Rapist…? She's from the States. Or how about Jesse Eisenberg? He's from the States. Nearly every week, you seem obsessed with things "over there". Well, I like here, too, and Europe.
Dave Johnstone
Eridge Green, East Sussex

What Happens When You Try To Leave The Church Of Scientology? was a rehash of secondhand allegations from someone who, by his own admission, had not pursued the religion for more than 25 years. The article does give some acknowledgment of the positive effect Scientology has had on the lives of its adherents and the world at large. Anyone who wants to know the true story of Scientology can tour a Church of Scientology or visit Scientology.org to learn about the work of the church around the world – raising awareness of human rights, preventing drug abuse, restoring morality and giving disaster relief.

Graeme Wilson
Public affairs director, Church of Scientology, East Grinstead, W Sussex

I feel sorry for the correspondent after advice on breastfeeding. Dr Smith would be well advised to check WHO guidelines, which recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months with continued breastfeeding until at least age two. It is no wonder that Britain is among the lowest breastfeeding nations in western Europe.
Chris Curran
Hereford

If Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's simple Sri Lankan bream curry has 21 ingredients, how many does his not-so-simple one have? Has he been spending time with Heston?
Simon Gretton
By email

• Got something to say about an article you've read in Guardian Weekend? Email weekend@guardian.co.uk. To be considered for publication on Saturday, emails should include a full postal address (not for publication), must reach us by midday and may be edited. Or send a response on Twitter to twitter.com/guardianweekend.

How accurate can it really be?

Few sentences have irritated me more in recent weeks than this, from the jacket of The Procrastination Equation by the psychologist Piers Steel: "If you think you procrastinate because you're a perfectionist, you're wrong." Singling out Steel is harsh, I admit: he probably didn't write that line, and the book itself is great. Even the argument behind that sentence is persuasive: perfectionists are more likely to seek help for procrastination, he argues, because it offends their perfectionism, so researchers mistakenly imagine there's a causal link. But the jacket's tone encapsulates a position that's increasingly prevalent today – in David Cameron's "happiness index", in much coverage surrounding the launch of the (broadly excellent) Action for Happiness movement, and in 100 books on "the surprising science of" this or that. The position is this: that if scientific studies have reached a conclusion on some aspect of psychology, the argument's over. (And, yes, I know I rely on such studies in this column. "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue" – La Rouchefoucauld.)

For all the near-unchallenged popularity of the science of happiness, though, there are some awkward problems. One has to do with unrepresentative samples: as mentioned here before, too many experiments rely on citizens of white, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (Weird) countries. Then there's the intrinsically provisional nature of science: any conclusion reached might be overturned next week. But there's a more fundamental philosophical problem, too: even the best scientific studies can't fully penetrate the experience of being you.

This is because, as Daniel Dennett puts it, science is by definition "third person": its whole point is dealing with things others can observe, and in procedures they can try to replicate. The place where happiness and sadness happen – your conscious experience of being yourself – is intrinsically first person. You can never perfectly communicate, even to your closest friend, your experience of subjectivity. That doesn't mean scientists can't study consciousness – they do so all the time – but it does mean that to talk about things like happiness, science must translate what you mean when you say, "I feel happy" into something more objective: your responses to a questionnaire, say. (According to one head-spinning philosophical position, the whole external world is ultimately ungraspable, not just other people's minds. After all, everything we know about it comes through our senses – so how could we ever be certain our senses weren't fooling us?)

None of this is to suggest happiness science is worthless: going with the scientific evidence is usually advisable, especially if you're spending public money on policies to promote wellbeing. Nor should it provide solace for pseudoscientists, who peddle what looks like scientific evidence but isn't. Rather, it highlights the possibility of strategies for happiness that are neither science nor pseudoscience – a case made recently for psychoanalysis by the writer Robert Rowland Smith, who suggests that its focus on the unique properties of the client-analyst relationship might place it beyond meaningful experiment. And it shows that while the science of happiness may come close to understanding your mind, we shouldn't forget that it can never quite get all the way. In the final analysis, when it comes to your inner experience, no study (or dust-jacket) can conclusively tell you you're wrong.

oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk
twitter.com/oliverburkeman

'We've done seven dry runs to the hospital, none of them successful. The satnav, for some reason, refuses to believe such an institution exists'

If you're reading this, I'm in labour. I hope your day's going better.

I've done all I can by way of preparation. My hospital bag, assembled and packed by Mum in a manner that would make any Krypton Factor champion weep for very shame, has been in the hall for six weeks. It contains clean nighties, clean knickers, clean dressing gown, two packs of newborn-sized nappies, a packet of maternity pads that I prefer not to think about, six babygros, a baby hat, a fan, a water spray and some cereal bars that look like the kind of thing you should undertake only if you are in peak physical condition, not trying to push a baby out of a reluctant orifice. I presume Mum knows what she's doing. I have always presumed she knows what she's doing.

Alongside it is the supplementary bag I have packed for myself. It contains four Twixes, a Creme Egg, Bunny (my faithful and only non-judgmental childhood companion) and a selection of comfort reading that caused what I strongly feel to be an unnecessary number of disagreements between me and Toryboy. I tried to put in Maeve Binchy's Light A Penny Candle. He took it out.

"No son of mine is going to be born in the vicinity of one of your Bridget O'Bridget sagas," he said.

"I'm not even going to be looking at it. It's just to have. I'd like to know it's there. It's the bibliographic equivalent of Bunny."

"No."

No matter. I've taken out three of the maternity pads in the other bag and slipped it in there instead.

What else? My godmother and great-aunts have been alerted so the novena chain has begun.

Toryboy and I have decided that the baby will take his name. He doesn't know it's because I spoke to Mum about it and she said, "Oh, yes, let him have the name. Everyone knows children belong to their mothers really. Changing the name just makes the dads feel like they've got something to do with it." It's a robust attitude, and one that explains much.

We've done seven dry runs to the hospital, none of them successful. The satnav, for some reason, refuses to believe such an institution exists. Rather than buy a new one, Toryboy has chosen to interpret this as a challenge to his masculinity and intends to do the journey unaided. That's fine. The bookbag and I are going by taxi.

After a brief but intense discussion, Mum has agreed to meet us at the hospital and stay for the first hour or so to get me settled.

"But it should be your and Toryboy's time," she argued.

"What? What? Now you're attempting detachment? After 36 years of making sure you haunt my every waking and sleeping  thought?"

"But he's your husband and the father."

"Nobody can prove any of that. I had papers destroyed. What's with you? Have you been on the internet again? Who's filling your head with all this nonsense? No, you're coming. You didn't send me to university on my own, you're not leaving me now. It'll be like September 1993 all over again. You come, you unpack while I sob inconsolably with fear and regret, you make me eat something, you leave. Three years later we'll hopefully agree again that it all worked out fine in the end."

So that's it. We're ready to go. Whether we're ready to come back with a baby in tow is anybody's guess. I'll let you know how it went when I make it back to work in six weeks, six months or 18 years' time, however long it takes to find the new normal, though I'll try not to bang on about him thereafter. Wish me luck.

actress

Coliseum, London

At first sight it seems really perverse to invite Terry Gilliam to cut his teeth as an opera director on a work that isn't really an opera at all.

Berlioz labelled it a "dramatic legend" and intended it for the concert hall; the pacing of the score, with its extended orchestral interludes and ballads, and character pieces for many of the solo vocal numbers, hardly suggests a living, breathing piece of theatre.

But the hazy dramatic boundaries, and the latitude for interpretation that Berlioz's recasting of the Faust legend allows, gives a maverick creativity like Gilliam's the freedom to flourish.

Working together with a creative team of huge experience, he has refracted the story through 100 years of German history and culture, from the 19th century to the Third Reich, from the romantic imagery of Caspar David Friedrich, through the grotesqueries of Otto Dix and George Grosz to Leni Reifenstahl's film of the 1936 Olympics.

Sometimes too much is packed into each scene – if one imaginative stroke doesn't quite hit the mark, another is likely to comes very soon after. But the best of what Gilliam comes up with is by turns breathtakingly imaginative and horrifyingly vivid, whether it's the Hungarian March serving as a backdrop to the outbreak of world war one, Faust's seduction of Marguerite while Kristallnacht is taking place outside her window, Marguerite's final scene awaiting the train that will take her to a concentration camp, or Faust and Mephistopheles's ride to the abyss in motorbike and sidecar.

No punches are pulled, the use of video is perfectly judged, and everything on stage has a musical as well as visual purpose.

Gilliam's direction of the singers, whether en masse or individually, is detailed and precise too. Christopher Purves, right, as Mephistopheles is the master of ceremonies, by turns suave, demonic or caricature, and commandingly incisve in everything he sings. Peter Hoare as Faust, far right, is a bizarre hybrid between Shockheaded Peter, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a mad scientist; he sings his numbers with great style and sense of line; Christine Rice as Marguerite has two solos, the Ballad of the King of Thule and the Romance, and the still points of beauty. Only the chorus lack of presence disappoints, along with Edward Gardner's undemonic treatment of some orchestral passages.

Rating: 4/5

Khalid al-Fawwaz charged with helping al-Qaida plan 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania

A Saudi man accused of conspiring with Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two US embassies expects to be extradited to face charges after more than 12 years in British custody, according to documents which have emerged from a US court.

Prosecutors in New York have charged Khalid al-Fawwaz with helping al-Qaida to orchestrate the 1998 car bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people.

A letter from a lawyer seeking to be appointed as Fawwaz's US defence counsel said: "He [Fawwaz] anticipates extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States within the next few months to face these charges."

The lawyer, David Kirby, told Reuters that he had been in touch with Fawwaz's British lawyers, who he said had told him they had exhausted all efforts to fight Fawwaz's extradition, and he could arrive in the US in the next few weeks.

Kirby's request to be appointed as Fawwaz's US defence lawyer was denied by Judge Lewis Kaplan of Manhattan federal court, who is presiding over the case. He asked him to renew his application once Fawwaz arrives.

Fawwaz, who was arrested in 1998, moved to London in the 1990s from Kenya with his family, and established an organisation called the Advice and Reformation Committee, a political group headed by Bin Laden that was said to be campaigning for peaceful reform in Saudi Arabia.

US investigators said Bin Laden, through Fawwaz, published several threats against the US in the 1990s for keeping troops in Saudi Arabia, and also against so-called crusaders for allegedly waging war on Muslims.

Fawwaz has fought against his extradition, denied any involvement with Bin Laden and rejected allegations that the committee was a British arm of al-Qaida.

Ahmed Ghailani, a former bodyguard for Bin Laden, was sentenced to life in prison in January over the embassy bombings, following a six-week trial in Manhattan. He was the first former Guantánamo Bay detainee to face a civilian trial in the US.

He was captured in 2004 in Pakistan after a battle with government troops, and was later found guilty of being part of the plot in which hundreds of were killed in twin bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Four co-defendants of Ghailani were convicted of all charges, including joining an al-Qaida conspiracy to kill US nationals, during a 2001 trial in New York.

The president has good reason to be thankful to the assault team – the raid has silenced his critics and reshaped his image

Barack Obama flew to Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border on Friday to thank in person the assault team who stormed Osama bin Laden's hideout. He has good reason to do so: the raid has transformed the way Americans view their president, changing him overnight from dithering nerd-in-chief to decisive action man.

At emotional meetings, held behind closed doors to protect their anonymity, he awarded the units involved the highest honours available to him and heard their first-hand accounts of what happened inside the Abbottabad compound.

Afterwards, at an open meeting at the base with other troops, there were cheers when Obama spoke of these "quiet professionals" who had ensured that the terrorist behind the 9/11 attacks "will never threaten America again". He had told them: "Job well done."

The president spoke to a hangar full of cheering soldiers after meeting privately with the full assault team, army helicopter pilots and navy seal commandos who executed the dangerous raid on Bin Laden's compound and killed the al-Qaida leader in Pakistan early on Monday.

"Thanks to the incredible skill and courage of countless individuals … the terrorist leader that struck our nation on 9/11 will never threaten America again," Obama said, speaking at an army post whose troops have sustained heavy losses in a war in Afghanistan, losses that have grown on his watch.

A US official said that material retrieved from Bin Laden's compound shows he was in touch with senior al-Qaida figures and was able to plot future attacks on US targets from his suburban Pakistani hideout. The official said the trove of documents and computer material also includes new video of Bin Laden, both unreleased propaganda tapes and more candid shots like home videos.

Obama owes a large debt to the special forces. Since he began campaigning for the presidency in 2007, he has faced criticism that he was not up to the job. First, the Hillary Clinton campaign implied that he was too inexperienced, that he could not handle the 3am crisis call. More followed from John McCain and Sarah Palin. Then came the rightwing commentators Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement. He was too detached, too academic. His patriotism was questioned as was his religion.

Stephen Hess, one of America's most respected commentators on the White House, acknowledged Obama's changed status since the death of Bin Laden. "His image, fair or unfair, is that he is an intellectual, which he is and which is unusual in a president. Obama thinks about things and takes his time in making decisions, which I think is a good thing."

But Hess, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution, saw the Abbottabad decision as "gutsy, tough, made quickly" and responsible for changing the dynamics of American politics. "It is going to be very hard for Republicans to use any more that label of weak and indecisive," he said.

Helping to reshape the image are those pictures of Obama in the situation room looking grave, grim and anxious as the raid is taking place. He was risking not only the special forces he had sent in but his own presidency, with the danger of a Jimmy Carter-style Iranian hostage rescue debacle that could have finished any hopes of a second White House term.

Richard Wolffe, the author of two books on Obama, acknowledged that the perception had changed but insisted the view of the president as weak and naive was always wrong. "If he was as cautious as people said, he could have flattened the building with a bombing raid," he said.

"He makes a few big gambles, but cautiously. He will make the gutsy move, but gets there more slowly. It is a weird combination because we are used to someone who shoots from the hip like Bush or someone more hesitant like Kerry or Clinton. But we have someone who is a combination of the two, someone who is cautious but who makes the calls." There is a hard core that will never be convinced that Obama is truly patriotic and will continue to insist he was not born in the US, that he is a secret Muslim. But their numbers have dwindled fast because of the combination of his release of his birth certificate a fortnight ago (and his ridiculing of Donald Trump at the White House correspondents' dinner) and the Abbottabad raid. Beck, Limbaugh and former members of the Bush administration joined in the praise.

David Frum, who as an assistant to Bush wrote the "axis of evil" speech, deplored the vilification of Obama as some dark-skinned alien. "So we had this situation where he was not an American, a Muslim, not a patriot. I do not think it [the Bin Laden killing] ends the paranoia but it shoves it back from the centre to the margins. He has shown he understands that the nation has enemies and that force is sometimes the only remedy," Frum said.

The White House and Pentagon almost threw away their advantage with its poor handling of the aftermath, offering exaggerated accounts of what happened and then having to recant. Obama's meeting with the 9/11 relatives on Thursday and his trip to see the troops at Fort Campbell have undone some of that damage.

Within minutes of Obama announcing last Sunday that Bin Laden was dead, US commentators were tweeting that the president had the 2012 election in the bag. That is grossly premature. Obama has not enjoyed the kind of spectacular jump in approval ratings that he might have expected. He has not soared into the 80s, instead seeing relatively modest rises that take him from the mid-40s to the mid-50s. That is mainly because of the sluggish economy.

Democratic strategists, speaking anonymously, reluctant to sound negative in a week of good news for the president, are far from convinced he is invincible and are nervous about the slowness of the economic turnaround.

Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon polling, agrees. "There is no reason for Democrats to say it is over. I think Republicans thought the same thing in 1991." George Bush Sr had seen the Berlin Wall fall on his watch and had high approval ratings for his handling of the Gulf war, but still lost.

"There is plenty of time for Obama's shine to fade. Now you have all this stuff surrounding the release of these photos. Not wanting to put them out feeds into the old Obama image, not wanting to offend Muslims. We are a tabloid country. We want to see pictures of Bin Laden," Coker said, predicting that Obama's modest boost in the polls would last only a week before being halved.

Obama came to power with some of the highest approval ratings in US political history. Millions turned out for his victory night party and inauguration. He has managed to get some of his programme through, delivering on his promise to introduce near-universal healthcare, due to begin in 2014. He has had other gains too, on gay rights, a US-Russian arms reduction deal and preventing the shutdown of government. But there is a lot left to do, including closing Guantánamo, reforming immigration laws and ending tax breaks for the wealthy. These failures have brought criticism from the left. Clarence Jones, a former lawyer and adviser to Martin Luther King, writes regular commentaries calling on the left to mobilise and press Obama to do more. While pleased that it went well in Abbottabad, he would like to see the president "apply the same careful, premeditated, calculating weighing of options about major domestic issues as he did in determining which course of action to pursue to get Bin Laden". Jones, who helped draft King's "I have a dream" speech, believes there was an undercurrent of racism behind many of the jibes about the president not being up to the job. "Yes, his academic professorial background was used by his critics to portray Obama as some ivory tower intellectual incapable of taking decisive action. Regrettably there was a racial undercurrent in the suggestions he was not up to the job." Jones does not believe that the removal of Bin Laden has exorcised that.

Politics will return to normal in Washington next week. The Republicans will resume their confrontation with the White House over the size of the national debt. Catching Bin Laden has given Obama an edge in those negotiations and an edge in the longer term. National security is usually a point of weakness for Democrats. But next year, if any Republican rival questions his credentials, the president will have an easy, one-word answer: "Osama".

Quick-cook polenta is one of the great standbys of the store cupboard. But it needs a bit of embellishment to show off its best side

Of all the dry store cupboard ingredients, quick-cook polenta makes the fastest meal. But remember that polenta needs plenty of enhancements – butter, cheese, olive oil – to turn on its soft and soothing charm.

Grilled green polenta (V)

This rich dish needs a simple, sharp salad. Later in the year, try diced tomatoes very lightly dressed with olive oil and red-wine vinegar instead of this rocket salad. Serves six.

40g basil
20g parsley
20g rocket
10g tarragon
1 clove garlic, crushed
70ml olive oil, plus extra for greasing
600ml water
150g quick-cook polenta
70g parmesan (or other mature hard cheese), grated
70g unsalted butter
Salt and black pepper
100g ricotta

For the salad
100g rocket
250g cherry tomatoes, halved
½ small red onion, thinly sliced
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice

Put all the herbs, the crushed garlic and the olive oil in a food processor, blitz to a paste and set aside.

In a large pan, bring the water to a boil, pour in the polenta and stir continuously until cooked, three to four minutes. (You may need a touch more water to make it more spreadable.) Fold in the parmesan, butter, a teaspoon of salt, some black pepper and the herb paste. Now fold in the ricotta – swirl this through, rather than mixing in uniformly. Adjust the seasoning to taste.

With a palette knife, spread the polenta in a 22cm by 22cm baking tray lightly greased with olive oil. (Wet the knife with cold water to stop the polenta sticking.) Leave for 30 minutes to cool and set.

Heat the grill. Cut the polenta into six and space on a baking tray. Grill for eight minutes, until it takes on some colour. Mix the salad and season lightly. Serve a piece of polenta with some salad alongside.

Asparagus with polenta (V)

The two cheeses add complexity, but you could use just one, albeit doubling the quantity. Serves four.

16 asparagus spears
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper
30g walnuts, roughly chopped
½ garlic clove, crushed
100g quick-cook polenta
20g unsalted butter
20g parmesan (or other mature hard cheese), grated
20g stilton (or other blue cheese), crumbled
Grated zest of 1 lemon plus 2 tsp lemon juice
40g soured cream
1 tbsp chopped parsley

Bring a large pan of water to a boil, blanch the asparagus for two minutes, drain and refresh in cold water. Pat dry, gently toss in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat a heavy frying pan and chargrill the asparagus spears for two minutes, turning once, so they colour all over. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Mix the walnuts with the garlic and set aside.

Pour half a litre of water into a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, then pour in the polenta. Stir constantly on very low heat until cooked, about three minutes. Add the butter, parmesan, stilton and half the lemon zest, and stir until the cheese and butter melt in. (You may need to add a little water to bring the polenta to pouring consistency.) Stir in half a teaspoon of salt, or to taste, and some black pepper.

To serve, spoon a dollop of polenta on to each plate, followed by two teaspoons of soured cream. Lean four spears of asparagus on the polenta. Sprinkle over the garlic walnuts, followed by the remaining zest, a drizzle of lemon juice and the parsley. Serve straight away.

• Yotam Ottolenghi is chef/patron of Ottolenghi and Nopi in London.

What to drink with the spears?

According to conventional wisdom, asparagus is well up on the list of "tricky ingredients to pair with wine", but I reckon the problem is overplayed. True, asparagus on its own can make whites taste oddly sweet, especially if they're oaked, but stick to crisp, dry, young whites and you should be fine.

The obvious match is sauvignon blanc, which can taste of asparagus itself. I'd personally avoid the very asparagussy ones (cheaper New Zealand and South African bottles) as being a bit too much of a good thing and stick to more minerally styles such as a classic sancerre or cheaper touraine sauvignon. Or – and this is really nice during the homegrown asparagus season – an English sauvignon taste-alike such as Bacchus, a modern cross of sylvaner and riesling. The award-winning Cornish winery Camel Valley does an attractive one – the 2010 vintage (£12.95; 13% abv) – as does Shawsgate in Suffolk (£9.99, £12.95, Great Western Wine, Bath; 10.5% abv). And if you serve your asparagus with goat's cheese, it will bring out the flavour of the wine – a very accommodating ménage à trois.

If you find this style too acidic, add a dollop of rich, buttery hollandaise to your asparagus and instead drink a richer white, for instance the lusciously creamy Innocent Bystander Chardonnay 2009/10 (13.5% abv) from Australia's Yarra Valley (£9.49, West Mount Wine of Huddersfield, £10.44, The Sampler, London – wine-searcher.com for other stockists). It would also work with Yotam's recipe this week, where the cheesy richness of the polenta offsets the grassiness of the asparagus.

Give asparagus an Asian spin with seasonings such as soy and sesame, and you'll find a dry riesling rides to the rescue; or serve it with its other soulmate, eggs, in a quiche, omelette or frittata, and a sparkling chardonnay or blanc de blancs will hit the spot.

And you can even drink asparagus with a red if you char-grill it and serve it with olive oil and slivers of parmesan, or with mushrooms, whose meatiness sets off a red nicely. Not a massive belter of a shiraz, but a light Loire, cabernet franc-based red with some fresh herbal tones of its own, such as Sainsbury's well-priced Domaine du Colombier Chinon 2009 (£6.29; 12.5% abv). Pop it in the fridge for 20 minutes first.

For more wine suggestions with asparagus, check out my website, matchingfoodandwine.com.

fibeckett@live.com
Photographs: Full Stop Photography

Matthew Fort answers readers' culinary queries

I am changing my hob to an induction and have been trying to source a griddle pan. The only ones available seem to be very, very heavy (Le Creuset). The one I have is Tefal with a red dot in the middle, and it works brilliantly but won't do for induction. Any suggestions?
I quite like the heft of my cast iron, but I know what you mean. The trouble is that normal lightweight materials – stainless steel, aluminium – are not magnetic, so won't react with induction hobs. However, there is the BBC Ready Steady Cook Bistro Griddle Pan which, it is claimed, is suitable for induction hobs (£22, from wilkinsonplus.com). Russell Hobbs also does one that is lighter than the cast-iron variety (£40, from direct.tesco.com).

I hate my fan oven. It cooks far too fast, dries food out, needs to be turned down almost to nothing for stews, spatters fat and still cooks faster on the top shelf than the bottom. Do other people like fan ovens or am I a freak?
Having avoided fan ovens like the plague for most of my cooking life, I, too, am currently adjusting to life with one. I would agree with some of your criticisms. But it's not without its advantages: it is efficient – so efficient, in fact, that you can reduce the temperature for a recipe by about 20C, and shorten cooking times by 10 minutes or so per hour. Not much use, I agree, if you want long, slow cooking for a stew or low-temperature roasting, but every little helps, as someone once said.

• Got a question for Matthew? Email food.for.fort@guardian.co.uk
twitter.com/matthewfort
Visit Matthew's blog, Fort on Food

A Scandinavian classic that's perfect for breakfast, elevenses or teatime

The Danish cook and activist Camilla Plum is comparable to our own Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the vigorous, passionate way she writes about food and her garden. Her book The Scandinavian Kitchen combines foraged foods with familiar, everyday ingredients in an inspired way. Also look for Signe Johansen's Scandilicious, which is focused on modern Scandinavian cooking and baking. Here's my take on a classic.

400ml milk
Seeds from 3 or 4 cardamom pods
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
500g strong white flour, plus extra for shaping
50g unsalted butter
1 medium egg
50g caster sugar
1 sachet fast-action yeast
1½ tsp salt
Oil for kneading

For the filling
3 Ryvita
125g dark brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
Butter
Beaten egg, to finish

Put the milk, cardamom, lemon zest and 50g flour in a saucepan, whisk well and bring to a boil. Spoon into a mixing bowl, stir in the butter and leave until warm. Beat in the egg, sugar and yeast, followed by the remaining 450g flour and salt. Mix to a soft and very sticky dough, cover and leave for 10 minutes.

Lightly oil a worktop and knead the dough on it for about 10 seconds, then put the dough back in the bowl, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Repeat this kneading twice more at 10-minute intervals, then leave the dough for an hour.

With nonstick paper, line the base and sides of a very large round or square baking tin, about 25cm in diameter. Grind the Ryvita in a food processor until very fine, then mix in the sugar and cinnamon. Lightly flour the worktop and roll the dough to about 0.75cm thin. Dab a little butter over the dough, sprinkle the cinnamon mixture over it, roll it up tightly and cut into 2-3cm slices. Lay these cut side up in the tin, cover and leave for 45 minutes. Brush with beaten egg and bake at 220C (200C fan-assisted)/425F/gas mark 7 for 15-20 minutes, until brown on top.

danlepard.com/guardian

If you're after an authentic and tasty Korean meal, it makes sense to head for an area that's home to Europe's biggest community of Koreans

New Malden is home to the biggest Korean community in Europe. That fact is probably more resonant if you know where New Malden is, which I have to admit I didn't. It turns out to be a suburb of west London, farther out than Wimbledon, less far than Richmond, and less grand than either. Twenty thousand Koreans live there, for reasons that go back to the 1960s, when the Korean ambassador lived in the area and the community started to grow up around him.

This is the answer to a conundrum that has bothered me for some time: where are the UK's good Korean restaurants? Most of the world's cuisines are represented here, particularly in London, which has a curious, novelty-hungry public and restaurant-sustaining populations from most parts of the world. Korean food, though, hasn't been well represented, which is a pity because it can be sensationally good. A historic racist insult directed at Koreans by their Japanese neighbours was "garlic-eaters", which provides a clue as to what's distinctive about their cuisine. (It has dated as a put-down – a bit like trying to diss a nation by calling them "Sex with the light on people".) Korean food is like a more vivid, highly flavoured and spiced version of Japanese food. The non-Japanese flavours of garlic and chilli feature prominently, and no meal is complete without a kick of kimchee, the chilli-hot national dish of fermented cabbage. There's nothing not to like about this food – the only problem has been where to find it.

Answer: Su La, in New Malden, which was doubly camouflaged on an anonymous suburban street behind a spectacular set of roadworks. The front-of-house is run by Hannah Paek, whose father is the chef. It's the perfect mix, with authentically Korean cooking married to a sympathetic understanding of less-informed, non-Korean customers. You'll need some help understanding what, and how much, to order, and Ms Paek is the person to give it.

The atmosphere is Korean in at least two senses: one, lots of Korean customers; two, the table-top grills generate huge amounts of smoke, and despite groovy extractor fans that lower to the table, some fumes escape. The charcoal braziers, brought to the table in tongs, are a great piece of theatre, and a reminder not to leave without trying some of the grilled dishes.

But there's some other ordering to do first. Crisp, delicate pancakes layered with cooked vegetables are a must-try, and come with a particularly appealing sesame and soy dip. They're served with a range of condiments: kimchee, seasoned bean sprouts, mooli (I think) and salted chinese broccoli (ditto). These are used to tweak your mouthful of food according to your personal preference of taste and texture.

"Authentic specials" include a wonderfully hot, sweet, deeply flavoured ox tripe stir-fried with chilli. I also braved yook hwe, a magnificently crazy starter of chopped raw beef, stirred with finely sliced pears, egg yolk, soy sauce and sugar, and served with the beef still partially frozen. It was by far the best partially frozen dish of raw beef with pears I ever expect to eat. I can also recommend the significantly less challenging salted grilled mackerel.

Then it's time for the grills. The house special is marinated beef rib, cooked over the white-hot brazier and then chopped into manageable portions by a waitress with scissors. Then you wrap it in lettuce – to make what in Korean is called a ssäm, the generic word for anything wrapped – and add condiments: miso paste, bean sprouts, seasoned spring onions are recommended. From the extras menu, the chilli-hot seasoned cucumber is a personal tip.

You won't want a pudding, which is just as well since there aren't any, apart from the orange they bring you with the very reasonable bill. It's a big menu, and I reckon I've tried only about 5% of it; there's a lot to look forward to in New Malden. On my next visit, I'm definitely trying another of those "authentic specials", seasoned cow leg.

They may not be the prettiest cuts to look at, but cooked properly, their flavour and texture is unrivalled. What's more, they're cheap, too

It has given me great pleasure over the past decade to see the rehabilitation of offal, not only on smart restaurant menus but, even more thrillingly, in the repertoire of home cooks. Many have thrown off squeamish timidity and embraced true nose-to-tail eating with gusto. Or even with guts.

For some, it may have started as a bit of kitchen posturing ("Admire my adventurous palate!"), but most see the sense and value of an exercise in flavourful thrift (most offal cuts are relatively inexpensive). However you arrive at offal appreciation, the variety of flavours and unique textures achieved when the body parts in question are properly cooked usually turn what may have started as an experiment into a regular treat.

Today, I'll spare you the internal organs and instead focus on a trio that benefit from long, slow cooking. Oxtail is perhaps the least challenging, or most familiar, of the three – it's just an unusual cut of meat on the bone – but the arrangement of linked segments, fibrous meat and gelatinous tendon transforms into a very special texture and deep flavour unmatched by any other cut.

Cheeks, too, when cooked with care, have a very special grain and yielding succulence. Pig's cheeks are traditionally turned into Bath chaps – brined, slow-cooked until tender and served as a cold cut – but today's recipe uses fresh cheeks, which are becoming a more regular feature at good butchers' and farmers' markets.

And so to tongue (and I'd suggest ox tongue rather than calf's, because the latter is likely to come from a veal animal raised on the continent). Brined and slowly simmered, it's another example of a special texture – rich and almost pâté-like – that can't be faked or imitated. I admit, a whole ox tongue looks formidable – it's so like a giant version of the human equivalent, it forces us to confront the fact that we are, undeniably, consuming what was once a living, chewing beast. But if we can't deal with that, should we really be eating meat at all? Put another way, if we're going to raise animals for food, let's treat them well and waste nothing. Especially not heads and tails.

Ox tongue with lentils and green sauce

Don't be put off by the long list of ingredients – it's very simple and you will have plenty of tongue left over for sandwiches and salads. Serves six.

For the brine
500g demerara or light muscovado sugar
1.5kg coarse sea salt
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp juniper berries
5 cloves
4 bay leaves
1 sprig thyme

For the tongue
1 whole ox tongue
1 bouquet garni (1 bay leaf, 4 parsley stalks, 2 sprigs thyme)
1 carrot, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 celery stick, chopped
1 leek, chopped
1 clove garlic

For the green sauce
1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley
1 large bunch mint, marjoram or basil (or a combination thereof)
1 tbsp capers, rinsed and chopped
8 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp white-wine vinegar
Extra-virgin olive oil

To finish
300g Puy lentils
1 bouquet garni (1 bay leaf, 4 parsley stalks, 2 thyme sprigs)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the brine ingredients in a large pan, add five litres of water and, over low heat, stir until the sugar and salt dissolve. Bring to a boil, bubble for a few minutes, remove from the heat to cool, then refrigerate until cold.

Put the tongue in a non-metallic container. Cover with the brine, weighting it down, if necessary, to keep it submerged, and leave in a cool place or fridge for four to five days.

Remove the tongue from the brine and soak in fresh, cold water for 24 hours, changing the water at least once more. Put the tongue in a pan with the bouquet garni, vegetables and garlic, cover with fresh water and bring to a gentle simmer. Poach very gently for two and a half to three hours, until tender and yielding. Lift out the tongue, cool and peel off the coarse outer skin.

To make the sauce, finely chop the herbs and put in a bowl with the capers, anchovies and garlic. Add the mustard, seasoning and vinegar, toss, then add enough oil to loosen the mix to a spoonable consistency.

Cook the lentils as per the packet instructions (though adding a bouquet garni to the cooking water), then dress with oil and season. When the tongue is completely cold, cut into 1 cm slices and serve with the lentils and green sauce.

Pigs' cheeks in cider and mustard sauce

You don't need the whole cheek for this, just the trimmed, meaty cushion part. Serves six.

2 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
30g butter
2 onions, finely diced
1 tsp thyme leaves, coarsely chopped
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 celery stick, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
6 free range pig's cheeks, trimmed
2 tbsp flour, seasoned
400ml cider
500ml chicken stock
1 bouquet garni (2 bay leaves, 2 parsley stalks, 2 thyme sprigs)
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp double cream
3-4 tbsp finely chopped parsley

In a large casserole over medium-low heat, warm a tablespoon of oil and the butter. Sauté the onion, thyme and a pinch of salt until the onion is soft and translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the celery, sauté for five minutes, add the garlic and cook for a further minute. Scrape into a bowl and set aside.

With the heat on medium-high, warm the rest of the oil in the same pan. Dust the cheeks in seasoned flour, then brown in batches and transfer to the veg bowl. Deglaze the pan with cider, scraping up any bits, then add the stock, vegetables and meat. Season, add the bouquet garni and bring to a simmer. Partially cover and cook for three hours, until the meat is very tender. Lift out the meat and keep warm. Reduce the sauce to thicken slightly, remove from the heat and stir in the mustard and cream. Return the meat to the sauce, warm gently, season to taste and add parsley. Serve with mash and wilted greens.

Oxtail and chorizo stew

This is even tastier if made a day ahead. Serve with crusty bread and a crisp, green salad. Serves six.

2kg oxtail, cut into 4-5cm slices
5-6 tbsp plain flour, well seasoned
3 tbsp olive oil
400g cooking chorizo, skinned and broken into 4cm chunks
2 onions, finely diced
4 medium carrots, peeled and quartered
1 celery stick, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp tomato purée
250ml dry sherry (or white wine)
1.2 litres beef or chicken stock
3 tbsp finely chopped oregano
1 bouquet garni (3 parsley stalks, 2 thyme sprigs, 1 bay leaf and a strip of orange zest)
1 cinnamon stick
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 handful parsley leaves, chopped

Dust the oxtail pieces in seasoned flour and shake off any excess. Over a medium-high heat, warm the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed casserole. Brown the oxtail on all sides in batches – don't overcrowd the pan; as each batch is done, transfer to a bowl. Pour off all but two tablespoons of oil, brown the chorizo pieces and, when done, add to the oxtail bowl.

Turn the heat to low. Sweat the onions until soft and translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the carrots and celery, fry gently for five minutes, stir in the garlic and tomato purée, and cook for a minute. Tip in the sherry, let it bubble away to reduce by a third, then return the meat to the pot.

Add the stock, oregano, bouquet garni and cinnamon, and season. If the liquid does not just cover the meat, top up with water. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer very gently, part-covered, for three hours, stirring from time to time and topping up with a splash of water if it looks dry. To serve, skim off some of the fat, stir in the parsley and season to taste.

• Learn new skills on River Cottage's four-day cookery courses; rivercottage.net for details.

'Marooned' on a desert island off the Belize coast, the castaways learn to survive using spearguns, machetes and plastic bags

The signal comes from the front. The helicopter is going down: we have to jump. I step out on to the skid, then take another step into air. Seconds later, I'm in the Caribbean sea, swimming for a small patch of sand between thick mangrove trees on a nearby island. Water fills my boots and makes my clothes heavy which, along with the current, means progress is slow. I wade on to the beach, closely followed by my fellow "survivors".

This is what we've trained for. For the past five days, we've sailed the blue waters around remote Turneffe Atoll, 40km off the coast of Belize, setting up rudimentary camps on deserted beaches to learn the essentials of island survival. The staged emergency exit from the helicopter marks the start of our Isolation Phase, in which our group will have to put what we've learned into practice, unsupervised. With air-con and cooling cocktails, these islands might be paradise. But without such comforts as beds, food, water or relief from the intense heat, these are inhospitable environments where survival depends on our ability to find or produce food, water, shelter and fire from our unpromising surroundings.

We were warned it would be tough. "The whole point is to make you psychologically uncomfortable," instructor Ian Craddock told us on day one. "This is not happy camping." He's a former SAS instructor and a mate of Bear Grylls and Bruce Parry, and the new desert island survival course he's put together is refreshingly light on health and safety hang-ups. ("Here's a speargun – point it at what you want to hit, and shoot".) It is also full of genuine hardships and tests of character. Not to be undertaken lightly.

We're in troubled waters from the start: when we set off from Caye Caulker at the beginning of our week's training phase, the sea is so rough that even hardened captain Papa Joe looks perturbed. We spend our first night on a sandy strip of shore lined with gnarly, sun-bleached tree trunks. Our team is, disappointingly, all male – I've never particularly enjoyed exclusively male company. But it's a good group, and over the course of the week, the eight of us – including an Austrian hypnotist, an American web marketer and an aeroplane engineer whose face peels, bleeds and peels again in the sun, making him look like Freddy Krueger's Welsh cousin – form a tight unit.

We spend mornings on the beach learning how to make and start a fire, how to build a shelter, how to scale, gut and cook fish. Ian demonstrates how to use a machete with a 14-inch blade: it's a vital piece of kit that can help provide food (opening coconuts, for example), water and shelter.

Real survival is a world away from TV survival, he stresses: "There are no fancy tricks, no squeezing water from cow poo. It's simple – all you need to do is stay alive."

We learn techniques that produce small but life-saving quantities of fresh water: if you wrap plastic bags around palm tree leaves, they "sweat" and the water vapour condenses and collects at the bottom of the bag. We find and hack open coconuts for the water and flesh inside.

The sun is relentless, the intense heat exhausting. Water is rationed. Food is basic and limited. But the worst thing by far, an absolute drain on spirits and morale, is the bug situation. Mosquitoes and flies pester us from the moment we landed. They make simple tasks difficult and unpleasant and they disturb our sleep (in hammocks under our makeshift shelter). (There's talk of scouting out a group of islands further south for next year's trips, to reduce the problem.) A few days in, my body is covered in itchy red bumps.

But there's great satisfaction, too, in learning skills that are mostly new to me, and in stripping life down to the essentials. The island demands assertiveness. We have to be alert and think ahead because what we do or don't do has direct consequences on, say, our food or water supplies. And in the moments when the bugs are kept at bay by campfires, I enjoy the beauty of our remoteness. There are pink sunsets that make the tropical sky glow, campfires on sandy beaches under crescent moons, mornings swimming alone in the clear sea.

The best parts of the day come when we are out on the boat and diving to catch dinner. I've never speargunned for fish before but find I have a knack for it, bringing in a good share of the group's evening meals. I engage in epic chases over coral landscapes with parrotfish and snappers.

There's a Last Supper-ish feel to the night before Isolation. Ian has deliberately withheld information so that we're unprepared but we know it will be tough. Not everyone completes these courses; some radio in for an early rescue from whatever torment breaks them.

After the helicopter has dropped us from a height of eight metres into the sea and we've swum to shore, we inspect our survival kit – a dinghy and speargun, plastic bags for collecting water, a first aid kit and two machetes – and survey our surroundings.

We are surprisingly efficient. Four of us build a wooden structure with a roof of palm tree fronds. Others collect firewood and coconuts. We set up plastic bags on green leaves and dig solar stills to start the slow process of collecting water. By early afternoon, we're sheltering from the sun in our roomy "hut".

The speargun turns out not to be much use. We go out on the dinghy but there's no reef close to the island on which to fish. (The fish hide in the mangroves close to the island, Ian later tells us.) We manage to keep fires burning through the night, but the insects are still a major annoyance, and with no beds or hammocks, no one gets much sleep. I spend most of the night by the campfire trying to stay warm, feeding the flames with coconut husks and tree branches.

The following day, the group is sapped of energy. Tony (ex-British army) manages to catch a few small crabs and cooks them on the fire. We eat the minuscule amounts of white flesh, but mostly live, Papillon-style, on coconut. Ian checked in briefly the night before, dropping off a few small fish and a bottle of water as rewards for our good work (a cheat, but a welcome one). But we are all hungry, thirsty, tired, itchy from our bites and drained by the heat. We collect wood to keep the fire burning, but otherwise spend lethargic hours in our shelter.

Time slows, which is both a blessing and a curse. There's time here to think and also to talk. We have long philosophical discussions about memory, sexuality, sport, the history of mankind. The group's camaraderie maintains our vital PMA (Positive Mental Attitude, the top tier in the army's triangle of survival needs). There are filthy jokes, games of hangman and I-spy. Inevitably, conversations find their way back to the cold beers and junk food that await us back on Caye Caulker after rescue. This thought sustains us.

But mostly, Isolation is a test of mental fortitude and the capacity to endure discomfort. Rescue can't come quickly enough.

We keep the fires burning through another difficult night, and early in the morning sit together, chewing on small chunks of coconut, watching through a gap in the mangroves for the small yellow boat that will carry us away from the island. When it comes, we board quickly. Relief passes through our bodies, each one of us bearded, dirty, exhausted, but alive.

• Bushmasters desert island survival courses (bushmasters.co.uk) in Belize cost £1,300pp. The next courses are in 2012 and include 2-11 February, 16-26 February, 1-10 March. It also runs jungle survival courses in the Amazon in Guyana. British Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com) has daily flights to Belize with connections via Miami, starting from £889 return. For more information, see travelbelize.org

Think fruit or wine, not sugared almonds

Pink is not a colour. It is an industry and a cultural symbol. Pink stands for a particular definition of femininity, one of arrested development, where princesses represent the pinnacle of ambition and parties are about wearing cumbersome dresses rather than having fun. It's a lot like footbinding, except you buy it in Toys R Us.

This phenomenon is annoying because it means that these days a grown woman in pink has about her something of the Katie Price.

Annoyingly, I like pink. It's a really pretty colour; and besides, I look ill in orange and yellow. For this reason, I am keen to champion fashion's current bid to reclaim pink for the centre ground. At Paris Fashion Week, I bought a pair of pink Zara trousers, the exact pink of a kir royale with which I am now obsessed, and I am far from alone: the pink trouser has been the LBD of spring 2011.

The pink trouser trend was a game-changer. By taking the tailored trouser – which is a bit androgynous and rather modern – and colouring it pink, the sugar of the shade was adjusted to suit a more grown-up palate. So much so that pink dresses are back on the style radar.

How to wear a pink dress without looking as if you are chasing some ghastly, age-inappropriate notion of cuteness? Avoid the Barbie zone of the spectrum. A peachy pink such as this is much more grown up (indeed, detractors might feel it verges on Queen Mother territory). A deep, rich kir royale pink is a good alternative. Think fruit or wine, not sugared almonds, and avoid the shades that set your teeth on edge.

• Jess wears: Dress £229, from Fenwick. Shoes £75, from Russell & Bromley.

Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Hair and make-up: Jen Fechter at Era Artist Management

'A typical Parisian weekend would begin with eggs Florentine and pink champagne'

I approach dressing myself like dressing the characters in my plays. One day I'll be Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box, then a creature from an Angela Carter story, then Woolf's Orlando. These trousers are my favourites. They're by Vivienne Westwood and remind me of Rupert Bear. My dear friend and neighbour Florence, who is 89, always enjoys my outfits. When I visit her, she takes tea in a beautiful kimono from the 1920s, and tells me stories about her four husbands.

I used to live in a garret in Paris at the top a of a glorious Haussmann building. I was studying at Lecoq Theatre School. When I arrived at the garret, there was nothing except an ominous pair of earplugs. I soon realised why; the room next to mine was shared by a man, his wife and his lover, and they used to have unbelievable arguments every night.

A relaxing Parisian weekend would begin with eggs Florentine and pink champagne for breakfast in the Marais, followed by a trip to my favourite flea market, Porte de Montreuil. I'd have lunch at the Hôtel du Nord on Canal St Martin, made famous by Carne's beautiful film of the same title.

Paris was filled with adventure. I once ended up running around stark naked in the garden under Sacré Coeur in the moonlight, and for a while I worked as a magician's assistant. The magician approached me while I was in Café de Flore. It was rather a problematic job in the end. The rabbits he used for tricks kept dying.

• Are you a Weekender? Email a photo and a brief description of how you spend your weekends to weekender@ guardian.co.uk.

The latest rebranding of the paisley look is more Su Pollard than Syd Barrett

I was recently in front of Su Pollard in the queue at Victoria station. I know, I know, but that's the life of a journalist: one endless round of head-spinning celebrity encounters. I knew it was Su Pollard because she was dressed as Su Pollard – ie, in a manner that made your eyes involuntarily cross. Her tights were cerise, her ra-ra skirt berserk, but not everything she was wearing was as understated as that.

I mention this because Pollard's sense of aesthetics seems to hang over the current vogue for "psychedelic" men's clothing. I love the brief period of British menswear between the smartness of mod and the luridness of flower-power: paisley shirts and vintage militaria. In an America scarred by Vietnam, people took acid and began fomenting plans for revolution. Here, lysergic mind expansion's main effect seems to have been to instil an insatiable desire to dress like a Victorian.

It's a look you can't bring back without looking parodic, which is why what's now touted as the psychedelic look seems to have more to do with Su Pollard than with Syd Barrett: clashing colours and patterns, op-art prints, dip-dye and tie-dye and sweaters described as "blotchy intarsia" – which sounds like something you'd make a discreet appointment at a clinic about, but turns out to be a knitting technique – all thrown on at once. A lot of the stuff is lovely in isolation: one style mag had a photo of a James Long shirt with a beautiful, mind-blowing print and a price to match. But all at once? In the parlance of the era: it's too much, man.

• Alexis wears: Shirt from a selection, by Etro. Jeans £120, from Urban Outfitters. Shoes £125, by Russell & Bromley.

Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Grooming: Jen Fechter at Era Artist Management.

Up and away: Eye masks and Kirsten Dunst's hair. Down and out: Jelly shoes and tricky nail polish

Going up

Otis Batterbee Lavender-filled travel eye mask heaven. Think pistachio or gold cord – or blue stripe shirting. Anyways, get one...

YSL hi-tops Trainer obsession of the week. Rejoice

Melancholia blonde Love Kirsten Dunst's light bleach blond hair in the upcoming Lars von Trier film. Particularly when it's scruffy and down. See trailer

Stripy Ikea parasols They come in candy pink, lime, navy or black. And for £8.16, too – 2011's hamper/garden fairy lights?

APC & Tooshie Bikini simplicity. Who needs bells and whistles on the beach?

Going down

Tricksy nail polish You can keep your WAH nails. It's all Dior's Aloha right now

Jelly shoes No, they're not staging a comeback. They've been back for at least two, if not three summers. We still don't like them

Colourful watches Unless it's a classic toy, we're not interested

Baths Have you seen how much fun those young nudey scamps are having in the Tom Ford Neroli Portofino ads?

To celebrate the launch of our new city guides we're offering three short breaks to London or Paris in a prize draw

My wife takes care of the administrative side of things in our family. So, technically, this problem at passport control is all her fault

It's the end of our holiday, the one where my wife had to do all the driving because I forgot my licence. Like many left-hand drivers, she hugs the right side of the road when abroad. It's more noticeable when you're in the passenger seat and almost impossible, I find, to resist mentioning. "You're almost on the pavement over here," I say.

"Be quiet," my wife says, veering left. "You're the one who forgot his licence."

"Yeah, Dad," the youngest says from the back.

I could risk pointing out that since she placed herself in charge of all travel documentation, technically she forgot my licence, but our fraught week is almost over.

At the airport, I wonder whether our marital division of labour needs adjustment. The old system – where my wife undertook all administrative chores and I provided paranoia – was stressful but effective: it got us where we were going. On this trip, I'd made a deliberate effort not to second-guess her preparations or undermine her authority. This was less stressful, but led to several hiccups: the forgotten licence; a carry-on bag too big to carry on; the purchase of train tickets from Stansted, even though we were landing at Luton.

On the plane, I decide to involve myself more fully in the administrative side of family life, bringing my paranoia to bear on our paperwork in a positive way. I could even stop calling it paranoia and just say it's perfectionism.

At passport control, we enter the shorter queue for EU citizens, even though I have a US passport. I always feel a bit shifty about doing this. My wife's argument – and she is prepared to argue – is that our group contains a preponderance of EU citizens. Eyebrows are occasionally raised, but I've never been sent back.

The woman at the desk flips through my passport. "You're resident in the UK, sir?" she asks.

"Yup," I say.

"You've been granted indefinite leave?" she says.

"Yes," I say, a little impatiently. "There's a stamp in there that..."

Suddenly I feel the blood leave my face. I look at my wife. "It's in your old passport," she says. I'm meant to have both passports with me, but I forgot to remind my wife to bring the old one. I explain, and apologise.

"You'll have to wait here," the woman says. She disappears.

"Your accent goes really American when you're freaking out," the youngest one says. He performs an unkind impersonation of me being obsequious in the face of authority.

"Please stop doing that," I say.

"Are you going to jail?" the middle one asks with unsuppressed delight.

"Possibly," I say.

It is a long wait. I sense the disapproving stares of EU citizens in the queue behind me. My children pass the time by trying to push each other over the line labelled "Do Not Cross". They switch from pushing to punching.

"Don't fight at passport control," my wife says. "You'll get shot."

I experience an irrational urge to make a run for it. Finally, the woman returns: "I've put a warning in your passport. If you forget your old passport again, you will be turned away."

"Thank you," I say.

"You got a warning," the middle one says in a teasing singsong.

"Don't be mean to immigrants," I say.

There are no seats on the train. My wife and I stand in the area between carriages, with someone's wheeled suitcase circling us like a Dalek.

"Can I see my warning?" I say. She fishes my passport out of her bag and hands it to me. The warning, it transpires, consists of an ordinary entry stamp with a W scrawled on it in Biro. I cannot help being disappointed.

If you think machines have liberated us, think again, says film-maker Adam Curtis. Instead we have lost our vision

It was amateur footage of an event involving an early video game called Pong that gave Adam Curtis the idea for his new documentary series.

In 1991, a computer engineer from California called Loren Carpenter organised a mass experiment in a huge shed. Hundreds of people were each given a paddle, and told nothing. But on a big screen in front of them was projected a game of Pong – a very basic computer game, where a ball is knocked back and forth on a screen, like table tennis. Each half of the audience jointly controlled the bat on their side of the screen; they had to operate it together and, spontaneously and without discussion, they successfully played a game of Pong, whooping and cheering at their collective collaboration.

"It was like a switch went in my head," Curtis says. "Carpenter saw it as a world of freedom with order. But I suddenly saw it as the opposite – like old film of workers toiling in a factory. They weren't free – they looked like disempowered slaves locked to a giant machine screen. It was a video game, which made it fun, but it still made me wonder whether power had really gone away in these self-organising systems, or if it was just a rebranding. So we became happy components in systems – and our job is to make those systems stable."

The new series, called All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, takes complicated ideas and turns them into entertainment by the use of the vertigo-inducing intellectual leaps, choppy archive material and disorienting music with which all Curtis fans are familiar. The central idea leads Curtis on a journey, taking in the chilling über-individualist novelist Ayn Rand, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, the "new economy", hippy communes, Silicon Valley, ecology, Richard Dawkins, the wars in Congo, the lonely suicide in a London squat of the mathematical genius who invented the selfish gene theory, and the computer model of the eating habits of the pronghorn antelope.

You can see why Zoe Williams once wrote that, while watching one of Curtis's programmes, "I kept thinking the dog was sitting on the remote."

Perhaps because of these emotionally engaging techniques, Curtis inspires cultish devotion, and not just from viewers – he has won six Baftas. A former politics tutor at Oxford, and a Tiggerish man of 55, it's surprising to learn that he began his career in TV working on the zany magazine show That's Life! ("It taught me two things," he says. "That people who think they are funny aren't funny. And how power really works in television – through fear. One day I went to film a dog that sang to its owner's bagpipes. The dog refused to sing. After three hours, I rang Esther Rantzen and she simply said, 'Darling, don't come back until you've made it sing.' So I made the dog sing.")

But he says he'd always been interested in the idea that you could "fuse high seriousness with popular culture, and cut out the middle bits". The new series can be seen as a continuation of a theme to which he has often returned in his 20 years in films: that power works through many different channels, not just Westminster or the White House. So Pandora's Box, in 1992, was about how politicians had tried to use scientific ideas to control society; The Mayfair Set, in 1999, was about how entrepreneurs such as James Goldsmith paved the way for the resurgence of the markets; The Century Of The Self, in 2002, looked at how Freud's theories of the unconscious were used to promote shopping from necessity to leisure activity; The Power Of Nightmares, in 2005, was about how politicians were turning to fear to try to restore their waning influence in a society disillusioned with them.

Now he has moved on to machines, but it starts with nature. "In the 1960s, an idea penetrated deep into the public imagination that nature is a self-regulating ecosystem, there is a natural order," Curtis says. "The trouble is, it's not true – as many ecologists have shown, nature is never stable, it's always changing. But the idea took root and spread wider – people started to believe there is an underlying order to the entire world, to how society is structured. Everything became part of a system, like a computer; no more hierarchies, freedom for all, no class, no nation states." What the series shows is how this idea spread into the heart of the modern world, from internet utopianism and dreams of democracy without leaders to visions of a new kind of stable global capitalism run by computers. But we have paid a price for this: without realising it we, and our leaders, have given up the old progressive dreams of changing the world and instead become like managers – seeing ourselves as components in a system, and believing our duty is to help that system balance itself. Indeed, Curtis says, "The underlying aim of the series is to make people aware that this has happened – and to try to recapture the optimistic potential of politics to change the world."

The counterculture of the 1960s, the Californian hippies, took up the idea of the network society because they were disillusioned with politics and believed this alternative way of ordering the world was based on some natural order. So they formed communes that were non-hierarchical and self-regulating, disdaining politics and rejecting alliances. (Many of these hippy dropouts later took these ideas mainstream: they became the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who decided that computers could liberate everyone and save the world.)

Another, rather different kind of fan of the network society was Alan Greenspan, for many years the world's most important central banker. "Greenspan believed that networks of computers, like networks of nature, could stabilise themselves," Curtis says. "And technology could turn everyone into heroic individuals, completely free to follow their own ideas." In his individualism, Greenspan was inspired by Ayn Rand, the Russian-born novelist who abhorred altruism, praised the "virtues of selfishness" and still has a massive following in the US 29 years after her death.

At first, the vision that machines had created a new stability seemed true. On Greenspan's watch, computers allowed investment banks to produce complex mathematical models that could predict the risk of making any loan or investment. If a risk could be predicted, it could be balanced by hedging against it. Hence, stability. There would be no more boom and bust. It was the "new economy".

That stability was, of course, an illusion; it was followed by the greatest economic crash since 1929. But, as Curtis says, the price of the bailouts was paid by ordinary people, via the state, rather than by the wealthy financiers who lost all the money in the first place. That's because, despite the illusion of ordered non-hierarchy, some people have vastly more power than others, and in many cases have had it for centuries.

He draws a parallel with those 1970s communes. "The experiments with them all failed, and quickly. What tore them apart was the very thing that was supposed to have been banished: power. Some people were more free than others – strong personalities dominated the weak, but the rules didn't allow any organised opposition to the suppression because that would be politics." As in the commune, so in the world: "These are the limitations of the self-organising system: it cannot deal with politics and power. And now we're all disillusioned with politics, and this machine-organising principle has risen up to be the ideology of our age."

If you are a component in the system, it is difficult to see how power has shifted, Curtis says. "The power of politicians has been taken by others, by financial institutions, corporations. After the crash, the elite used politicised power to rescue themselves. Politics was seen to have failed, to have been corrupt, empty."

This has cultural expressions, as well as economic. We, and our feelings, are now the centre of everything – from reality TV to confessional memoirs to blogs. "There's no one like, say, Tolstoy, who wrote of both man in his world and the architecture of his world," Curtis says. "Now there is no context, just the feelings of one person. The philosophy of our time is summed up by Bill Murray sitting in a submarine in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic saying, 'We're all a bit shit but that's OK.' We have no grand dreams. So of course we embrace a nice stable order."

Why don't we have big ideas or dreams any more? "Because now that there's nothing more important than you, how can you ever lose yourself in a grander idea? We're frightened of eccentricity, of loneliness. Individualism just wants to keep the machine stable, leads to a static world and a powerless world. Rand is individualism carried to its most extreme form, yet she's very popular, and not that far away from how a lot of people, especially the young, feel today."

All of this, Curtis says, means we're missing the bigger picture. "We never talk about power these days. We think we live in a non-hierarchical world, and we pretend not to be elitist now – which is, of course, an emotionally attractive idea, but it's just not true. And that's dangerous."

He believes that because British politics is now obliged to appear non-hierarchical, it has become managerialist, obsessed with process over vision – a recognisable idea to anyone who lives in this triangulated, professionalised political age. He says this doesn't just affect the political parties (although he singles out Andrew Lansley as managerialist-in-chief), but politics in its widest sense. "Even the 'march against the cuts'," he says, referring to the TUC march in London in March, "it was a noble thing, but it was still a managerial approach. We mustn't cut this, we can't cut that. Not, 'There is another way.' Why are we so frightened of a few bond managers? Why can't we challenge the 'markets'? Why do we treat them as if they're their own precious ecosystem? The idea of proper change, or really shifting things, is alien to us today. We just argue about how to manage a system best. It's a moment of high decadence. And we've forgotten that we do have deep responsibilities to people who really are powerless." (He has fascinating material on this about the west's interventions in Congo, as "a place that generates different kinds of myths about us as human beings, things that the west longs for but that also make us terrified".)

In his films, Curtis draws on recent attempts to overthrow power in autocratic countries, describing the spontaneous revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan as a "triumph of the visions of computer utopians of the 1960s, with their vision of computers allowing individuals to create new, non-hierarchical societies" – just like in that mass game of Pong. "The internet played a key role in guiding revolutions that had no guiding ideology, except a desire for self-determination and freedom." But the desire for freedom itself was not enough, he says. "In all those revolutions, that sense of freedom lasted only for a moment. The people were brilliant at overturning the power – but then what? Democracy needs proper politics, but people have given up on saying that they're going to change the world." The Arab uprisings began after he finished making the films, but he sees these in the same way. "It's as if these people assembled spontaneously on Twitter and they just want freedom. But what kind of society do they want?"

He does not deny that Twitter and Facebook had some impact – at least organisationally. But he has strong views on social networking for anything beyond straightforward organisation; he considers the sharing of emotions online to be the "Soviet realism of the age".

He quotes Carmen Hermosillo, a West Coast geek and early adopter of online chatrooms who in 1994 argued that, although the internet is a wonderful thing, your emotions become commodified. "It is fashionable to suggest that cyberspace is some island of the blessed where people are free to indulge and express their individuality," she wrote. "This is not true. I have seen many people spill out their emotions – their guts – online and I did so myself until I began to see that I had commodified myself." Says Curtis, "On Facebook and Twitter, you are performing to attract people – you are dancing emotionally, on a platform created by a large corporation. People's feelings bounce back and forth – happy Stakhanovites, ignoring and denying the system of power. It's like Stalin's socialist realism. Both Twitter and socialist realism are innocent expressions of the ideology of the time, which don't pull back and show the wider thing they are part of. We look back on socialist realism not as innocent but as a dramatic expression of power; it expresses the superiority of the state, which was the guiding belief at the time. I think sometime in the future people will look back at the millions and millions of descriptions of personal feelings on the internet and see them in similar ways. This is the driving belief of our time: that 'me' and what I feel minute by minute is the natural centre of the world. Far from revealing that this is an ideology – and that there are other ways of looking at human society – what Twitter and Facebook do is reinforce the feeling that this is the natural way to be."

Curtis doesn't tweet or Facebook – send him to the gulag! – but he has an excellent blog, "which isn't about me or my feelings, because I don't think I'm as interesting as the stories I'm telling".

Where will the next big idea come from? He wonders about China. "Is it a stable system? Or a mercantilist economy that's gone too far?" Or closer to home. "If things go really bad, they change. If things get really bad, they say, can we have a dramatically different, better kind of society?"

Since the modern world is all about me, me, me, here's a confession: Curtis's ideas have made me run for my life. In 2009, in the course of It Felt Like A Kiss, the sublime theatre event Curtis put on with Punchdrunk about the birth of hyper-consumerism, I was separated from the audience and sent down a long, dark corridor, which I took to represent the apotheosis of individualism. I remember thinking, I must run because my life depends on it – I knew it wasn't real, but I couldn't help myself. It was terrifying. The ideas in All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace are similarly mesmerising and disturbing, but they're also a provocation: have we really given up on the hope of changing the world in our lifetimes? Or is that in itself an idea worth fighting for?

• All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace begins on BBC2 on 23 May at 9pm. See Curtis's exclusive video for the Guardian.

Number crunching the famous: Beastie Boys

Deep End (15)
(Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970, UK) John Moulder-Brown, Jane Asher. 92 mins

Where has this movie been for the past 40 years? It's as fresh and stylish a snapshot of late-60s Britain as we've ever seen, and a twisted coming-of-ager to boot. New kid Moulder-Brown wades into the depths of adulthood at the public bathhouse, and develops an unhealthy obsession with his worldlier colleague. The acting is natural, the soundtrack groovy (Can, Cat Stevens) and the visuals bold.

Hanna (12A)
(Joe Wright, 2011, US/UK/Ger) Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana. 111 mins

A novel fusion of Bourne and The Wizard Of Oz, this thriller packs some visual punches (aided by a Chemical Brothers score) and trowels on the symbolism. Blanchett relishes her she-wolf role, hunting little teen assassin Ronan across Europe.

13 Assassins (15)
(Takashi Miike, 2010, Jap/UK) Kôji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yûsuke Iseya. 125 mins

Noble samurai spring a trap for an evil lord and his 200 henchmen in this old-school action epic – climaxing with a great 45-minute battle.

Outside The Law (15)
(Rachid Bouchareb, 2010, Fra/Alg/Bel) Sami Bouajila, Jamel Debbouze. 139 mins

The Algerian independence struggle is given full-on epic treatment in this sober account of brothers who emigrate to postwar France.

Water For Elephants (12A)
(Francis Lawrence, 2011, US) Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz. 120 mins

Pattinson joins a 1930s circus and falls for its star (and an elephant). Waltz runs, and steals, the show.

Priest (12A)
(Scott Charles Stewart, 2011, US) Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet. 97 mins

Supernatural spectacle in a Blade/Underworld vein, with Bettany sinning to win in a post-apocalyptic theocracy in denial about its vampire problem.

Something Borrowed (12A)
(Luke Greenfield, 2011, US) Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, Colin Egglesfield. 113 mins

Romantic comedy of errors in which Goodwin fancies her best friend's fiancé, everyone else fancies the wrong person, and they all get a bit hysterical about it.

Everywhere And Nowhere (15)
(Menhaj Huda, 2011, UK) James Floyd, Adam Deacon, Alyy Khan. 96 mins

The Kidulthood director on the life of second-generation Asians, particularly a nice lad torn between the family business and a DJ-ing career.

My Dog Tulip (TBC)
(Paul & Sandra Fierlinger, 2009, US) Christopher Plummer, Lynn Redgrave. 83 mins

JR Ackerley's hymn to canine companionship is rendered with watercolour animation and scatological observation.

Forget Me Not (15)
(Alexander Holt, Lance Roehrig, 2009, UK) Tobias Menzies, Genevieve O'Reilly. 96 mins

Before Sunrise-style spontaneous romance, as a musician and a barmaid spend 24 hours in London.

Jig (PG)
(Sue Bourne, 2011, UK) 97 mins

Doc capturing the deadly competition, ridiculous wigs and dazzling leg-twiddling of Irish dancing.

Flying Monsters 3D With David Attenborough (U)
(Matthew Dyas, 2010, UK) 40 mins

What-it-says-on-the-tin IMAX doc.

Out from Friday

The Way

Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez in a father-son drama.

From The Ashes

England's 1981 cricketing triumph recalled.

Out Tue

Attack The Block

Aliens invade a south London estate, and regret it.

Amreeka

Palestinian immigrants get used to smalltown America.

After The Apocalypse

Soviet nuclear guinea pigs cope with the long-term effects.

Take Me Home Tonight

Topher Grace and Anna Faris in a 1980s-set teen comedy.

A Screaming Man

Swimming pools and civil war in a Chadian drama.

Red Hill

Aussie cop thriller with western overtones.

Love Like Poison

Flesh versus spirit in a French coming-of-age drama.

Risen

Biopic of Welsh amateur boxer Howard Winstone.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 3D – Bonds Beyond Time

Another anime trading-card-game adventure.

Taxi Driver

35th anniversary reissue for Scorsese's sombre masterpiece.

Coming soon

In two weeks... Depp ahoy, it's Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides … Paul Giamatti is a good sport in Win Win …

In three weeks... One regrettable night in Bangkok in The Hangover Part II … Three-way romance Heartbeats …

In a month... Superheroes before they were famous in X-Men: First Class … The fast times of a formula one superstar in Senna …

Taxi Driver returns to the big screen this week. John Patterson, who has seen it many times, says this American parable is ever more relevant today

I first met "God's Lonely Man" at the end of the 70s, the night before I moved to the United States. It was just something to pass the time before getting myself to the airport, but after Taxi Driver's climactic whorehouse massacre, which leaves blood, brains and hair on many a wall, I began to wonder whether this whole moving to America business was such a good idea after all.

Cut to three years later, June 1982: I take my father to a double-bill, this time in Washington DC, about four blocks from the White House. First up was a thinly attended screening of The Deer Hunter, which I and my father, a military man, concurred was utter bollocks; but before Taxi Driver came on we went for a fag break and saw a line snaking around the block. This was right in the middle of the trial of John Hinckley Jr, the man who had tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan a year earlier, the better to effect "a magical union with Jodie Foster". On the drive home I told my dad that I had now seen the movie more times than Hinckley. That shut him up.

Rewatching Taxi Driver recently, I realised what a deep and rich relationship I've had with this feral, minatory and menacing masterwork over 30 years. It's fun to disentangle the interlaced authorial sensibilities and religious backgrounds of Dutch Reformed Church screenwriter Paul Schrader and the baroque Italian-American Catholic Martin Scorsese: Schrader brings the squalor, the Bresson-Ozu-Dreyer-esque astringency of vision, while Scorsese goes near-operatic and throws more red pigment at the screen than Michael Powell and Dario Argento combined.

Or you might ponder the wild bestiary of mad assassins and gunmen thronging the American cinema of the 1970s: Scorpio in Dirty Harry; snipers in The Parallax View and Executive Action, Nashville and Two-Minute Warning; the vengeful heroes of Death Wish and Walking Tall. Also, note the generational links between Arthur Bremer – who shot and paralysed governor George Wallace in 1972, and whose diaries inspired Schrader's script – and John Hinckley Jr, inspired by a film about a would-be assassin, based on the words of a would-be assassin, to become a would-be assassin himself – a perfect circle.

You can also see, on TV and in the streets and bars, more Travis Bickles these days than ever before. And not just in the form of The Office's Dwight K Schrute and Seth Rogen in the Taxi Driver-centric Observe And Report, but among anti-abortion snipers and the viler fringes of the far right (Tim McVeigh was pure Travis). He is the toxic waste by-product of John Wayne's racist avenger Ethan Edwards in The Searchers; not merely, as I thought at the time, a local symptom of America's post-Vietnam malaise but a recurrent and ineradicable archetype: the Psychotic American Nobody who wants to be Somebody.

London International Documentary Festival

Two weeks, over 130 films and countless events and appearances, the nation's biggest factual film event gives you plenty to chew on – too much for any one mouth but whether it's Finnish saunas, morris dancing or Middle East politics, there's something for you here. Many key films assess influential individuals. Asif Kapadia's new Ayrton Senna film opens proceedings; Steven Soderbergh remembers Spalding Grey and Martin Scorsese honours Elia Kazan; Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano's threatened lifestyle is detailed; and Playboy's Hugh Hefner is recast as a liberal crusader – nothing to talk about there then.

Various venues, Fri to 28 May

Fire In Babylon & From The Ashes, Nationwide

Cricket is hardly underrepresented on the nation's airwaves, but for those who'd prefer a little bit of history to go with the hours of live coverage, you've got an enticing documentary double bill this month. From The Ashes remembers England's tumultuous 1981 Ashes campaign, while the earlier rise of the West Indies as a cricketing force is charted in Fire In Babylon. These special preview screenings are augmented by satellite Q&As; with those who were there. For the home team, Ian Botham, Bob Willis and Dickie Bird (Tue), and for the visitors, Viv Richards and the makers of Fire In Babylon (Thu, and Wed at the BFI Southbank).

Picturehouse cinemas; BFI Southbank, SE1, Tue to Thu

Contemporary Arab And Maghrebi Cinema, Manchester

Events have been so momentous and fast-moving this year, it's difficult for an outsider to get a handle on the Arab spring. But here's one place to start: a brief tour of the film-makers and modes of expression that could one day be brought to bear on the stories currently unfolding. Rachid Bouchareb's grandly scaled, controversy-sparking Algerian independence drama Outside The Law is the tentpole release, and it's joined by smaller films touching on regional issues, from immigration to Europe to Israeli-Palestinian relations, but also less political questions of family and identity.

Cornerhouse, Tue to 7 Jun

All Tomorrow's Parties, Minehead

Animal Collective's musical lineup for their ATP weekender is pretty impressive, but their film selection is even more so. You could well be lured away from the likes of Kurt Vile And The Violators by the free cinema, screening such cult gems as Andrzej Zulawski's extreme relationship onslaught Possession, or that cheery festival favourite Don't Look Now. They've dug out some choice oddities from Japan (including unbelievably kitsch horror Hausu) and Australia (Colin Eggleston's outback classic Long Weekend), or if you'd rather stay close to the music, there's a fascinating travelogue of Ethiopian music, not to mention Animal Collective's own psychedelic audio-visual headtrip ODDSAC. Far out, but also quite near.

Butlins Holiday Centre, Fri to 15 May

I Saw The Devil
DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

It's no big surprise that most film industries rely, at least in part, on crime-related movies; they can be made at all different budget levels and are full of impactful, life-changing events for the characters.

What's interesting is how how each nation has their own enduring signature: we have our mockney gangsters; France tends to explore corruption in the law; Japan and Italy deal in epically large, organised criminal outfits. But it's South Korea that perhaps has the most interesting: the revenge thriller. While you'd think the genre would be all played out by now, I Saw The Devil shows the strength in many of the familiar moves by pushing them to extremes. A pregnant fiancé of a government agent becomes the latest victim of a particularly cold and gruesome serial killer (Oldboy's Choi Min-sik). The agent dedicates his life not only to tracking down the killer but to also feeling the same helplessness and terror as his victims. To do this he has to accept that he will too become a monster, but when he makes his grief-stricken promise he has no idea how far (and far-reaching) things will become. Director Kim Ji-woon has proved with such previous films as the supernatural A Tale Of Two Sisters and the preposterously entertaining pseudo-western The Good The Bad And The Weird that he's a director who knows what he's doing, so you have to trust him and his full-strength delivery here.

Archipelago

British middle-class holidays at their most uncomfortable.

DVD, Artificial Eye

Blue Valentine

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in a messy, realistic romance.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

The King's Speech

Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter in the Oscar-conquering George VI drama.

DVD & Blu-ray, Momentum

Upside Down – The Story Of Creation Records

Sixteen years of indie, with Alan McGee riding the ups and downs of signing Oasis, the Jesus And Mary Chain and Primal Scream.

DVD & Blu-ray, Revolver

Chico And Rita

Havana bebop jazz cartoon.

DVD & Blu-ray, Icon

Sufjan Stevens, On tour

When Sufjan Stevens was last here, his live shows were fantastical affairs with troupes of 50s-style cheerleaders and orchestras wearing butterfly wings. Back then his stock-in-trade was turning the civic histories of unfashionable American states into magical folk-pop songs. However, his 2010 album The Age Of Adz found him feeding his musicians into the shredder, butterfly wings and all, and rearranging their parts in Pro Tools to lend the music an unsettling, hyper-real sound. Who knows how he'll attempt to recreate that sensation live, although, particularly in the case of astonishing 25-minute-long closer Impossible Soul, it'll be fascinating to see him try.

Royal Festival Hall, SE1, Thu & Fri, touring to 19 May

SR

Short Circuit Festial, London

Unlike in rock, pop or hip-hop, where the academically minded are viewed with suspicion, electronica is a genre very much in touch with – if not entirely governed by – its inner nerd. Short Circuit is a three-day festival that blurs the boundaries between gig, nightclub and seminar hall, featuring an impressive range of performers, all generally engaged in applying technology to push music forward. The first day is a showcase for German avant electronic label Raster-Noton, featuring the world premiere of a collaboration between label founder Carsten Nicolai (AKA Alva Noto) and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The other two days are hosted by Mute, which underlines its broad-church approach to electronica by inviting everyone from techno auteur Richie Hawtin to conceptual art-punks the Residents, industrial stalwarts Nitzer Ebb, ragged noise-rockers Liars, and even 80s pop stars Erasure.

Roundhouse, NW1, Thu to 14 May

Sam Richards

Gang Gang Dance, On tour

While Björk has spent the past decade hurtling towards the avant garde in the company of Matthew Barney and assorted Inuit throat singers, Gang Gang Dance have been travelling in roughly the opposite direction. They began as an arty improv noise collective, but over five albums have coalesced into an eclectic unit whose new age impulses are anchored by tribal rhythms and bleeps'n'bass apparently informed by the UK grime scene (Tinchy Stryder even turned up on 2008's Saint Dymphna). Lizzi Bougatsos's breathy melodies make those Björk comparisons unavoidable, although new album Eye Contact actually occupies the kind of kooky cosmopolitan pop territory vacated by Ms Gudmundsdóttir some time ago.

Ruby Lounge, Manchester, Wed; The Great Escape @ Pavilion Theatre, Brighton, Thu; ATP, Butlin's, Minehead, Fri

SR

Reverberations: The Influence Of Steve Reich, London

For all the historical significance of Terry Riley and Philip Glass it was Steve Reich, with his fabulous musical ear and rhythmic acuity, who steered minimalism out of the New York lofts and galleries where it began and into the world's concert halls. If there's a composer whose 75th birthday deserves to be lavishly celebrated, then, it's Reichs, and the Barbican is certainly doing him proud. A weekend of concerts includes six separate programmes featuring not just Reich's own music, some of it new to Britain, but also works by younger composers who admit their debt to him. Performers range from the BBC Symphony to the Kronos Quartet, and the great man himself makes an appearance for his own Clapping Music.

LSO St Luke's, EC1 & Barbican, EC2, Sat & Sun

Andrew Clements

Kyle Eastwood Band, On tour

On his Songs From The Chateau album, bassist-composer Eastwood has shifted back to a more direct and soul-jazzy sound than he adopted on earlier explorations of dance-groove hooks and technology. It's an unpretentiously simple, soul, blues and Latin vehicle, with succinct and punchy tunes that sometimes mirror the economical delivery of Kyle's actor dad, Clint. Some of the music takes on a sensuously sermonising feel, and some of it takes the engaging Graeme Blevins into Sonny Rollins territory, as on the sparky Cafe Calypso. The harmonically smouldering Andalucia, on the other hand – a vehicle for Graeme Flowers's shimmering trumpet – has a Sketches Of Spain undertow. This band aren't staging any jazz revolutions, but are very welcoming for those dipping a toe into the music.

Norwich Playhouse, Mon; The Anvil, Basingstoke, Tue; Concorde Club, Eastleigh, Wed

John Fordham

Twelves, London

Last year they were the Twelves Trio – a jazz threesome exploring byzantine melodic pathways. Now they're just Twelves, and a quartet with the addition of alt-rock guitarist Rob Updegraff. With Updegraff's arrival the band suggests, among many things, Joe Lovano's encounters with John Scofield, with a little of Bill Frisell thrown in. Staccato metallic chord themes alternate with Mark Hanslip's soft sax countermelodies, and guitar/sax unison themes evaporate into drifting improv. On Kerfuffle from their current Adding Machine CD, Hanslip's signature mix of a melodic seamlessness and Wayne Shorter-ish creative hesitancy spins over abrasive guitar, Riaan Vosloo's rock-solid bassline and Tim Giles's lateral snare patterns. They're a band with real vision and the executive powers to match.

Vortex Jazz Club, N16, Wed

JF

Canadian heavy rockumentary stars Anvil turn the volume up to 11 (21 Jun-11 Jul, tour begins Corporation, Sheffield) ...

As if that wasn't enough histrionic rock riffing for you, Guitar hero Slash will be assaulting ears on a solo tour (20-25 Jul, tour begins, O2 Academy Birmingham) ...

Bearded strummer Josh T Pearson follows up his current tour with more UK dates (24 Jul, Tramlines, Sheffield; 2 Sep, End Of The Road, Dorset; 26 Nov, Barbican, EC2), and he's a new addition on the Green Man Festival bill along with the Avett Brothers and Alessi's Ark (19-21 Aug, Glanusk Park, Brecon Beacons) ...

The Apple Cart is a new one-day spree from the Field Day folk taking in Badly Drawn Boy, Steve Mason and more, plus comedy, art and magic (7 Aug, Victoria Park, E3) …

Demigods of post-rock Godspeed You! Black Emperor bring, er, anarchy back to the UK (22-25 Jul, tour begins Barrowland, Glasgow) ...

Wooh! Legendary hip-hoppers Wu-Tang Clan, with Young Dirty Bastard in tow (11-15 Jun, tour begins HMV Forum, NW5).

Rakim, On tour

Who could forget that immortal couplet: "Me and Eric B and a nice big plate of fish/ Which is my favourite dish"? Besides promoting the healthy benefits of an Omega 3-rich diet, Eric B & Rakim's 1987 album and single Paid In Full marked hip-hop's coming of age. Recorded in less than a week, Eric B's liberal use of 70s funk samples and the smoothly methodical lyrical contributions of Rakim marked it out as a turning point in the genre's evolution. To celebrate this influential album's 25th anniversary, Rakim (now sadly split from Eric B amid royalty wrangles) brings a night of highest quality old-school hip-hop to the UK on his own tour, before joining Mos Def's Black Star and De La Soul for two dates of hip-hop royalty. A fear of flying keeps him from playing here more often, so catch him while you can.

O2 Academy Bristol, Sat; Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, Sun; The Arches, Glasgow, Mon; with Black Star at HMV Hammersmith Apollo, W6, Tue & O2 Apollo Manchester, Wed

John Mitchell

Riffraff, Middlesbrough

Besides a few adventurous nights at The Empire, you couldn't say there was that much cool stuff going on in Middlesbrough's club scene. However, as with most places, scratch beneath the surface and you'll usually find something of worth, like Riffraff's cool house parties, helmed by Paul Bowen and Lee Pennington. They've had Berlin-themed evenings and hosted guests such as Benoit and Sergio, Miguel Campbell and Dyed Soundorom. Tonight's party sees them welcome Secretsundaze as Giles Smith and James Priestley make a rare joint appearance in support of their nomadic session's 10th anniversary.

The Medicine Bar, Corporation Road, Sat

Marc Rowlands

Field Day Night, London

With the eclectically awesome likes of James Blake, Omar Souleyman, Faust, Gruff Rhys, Wild Beasts and Warpaint all lined up for the Field Day festival on 6 Aug, it's fair to say this year's Victoria Park party will be worth a peek at the very least. There's no slouching from the organisers in the run-up to the event either, with tonight's Field Day Night giving a taster of things to come later this summer. DJ Omar-S – not to be confused with the aforementioned Omar, Mr Souleyman – will be playing an exclusive set of his own brand of deep Detroit goodness. Ramadanman collaborator Midland will also be making an appearance, as will Bloggers Delight's Casper C and Skull Juice's Benedict Bull. Further help in counting down the weeks until Field Day proper comes from Huntleys & Palmers and Secret Danger Society, who'll be adding to this squidgy house and "tech-yes" get-together.

XOYO, Cowper Street, EC2, Sat

Leonie Cooper

Highlife, Glasgow

Despite being big in the 1980s, thanks largely to the exposure given by Paul Simon's Graceland, the chances are that the last time you heard any actual South African music was during the World Cup, when it was honking out of the business end of a vuvuzela. Spurred on by the recent global successes of DJ Mujava's Township Funk and MC Okmalumkoolkat's Boomslang, Highlife's dedication to world music brings South African house to the fore at tonight's outing, with special guest Esa making an appearance. Born in Cape Town, Esa moved to Glasgow four years ago and is now a regular deckside presence at several local club nights, recently setting up his own label, Rememory Music. Esa's Sound Of South Africa at Highlife set contains a mix of music from his homeland that rarely gets aired at his usual residencies in the city.

La Cheetah, Queen Street, Sat

Patric Baird

Deptford Dub Club, London

It might sound like the sort of legendary happening that's been running for yonks and yonks, but rather than being as entrenched in SE8 lore as local branches of the WI and Neighbourhood Watch, it transpires that the Deptford Dub Club is a brand-new venture. In spite of this lack of anecdote-riddled musical history, the brains behind the party have picked two legendary talents to get the ball rolling. First up is record producer Adrian Sherwood, who's making the pilgrimage from north to south London to ply the punters with reggae, funk, R&B; and the cream of the Jamaican crop. He'll be followed by the unparalleled Mad Professor, a man who's worked with everyone from Lee Perry and Sly and Robbie to Horace Andy and Massive Attack. With both of tonight's acts boasting second-to-none dub credentials, expect to hear the very best the genre has to offer.

The Albany, Douglas Way, SE8, Sat

LC

'I just thought: "Get that monkey off his head." That was the priority'

In pursuit of adventure, All Ears headed to north Africa last week, only to discover on the flight back that others had been having a far more dramatic time.

Man 1 "I was stood in the square, I saw this grey fur out the corner of my eye, and next thing this weight, and tiny fingers around my neck."

Woman "They came from nowhere."

Man 2 "What kind of monkey was it?"

Man 1 "I dunno, but I didn't like it. I just froze and said, 'Get it off me!'"

Man 2 (puzzled) "You didn't get a picture?"

Woman (definitively) "No. I just thought: 'Get that monkey off his head.' That was the priority."

Man 2 "So how does it work then, the scam. Is it like getting your car clamped; there's a release fee?"

Man 1 "No, the idea is you take a picture and then you pay."

Man 2 "But you didn't?"

Man 1 "It all happened too quickly."

Man 2 "An eventful night then …"

Man 1 "There was more: we were having a coffee and this bloke – he smelled pretty lively – came up out of the crowd …"

Woman "He had his hands down his pants, and he wasn't being discreet about it."

Man 1 "Then he looked us in the eye and then just drank her coffee."

Man 2 "In one go?"

Man 1 "Well they're only small cups, he couldn't really savour it. He looked us in the eye as if to say, 'What are you gonna do about it?' Then he stuck his hand back down his trousers and disappeared."

Woman "And in the end the joke was on him. I'd put a lot more sugar in than I'd intended."

Man 2 "You'd go back, though?"

Man 1 & Woman "Absolutely."

Joe Lycett, London

Many comedians devote themselves to noble causes – from Mark Thomas's tireless activism against Coca-Cola to Robin Ince's fearless defence of the spirit of rationalism. But it has taken a man of the stature of young comic Joe Lycett to confront the evils of British customer service, and to attempt to break it from within. Lycett's years of working as a theatre usher, dealing with ultra-menial tasks and confronting imbecilic requests from customers, have provided him with plenty of great material. But he pulls off the difficult trick of slating the public for their intellectual shortcomings without coming across as snooty or smug. Instead, he uses the dumb utterances of the masses as a springboard for his own imaginative and cheekily subversive comedy. The same restless spirit that led him to create endless timewasting games with fellow ushers in the aisles now powers his entertainingly mischievous approach to stand-up.

Ku, WC2, Mon

James Acaster, London

There's no shortage of bright young comedians around on the circuit, but an abundance of youth can throw up its own problems. When your life experience to date consists mainly of plodding through school, wanking and attempting to get served in pubs, what else do you have to talk about onstage? James Acaster manages to find his own solution to the problem, producing autobiographical stand-up that finds fresh angles on all the familiar staples of young adulthood. For one thing, Acaster sticks out on account of his exquisite uncoolness – he's a bloke with problem hair, an awkward body and a Northants accent. It's hard to imagine him becoming a comedy pin-up, which makes his tales of embarrassments in the playground and serial failure to fit in resound with a ring of truth that only enhances the regular laughs. This summer, he'll be making his Edinburgh debut, where he's tipped to be among the runners for major recognition.

Ku, WC2, Mon; Storm, WC2, Tue, Wed

Lloyd Langford, Liverpool

Rhod Gilbert's success has opened the door for a fair few Welsh comics to succeed on a bigger stage. In the case of Baglan-born Lloyd Langford, the link's a little more direct – he's served as Gilbert's Karl Pilkington-like sidekick both on Radio 2 and in BBC 2's Ask Rhod Gilbert. And Langford gives every indication of being destined for great things in his own right. In his stand-up, he's a little bit smarter than he often appears to be on TV, with a particularly sharp eye for the idiocies of contemporary culture. He's one of those people who can spot a meaningless statement or an argument that doesn't work, and relentlessly mine it for first-class comedy, whether he's dealing with the ethics of muggers or the racial casting policies of Midsomer Murders. All become fuel for a wonderfully remorseless stream of pithy gags, delivered in an unshowy south Wales drawl. One to look out for.

Unity Theatre, Sat

A reader and author from Ireland recalls the protest marches of the 60s and praises the Guardian's tradition of asking searching questions

I've read the Guardian off and on since the late 1950s; my mother favoured the Guardian because of its stance on British policies in Ireland in the 20s. Although she couldn't get the paper in the wilds of Tipperary, she liked it as it favoured Irish independence.

I got involved in "ban the bomb" protests in the 60s, and went to the 1963 CND Aldermaston march. In court after being arrested I had a copy of the Daily Worker and the Guardian. The lawyer came up to me and said, "Don't let the beak see you with the Worker and the Guardian – you'll go down." In the end he gave me a fine, but I refused to pay it, so I did a month in Brixton prison. They were stirring times in the 60s, with the threat of nuclear war and Vietnam, but the Guardian was always consistent in its coverage, and it still is – the News of the World investigation and the uncovering of the death of Ian Tomlinson carry on that tradition.

The news is my favourite bit, but I read the sport first. I really admire the sports journalists. I like the scrutiny of the Grand Prix, particularly – it has become such a corrupt and commercial sport. I've always been interested in speed – as a child I raced a push bike for my country, and as an adult I have raced in Formula Ford.

After that I worked as a freelance journalist, and I went travelling, in Thailand and then the Philippines, where I met my wife. I've written six books, on subjects including motor racing and pioneering aviation. I hope my next book, about Bohemian Dublin, will be out in time for Bloomsday – it's called Memories of Baggotonia.

My wife and I moved back to Dublin in 1996, and married in '97. She is studying to become a pharmacist. She's too busy to read the Guardian, but we cut out the chess section and send it to her brother – so 7,000 miles away, in Manila, there is someone poring over the Guardian's chess corner.