The Times: The power of the online gossip sites

The internet has once again shown its talent for spreading gossip, but denial can make it worse, says David Rowan

IT WAS the week's hottest celebrity gossip: a false allegation about David Beckham that has spread uncontrolled over the internet.

It made little difference that Beckham chose to deny the "malicious rumours" in an unusually public response on Thursday, for by then it was too late to keep the claims from flying into thousands more in-boxes across Britain, in yet another example of the internet's efficiency at propagating falsehoods.

It is not just celebrities who keep falling victim to the gossip websites. From chief executives to Hollywood directors, the battle is on to retain some control of the web's 24-hour information barrage and, if possible, take advantage of it. One false rumour on a bulletin board or in an e-mail can travel around the world within seconds, and no matter how firmly the claims are denied a corporation's reputation can suffer from a few keystrokes.

Ask executives at the technology firm Emulex, which two years ago lost £1.6 billion of its value within 30 minutes after a news wire issued a false press release about its prospects. On another occasion, the designer Tommy Hilfiger faced threats of boycotts after an internet rumour falsely accused him of racism.

Angus Bankes, co-founder of Moreover, which monitors thousands of websites and discussion groups on behalf of corporate clients, says that the internet's instant global reach has rewritten the rules of PR. "You have to put out retractions all the time, as a false rumour, maybe by a disgruntled employee, or a business rival, can make your share price plummet," he says. "But there are nine million news groups and message boards where a rumour can begin."

Last night, as newsdesks in London fielded dozens of calls about the Beckham story, questions were being asked about where the rumour began. It first came to prominence earlier this month on the gossip website Popbitch, which was contacted by lawyers acting for Beckham and told to remove the statements.

The site said this week: "When the story was mentioned on the Popbitch message board a few weeks ago, we received surprisingly heavy-handed legal pressure from the Beckham camp. Their last letter told us that no one using the site was even allowed to mention David Beckham's name."

It remains unclear who first made the allegations, but another rumour being circulated yesterday identified a Football Association employee whose sister, who works for a PR firm in London, was said to have misinterpreted the sociable mood present during the England team's flight home from the World Cup. But as with many such rumours, there were few official confirmations. An FA spokesman confirmed that the man worked there, but said: "We cannot discuss anything involving the families of members of staff."

The sister was not at work yesterday, and no one was available at her firm to discuss where she was.

Popbitch is just one of thousands of internet rumour sites, from those that speculate over the next corporate failures, such as F****d Company, to those devoted to future Harry Potter films. While internet gossip is ubiquitous, elite gossip sites are so influential owing to their attraction for senior executives and the mainstream media.

Earlier this year, Popbitch beat the tabloids to news of Victoria Beckham's pregnancy and scooped the Financial Times on news that Marks & Spencer would be selling a David Beckham clothing range. It has also beat the mainstream press with news of Madonna's London stage debut, and the fact that she named her son Rocco.

Popbitch centres on a weekly e-mail newsletter and an active message board. Regular users include well-connected people in the music, PR and media industries, although the libellous remarks that they post have attracted legal letters on behalf of celebrities including Jeremy Clarkson and members of the band So Solid Crew.

Although the website claims to be a "pretty amateur operation, run by people in our spare time", it was, in fact, founded by the journalist Neil Stevenson, now the editor of The Face, and his girlfriend Camilla Wright. For obvious reasons they guard their own privacy with some vigour.

But it is the more specialist financial bulletin boards, on sites such as Money Central, that can cause City executives greater stress. And even when a damaging remark is identified, issuing a rebuttal may merely draw attention to it. As Simon Stokes, a partner in the technology department at the law firm Tarlo Lyons, put it: "As a celebrity, people will expect you to be knocked. One might take a view that you have to live with spurious gossip as the price of fame."

[PANEL]
The rumour mill: Where to catch the gossip

www.aint-it-cool.com
Early film previews and on-set gossip

www.eonline.com
Speculation from the entertainment world

www.f****dcompany.com
The next corporate failures

www.the-leaky-cauldron.org
Harry Potter for the complete obsessive

www.drudgereport.com
The original news-rumours site

(The Times, November 30 2002)

Read more!

The Times: The hot gossip websites

By David Rowan

IT WAS the week's hottest celebrity gossip: a false allegation about David Beckham that has spread uncontrolled over the internet.

It made little difference that Beckham chose to deny the "malicious rumours" in an unusually public response on Thursday, for by then it was too late to keep the claims from flying into thousands more in-boxes across Britain, in yet another example of the internet's efficiency at propagating falsehoods.

It is not just celebrities who keep falling victim to the gossip websites. From chief executives to Hollywood directors, the battle is on to retain some control of the web's 24-hour information barrage and, if possible, take advantage of it. One false rumour on a bulletin board or in an e-mail can travel around the world within seconds, and no matter how firmly the claims are denied a corporation's reputation can suffer from a few keystrokes.

Ask executives at the technology firm Emulex, which two years ago lost £1.6 billion of its value within 30 minutes after a news wire issued a false press release about its prospects. On another occasion, the designer Tommy Hilfiger faced threats of boycotts after an internet rumour falsely accused him of racism.

Angus Bankes, co-founder of Moreover, which monitors thousands of websites and discussion groups on behalf of corporate clients, says that the internet's instant global reach has rewritten the rules of PR. "You have to put out retractions all the time, as a false rumour, maybe by a disgruntled employee, or a business rival, can make your share price plummet," he says. "But there are nine million news groups and message boards where a rumour can begin."

Last night, as newsdesks in London fielded dozens of calls about the Beckham story, questions were being asked about where the rumour began. It first came to prominence earlier this month on the gossip website Popbitch, which was contacted by lawyers acting for Beckham and told to remove the statements.

The site said this week: "When the story was mentioned on the Popbitch message board a few weeks ago, we received surprisingly heavy-handed legal pressure from the Beckham camp. Their last letter told us that no one using the site was even allowed to mention David Beckham's name."

It remains unclear who first made the allegations, but another rumour being circulated yesterday identified a Football Association employee whose sister, who works for a PR firm in London, was said to have misinterpreted the sociable mood present during the England team's flight home from the World Cup. But as with many such rumours, there were few official confirmations. An FA spokesman confirmed that the man worked there, but said: "We cannot discuss anything involving the families of members of staff."

The sister was not at work yesterday, and no one was available at her firm to discuss where she was.

Popbitch is just one of thousands of internet rumour sites, from those that speculate over the next corporate failures, such as F****d Company, to those devoted to future Harry Potter films.

While internet gossip is ubiquitous, elite gossip sites are so influential owing to their attraction for senior executives and the mainstream media.

Earlier this year, Popbitch beat the tabloids to news of Victoria Beckham's pregnancy and scooped the Financial Times on news that Marks & Spencer would be selling a David Beckham clothing range. It has also beat the mainstream press with news of Madonna's London stage debut, and the fact that she named her son Rocco.

Popbitch centres on a weekly e-mail newsletter and an active message board. Regular users include well-connected people in the music, PR and media industries, although the libellous remarks that they post have attracted legal letters on behalf of celebrities including Jeremy Clarkson and members of the band So Solid Crew.

Although the website claims to be a "pretty amateur operation, run by people in our spare time", it was, in fact, founded by the journalist Neil Stevenson, now the editor of The Face, and his girlfriend Camilla Wright. For obvious reasons they guard their own privacy with some vigour.

But it is the more specialist financial bulletin boards, on sites such as Money Central, that can cause City executives greater stress. And even when a damaging remark is identified, issuing a rebuttal may merely draw attention to it. As Simon Stokes, a partner in the technology department at the law firm Tarlo Lyons, put it: "As a celebrity, people will expect you to be knocked. One might take a view that you have to live with spurious gossip as the price of fame."

++++

The rumour mill

Where to catch the gossip:

www.aint-it-cool.com
Early film previews and on-set gossip

www.eonline.com
Speculation from the entertainment world

www.f****dcompany.com
The next corporate failures

www.the-leaky-cauldron.org
Harry Potter for the complete obsessive

www.drudgereport.com
The original rumour site

(The Times, November 30 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - MyLifeBits/MyWay.com

By David Rowan

I WISH I could remember when my memory began embarrassing me, but I find myself increasingly reliant on Google to recall people's names, friends' addresses, even which articles I wrote a month ago. Faced with the information overload that is a journalist's lot, my brain's reaction has been to filter out the personal recollections along with the press releases and news bulletins, which is why an external back-up brain has proved so useful.

So I was excited last week to learn that Microsoft's latest project will let us chronicle our lives in huge, searchable databases that can store decades of personal data. From the photos that we take and videos we watch to our every written document, all will be recorded on terabytes of cheap computer memory.

It is an intriguing project, run by one of Microsoft's most senior scientists, Gordon Bell, who has digitised "nearly everything possible" from his entire life: more than ten gigabytes of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, photos, home movies and voice recordings. The database, called "MyLifeBits", will be searchable in various ways, from basic text and date queries to links between items and annotations that you may have made. Bell's inspiration is a famous 1945 essay by the American academic Vannevar Bush, which proposed the "memex", a vast mechanised personal library largely reliant on microfilm entries. The difference now is the vast storage capacity of the household computer that makes such a database practicable. Microsoft believes a 1,000-gigabyte hard disk will cost just £200 within five years.

Bell sees huge possibilities in the technology. "Imagine being able to run a Google-like search on your life," he says. Still, I have a few worries. Imagine how useful such whole-life databases would be to an identity thief - or even an intrusive Western government intent on domestic surveillance. And think how we'd all miss out on enjoying the moment if, perpetually DigiCam tourists, we were so concerned to record it.

And the neurologist Steven Rose points out that human memory is a far more complex, sensory-led system than a computer could ever emulate. A database may help us retrieve information, but it lacks the brain's extraordinary ability to build instant connections across and draw meaning from that data. Until Google can do that, I'd better return to the memory exercises.

++++

IF YOU USE Yahoo! and get annoyed by that endless torrent of pop-up and pop under ads, not to mention Flash animations and banners, salvation may be at hand. MyWay.com is a brash newcomer styling itself as a faster, ad-free rival financed purely by sponsored links from Google search listings. Using the slogan "Yahoo! is toast", the site offers similar e-mail, news and directory searches, and claims to be 51 per cent faster than Yahoo!, the web's third most popular destination. Founded by Bill Daugherty, who launched the iWon sweepstakes site and bought Excite out of bankruptcy, it hopes to capitalise on customers' frustrations with Yahoo!'s growing tendency to charge for its services, as well as changes to its privacy policy that let it sell on more of its users' data.

MyWay's pages do load quickly (on Explorer, less so on Netscape), and it is refreshing to read the news without having to shut down extra advert windows. It uses fewer news sources than Yahoo!, but, then, it has been going for only a few days, and doubtless new partnerships will follow. The free 6MB of e-mail space should earn it a few early fans, especially as Yahoo! continues to add restrictions to its own free service.

Even so, I expect that MyWay will be toast first. Its marketing, after all, is based around urging users to "Get on the rooftop and sing My Way at the top of your lungs". If only business were that simple.

(The Times, November 26 2002)

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The Times: The perils in a man's laptop

By David Rowan

A man who used a laptop computer on his lap for an hour needed medical treatment for burns and blistering, according to a doctor. Claes-Goran Ostenson, a professor of molecular medicine based at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, describes the case from Sweden in clinical detail in The Lancet, and says the man's injuries "should be taken as a serious warning against use of a laptop computer in a literal sense".

The man, a 50-year-old scientist with two children, had taken work home with him and, as he laboured with his laptop sitting on his lap, he noticed a slight burning sensation that seemed to subside when he changed positions. The next day he found his genital area covered in burns and blisters, injuries that his doctor attributes to excessive heat from the computer.

Professor Ostensen said that the man presented with irritation in his genital area as well as inch-long blistering that, once infected, caused "extensive suppuration". He said: "The patient recalled that, while sitting two days earlier with his computer on his lap, he had occasionally felt heat and a burning feeling on his lap and proximal thigh, a sensation that was relieved at least temporarily when the computer was moved slightly."

On checking the computer's manual, the man discovered an ominous safety warning, which stated: "Do not allow your portable computer to operate with the base resting directly on exposed skin. "With extended operation, heat can potentially build up in the base. Allowing sustained contact with the skin could cause discomfort or, eventually, a burn."

But this did not explain why the man, fully dressed in trousers and underpants, had sustained burns to his lap. Professor Ostenson does not name the make of laptop, but the warning appears identical to one supplied with Dell's Latitude model.

A spokeswoman for Dell UK said that the company had not come across any similar complaints. "The victim has not complained to Dell, and we have no record of the customer's injury," she said. The burnt man has since recovered.

(The Times, front page, November 23 2002)

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Evening Standard: Confessions of a middle-class graffiti addict

As the Government a crackdown on graffiti, a young record industry executive tells how he became an underground hero. By David Rowan

JASON HAMILTON leads a double life. By day, the 27-year-old record producer juggles the pressures ofa media executive's lifestyle, dashing between studio sessions and client meetings that he hopes will clinch the next lucrative deal. Late at night, however, the professional mask slips as Jason swaps the comforts of his digital mixing suite for a far more hostile terrain.

Armed with a facemask, wirecutters and a rucksack stuffed with paint cans, he breaks in to unguarded train depots and rail sidings on a high-risk criminal mission: to leave his mark on a Tube carriage or railway car, and escape before the morning's commuters arrive. For Jason, the well-spoken son of two civil servants, is one of London's growing band of middleclass graffiti writers - well-educated professionals who risk jail and large fines for the thrill of spraypainting trains and railway yards.

As the Government this week announced a crackdown on graffiti - giving police powers to stop and search those suspected of carrying spray cans - Jason's story offers a stark warning that the new threats of arrest will do nothing to dissuade hardcore offenders such as him from chasing what they regard as the ultimate buzz.

He knows it is a dangerous "hobby" - a fellow London graffiti painter, known as "Moody", was killed by a train at Catford station last summer - but, for Jason, the fear itself is part of the attraction. "Two, maybe three times a week I put myself under high stress, going into places where human beings were never meant to tread," he explains in a smart Camden Town gastro-pub favoured by media types. "But all the tension is worthwhile for the pleasure of seeing your work running on the line. "Nothing beats the instant satisfaction of graffiti - everything you've had in your head all day just vanishes, and there's just you, the train, your friends and the sense of what you're creating."

It has taken four months of negotiation to arrange a series of meetings with Jason, whose pride in his "canvases" - he clearly has an artistic talent - is matched only by his fear of being caught. He paints over CCTV lenses before entering a train yard, and will only be contacted via email or through trusted intermediaries. For Jason knows he is a wanted man blamed for vandalism that carries an ever-increasing cost to Londoners.

In May, the London Assembly estimated that graffiti cost London £100 million each year in cleaning bills and lost investment - diverting cash that could otherwise be spent improving public transport, schools and hospitals. The assembly's graffiti committee reported that this "increasingly prevalent and obnoxious crime" had grown dramatically over the past five years, degrading streets, houses, buses and trains, and "engendering an atmosphere of neglect and criminality". Yet, despite its image as a crime committed by underprivileged teenagers, the committee found graffiti was more and more the work of affluent professionals like Jason.

So why do men - and occasionally women - in their twenties and thirties risk their careers and freedom to "bomb" London's streetscapes with those scrawled nicknames known as "tags"? Adam Smith, who is involved with an underground magazine Bomb Alert, says: "People of all backgrounds do 'graf ', middleclass kids and even some upper-class kids. For some, it's a fame thing, wanting to be recognised by their peers; for others it's simply the buzz. Personally, I find it interesting that some people continue to write when they have got a job and kids."

The greatest kudos, he says, is accorded to those who have been caught more than once, yet continue to break the law.

SINCE he was 11, Jason has - by his own admission - left his mark on many hundreds, if not thousands, of trains, tracksides and walls. His "pieces" have decorated the Central and Hammersmith and City lines, the South-East's commuter trains, and spaces ranging from council-block garages to children's playgrounds. Although he has been caught seven times and fined three times in court, Jason cannot see a day when he would forgo the buzz that he says is greater than anything drugs can offer.

Like other professionals who share his secret passion - and Jason knows a nurse, a headhunter and a City banker who are active - he says he is willing to risk prison to fulfil what he considers his true vocation. "When you're used to such regular thrills, it's very hard to give up," he says. "Why would I take away such a big, exciting section of my life to be left on Saturday nights watching reality TV?"

Jason was first arrested and cautioned when he was 13. Yet, despite his extensive record, he has never been fined more than £1,000. He cannot see the new restrictions changing his behaviour. It is his day job, he says, that has persuaded magistrates to keep him out of prison.

"Obviously I don't want to go to prison and, yes, I've got more to lose now. But there are things I want to paint that have been in my head since I was 11. I couldn't draw them for you on paper, but I'll just know when I've done them."

For Jason, the attraction lies in the combination of fear and total concentration that a night-time raid achieves. "You feel like Scott of the Antarctic, exploring new territories: from the moment you enter a train yard, you're in a state of extreme alertness. "It starts off as nerves but then the feeling changes as your entire consciousness is focused on the one act, as you worry about staying alive and not getting caught.

"I don't do it for the adrenaline rush, although that's what works for some people. I do it because it's a struggle to create something against the odds, and - in 30 minutes or an hour - to make something beautiful out of the most inhospitable corners, and feeling you've got away with it."

His first work, copied out of a book of New York subway art, covered the garage door on a council estate near his school, the local comprehensive, in a prosperous market town an hour north of London. Since then the urge has never left him.

HE left school after A-levels and moved to London for its graffiti culture. He dropped out of art college after a year to take a number of jobs in graphic design and music. At every stage he has spent his spare nights, quite literally, painting the town. Even his holidays are devoted to graffiti. He recently spent a week in Germany painting trains. Through an informal network European graffiti-ists, he was put up for free in homes in Berlin and Cologne, and taken out at night deface some of the local sites.

Even among London's most active graffiti crews - with names such as the Diabolical Dub Stars and Total Kaos - Jason's longevity and artistic talent have earned his "tag" a certain celebrity status. At six foot and good-looking, with short black hair and a day's facial growth, he is certainly no geek. However, his devotion graffiti does ensure there are times - such as now - when is between girlfriends. "Girls are initially excited what I do, thinking it's daring and cool," he says. "But when they realise the grim reality of me disappearing all weekend, coming back covered in paint and wanting to get into bed with them, then it becomes less attractive."

For obvious reasons, the secrecy extends to Jason's workplace. "I like the romance of not telling my clients what I do - the double life appeals to me, having one identity at work and a notoriety in this other world, where no one knows who you are.

"I'll be out painting trains all night, sitting in a bush waiting for the cleaners to finish, thinking, I've got to be at work by 10 to pitch at a client meeting.' One time I was part of a presentation to a group of investors and I looked down and noticed yellow paint still on my hands. I quickly hid them under the table and carried on."

BUT what of the GLA's view that graffiti is "blighting" large areas of London, raising people's fears of crime, deterring investment and costing millions to clean up that could be spent on public services and better transport? What of the £100 million bill being blamed on lawbreakers like Jason?

"Show me the receipts," he says dismissively. "The cost is always grossly over-exaggerated. Graffiti is politicians' favourite kneejerk target simply because it is so visible. We're not smashing windows or slashing seats - the only damage we ever leave is the hole in the fence, and we wouldn't do that if they didn't build the fence.

"Yes, I can see why an old lady on a graffiti-covered estate might feel vulnerable but not why the rest of society should."

Statistically, it is only a matter of time before Jason Hamilton is arrested again. His tags feature on the British Transport Police database of 2,000 names, and since the death of his fellow graffiti vandal James "Moody" Dutka in May - police and rail operators have stepped up efforts to catch the perpetrators.

But, whatever the penalties he faces and however intense the police crackdowns, Jason insists that he will stop only when he is ready. He also defies politicians who claim that tougher penalties will by themselves clean up the streets.

"Graffiti culture has been around in Britain for 20 years," he says. "This is more than just a trend."

[Names have been changed]

(Evening Standard, November 20 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Tablet computing/E-card scams

By David Rowan

Say goodbye to your computer mouse and dump that old-fashioned keyboard. If you believe Bill Gates, the electronic pen is about to become a far mightier input device, heralding a new era in which computers will obey your every scribbled command. For Microsoft that era began last Thursday when it launched, to great fanfare, its Tablet PC, an "evolution" of today's laptop that is designed to read your handwriting while connecting you on the move.

"Gone are the days of your ink pen and pad of paper," proclaimed Microsoft, asserting boldly that the Tablet "will revolutionise the IT industry". Hype aside, the Tablet is an inspired and innovative executive tool, but not one that need worry stationers quite yet.

It is a brave move for Microsoft, considering the number of handwriting-based computers that have failed, from the Apple Newton to IBM's Crosspad. But two years after the company announced plans for an electronic "slate", improvements in handwriting recognition software, easier-to-read screen fonts and the popularity of wireless networking have produced a credible successor to the notebook computer. Version 1:0 isn't quite there -more of that later -but new Windows XP-based Tablets let you send handwritten e-mails, store notes as "digital ink" and scroll through electronic books and magazines using an inbuilt stylus. There are two broad designs from manufacturers, including Toshiba and Acer: one resembles a flat writing pad with the screen on the top; the other has a fold out screen that can be flipped back to standard laptop mode. At about £2,000, they will, however, cost rather more than a conventional laptop.

If you are prepared to wait for the software to familiarise itself with your scrawl, you may find the Tablet a useful alternative to a laptop in places where it is inconvenient to use a keyboard. Microsoft's vision of "mobile productivity" encompasses doctors on hospital rounds and children in primary-school classrooms. But I am less convinced by the company's boasts that it will replace "notebook PCs, planners, spiral notebooks, handheld devices and sticky notes". The battery lasts only two or three hours, compared with days for a Palm handheld computer; the first-generation Tablets are relatively heavy; and there are too few available applications and too many early software glitches to make them a must-buy (especially at the current price). They also face competition from mobile devices such as the BlackBerry and ever more powerful standard laptops.

++++

Beware electronic greetings cards this Christmas. The phoney e-card is the latest scam in the eternal battle for online traffic, playing cynically on people's goodwill to bombard them with adverts or promote dubious websites.

The e-mail that directs you to a website called SurpriseCards.net is a classic of the genre. To read your "greeting", the website explains, you must first download an "e-card viewer plug-in". Do so, and your browser will spout endless pop-up adverts for hard-core porn sites -because the plug-in is a "trojan", a rogue piece of software that takes control of your PC. Another website, FriendGreetings.com, is sending equally worrying e-mails. Again, before you can view your e-card on its website, you must agree to a "Security Warning and Licence Agreement". Don't. By clicking "Yes", you will permit FriendGreetings.com to send its advertising messages to every address in your Outlook contacts file. The warning is hidden in the small print -but who reads that?

That is the whole point, of course, and although a British court would shoot holes through the contract, the company happens to be based in Panama.

(The Times, November 12 2002)

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The Observer: The tough life of a restaurant critic

Getting paid to eat out at expensive restaurants is a tough job but someone has to do it. David Rowan discovers what makes Britain's top critics tick - or, more often, sick...

Sometimes one must make sacrifices in the selfless pursuit of truth. So let's hear it for those stoical men and women who daily brave over-garnished langoustine, unremarkable sevruga caviar, and kedgeree inexplicably flavoured to clash dismally with the Ch¿teau Lafite-Rothschild 1961. Night after night they endure such culinary imperfections at the hands of the nation's top chefs.

There are some tough jobs in journalism - crossword compiler for the Dyslexia Association magazine, say, or rural-affairs editor of the Jewish Chronicle - but none can match the sheer wretchedness of the restaurant critic's beat. Why, you only need read their columns to feel their pain.

Take, for instance, the Sunday Telegraph's Matthew Norman, forced by professional circumstances in recent months to ingest Gary Rhodes's 'Pot Noodle-flavoured' mullet, Terence Conran's chicken-¿-la-iron-filings, and the Dorchester's 'absolute howler' of a shepherd's pie.

For readers of the Sunday Times, meanwhile, Adrian (AA) Gill has had to eat 'belly buttons in fake tan' at an Egyptian restaurant, 'three blobs of invalid gloop' at the Hempel, and 'cat food' at the Millennium Dome. Not even a liberal newspaper such as this is guilt-free, having sent Jay Rayner up to Glasgow to witness an 'offence of grievous bodily harm' against an innocent little sea bream.

To free the critics momentarily from having to chew glycerine-flavoured brownies or pungent smoked salmon, we invited them to pose for a group photograph intended to celebrate their art. There were of course dangers in placing in one room such a gaggle of opinionated critics: there remain a few unsettled scores in the restaurant world; any number of chefs could have sought their blood en masse.

Gordon Ramsay, for one, has never warmed to AA Gill, once expelling him with guests including Joan Collins from his restaurant. Gill, in return, dismissed Ramsay as 'a failed footballer', prompting the chef, when asked in an interview about his pet hates, to reply: 'I loathe AA Gill. And okra.'

Marco Pierre White's long-running feud with the Sunday Times's Michael Winner, since resolved, provided far greater entertainment. For some inexplicable reason, the understated, subtle charm of Winner's prose tends to irritate a number of those it targets. Take this typically humble review of a 'disastrous' lunch at Claridge's (pre-Ramsay):

'"Luigi," I said loudly. "How dare you serve me this!" Luigi smiled the marvellous half-smile he uses for naughty children. "I'll have some freshly made," he offered. "I don't want any, just wrap this," I said. "I shall send it to Giles Shepard (the chairman of the Savoy Group) in the morning." Luigi duly returned and took the offending piece of Yorkshire pudding to wrap it somewhere discreetly. "Don't take it away! Wrap it on the table," I yelled.'

Perhaps his manner explains why Antony Worrall Thompson once banned him from all his restaurants, and placed a picture of Winner's face on his toilet seat.

So how difficult, then, is the troubled life of a restaurant critic? 'Actually, it's a piece of piss,' says Giles Coren of the Times, the relatively new kid on the block. He admits that he can be influenced by his peers' columns. Take E&O in Notting Hill, for instance, which he dismissed as 'pretty terrible'. But didn't other critics acclaim the place? 'I gave E&O a crap review because Adrian Gill loved it,' Coren explains.

As for the job's other occupational hazard, you may judge for yourself whether relentless expense-account dining leads critics towards a certain girth. 'There were a couple of porkers at the photo shoot,' Giles Coren notes afterwards. Of greater concern to him was AA Gill's loose interpretation of the photo shoot dress code. 'We were all asked to turn up in black, and Gill wore a handmade blue pinstripe suit with an open shirt,' he notes with some anxiety. 'So naturally it looks like we're all there just to serve him ...'

What the critics said
Restaurateurs pray for a good review. We, however, prefer the bad ones ...

Matthew Norman
The Sunday Telegraph

Marquee Bar and Grill, London, 2002
'Sweet dreams are made of this,' as the Eurythmics' first top-five hit chorused, 'who am I to disagree?' I'm the restaurant critic of the the Sunday Telegraph magazine, that's who, and I do disagree. Bitter nightmares are made of this.

Our studenty waitress took so long to fetch our fizzy water that it would have been quicker to fly to Switzerland and fill a flask from an Alpine spring. The main courses, served on weird, sloping plates seemingly bought in a job lot from the Alice in Wonderland closing-down sale, were no better. The Eurythmics track that came to mind the moment I tasted what the menu humorously described as a 'prime fillet burger' was 'Here Comes the Rain Again'. By the time the bill came we were reflecting that so long as he retains an interest, Dave Stewart will remain immunised against any recurrence of Paradise Syndrome.

The Mulberry Restaurant at the Belgravia Sheraton, London, 2001
Did they mean to create one of the world's worst restaurants, or was it all a tragic accident?

Within two minutes of arriving first and being seated alone in a corner, I noticed a strange whining noise. At first I thought that, going that extra mile for authenticity, it was a tape of wind-whistling-on-the-sea noises, but then I began to make out words. 'Save me,' a pitiable voice was moaning, 'saaave meeeee.'

I looked around for the source of this heart-rending whimpering. It was me. My salad of pickled wild mushrooms was, our Swedish waitress explained, a speciality of her native land. If so, you wonder how far this saccharine horror - and nothing so trivial as lack of sunlight or a morose nature - explains the works of Strindberg. There he was, poised to write a light comedy of manners, when someone served him the pickled mushrooms. And then, bam! Doom, gloom and Weltschmerz all the way.

Almeida, Islington, London, 2001
'How was the coq au vin?' the waiter inquired. 'Really nice, huh? ... And really traditional!' Well yes, I thought, if infusing that classic chicken dish with a metallic tang hinting at a generous sprinkling of iron filings is the tradition.

We were rewarded with four shocking dishes out of four. My friend's asparagus were the worst examples of that princely vegetable either of us has ever tasted. Or rather not tasted. These would have gone down well at the National Association of People Without Taste Buds annual dinner, and nowhere else. My fish soup did have a potent flavour, although of what precisely it's hard to guess. Not fish, certainly. The herb crust (with the cod) could have been adapted, with minimal effort, for use in germ warfare. After all that, the only sensible answer to the question 'Would you like anything for dessert?' is, 'Ah, you're very kind, I'll have the Listermint and a large spittoon.'

Fay Maschler
The Evening Standard

Chittagong Charlie, Golders Green, London, 1992
It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine anyone conjuring up a restaurant, even in their sleep, where the food in its mediocrity comes so close to inedible. The menu is based on traditional Indian dishes, plus what are described as reproductions of the original recipes once used in the clubs, restaurants and regimental messes of India, Singapore, Burma and other British colonies. Many of these recipes, say the press release, have remained undiscovered for years. It would do no harm if some, like those for dumpling stew and Cotton Club steak, faded straight back into permanent obscurity. Six Degrees, Soho, London, 2000

Chicken laksa, an innately likeable dish and not difficult to assemble, arrived looking like debris caught in a drain and tasting not much more appealing than the image suggests. I won't bore you with the main courses save to say I haven't seen liver cooked so grey since I was at boarding school.

AA Gill
The Sunday Times

San Lorenzo, Chelsea, London, 1998
It is, all things considered, quite the worst restaurant in London, maybe the world. San Lorenzo serves horrendous food, grudgingly, in a dining room that is a museum to Italian waiters' taste circa 1976. It's laughably overpriced, but doesn't take credit cards. But all that is just by the by compared with its unique horror. To get in, you have to be kissed by a woman called Mara, who must surely have been around to do tongues with Garibaldi.

The Langley, London, 2000
Slow-baked cheese-and-onion tart - snot in a box. Grilled kipper - smoked postman's Odor Eater. Battered saveloy, a thing that only specialist medical staff handle, with rubber gloves. Now, I haven't actually been sick for 20 years, but it's amazing how fresh and strong the memory was. Who would have thought a simple motherless mongrel sausage could do that? The duck p¿t¿ was interesting. It was also a Kurdish insurgent duck that had been interrogated to death by Turkish policemen using rubber hoses, then left in a warm, damp cupboard to emulsify. Coq au vin was thick-skinned chicken knuckles soaked in tepid Brylcreem and aftershave. Sherry trifle: unspeakable. Black forest g¿teau and apple pie: both would have worried gypsy caterers at a Troggs concert in Norwich. Congratulations to the Langley for managing to come up with quite the peerlessly worst restaurant so far this millennium.

The Fashion Cafe, Leicester Square, London, 1996
I am prepared to stick my neck out and say that the Fashion Cafe is the worst restaurant that I have ever reviewed. It hit professional depths in every department. The dining room looks like it was decorated over a weekend for an art school. There really is very little point in describing the food in any detail. I didn't put a single thing in my mouth twice. It all went back.

Michael Winner
The Sunday Times

Bibendum, Chelsea, London, 1995
I have recently had the worst meal I've ever eaten. Not by a small margin. Not 'This is terrible but another one somewhere else was nearly as bad.' I mean the worst! The most disastrous. The most unrelievedly awful! You don't need to be an atomic physicist to grill steaks, do you? They arrived so raw you could have drowned swimming in the blood. But the pi¿ce de resistance was my persillade of tongue. Leathery, so hard it was difficult to cut and, as far as I could tell, not fresh. I picked away at it. What I should have done was tell everyone, then and there, very icily, that it was a disgrace.

The Lanesborough Hotel, London, 1994
What I only go through. How I suffer. The food is grotesque, so awful as to be almost indescribable and an absolute disgrace. The owners should call a board meeting at once and fire themselves. And, believe me, what I've written so far is kind. Chinese duck cakes turned out to be no more than duck hamburger, with no sauce to help it. It was bland and dreary. For a main course I ordered a kedgeree of salmon and haddock with curry butter. It was totally uneatable. 'The chef would like to know when your write-up will appear,' the manager said. 'No he wouldn't,' I replied. 'The food is disgusting. I shall say so in no uncertain terms.'

Pont de la Tour, London, 1993
The least enjoyable, worst restaurant evening of my life. Everything had been appalling. The food was cold, the service rotten. I wrote to Sir Terence [Conran], detailing how a distressing meal had been turned into a remarkably unpleasant evening by the quite extraordinary antics of his unrepentant manager. Sir Terence replied sarcastically. 'Thank you for your film script. I shall certainly investigate the situation.'

Giles Coren
The Times

E&O, Notting Hill, London, 2002
Roast crispy skin chicken. Well, technically, yes. The skin was crispy, but the breast meat was sponge-dry and crumbled into that awful bog-papery consistency in my mouth. What do you do? You can't gob it out in front of Patsy Kensit. I thought of the starving babies in Africa, and downed it with a wince. The bird in the spring roll was worse: mashed to the consistency of peanut butter and tasting faintly of herring. Chicken this bad actually makes you yearn for tofu, except that E&O's tofu is biffed into a J-cloth consistency and rolled around sweaty fistfuls of rice and ginger. That stuff stayed on the plate, and sod the babies in Africa.

The Court Restaurant at the British Museum, Bloomsbury, London, 2002
The taste and texture of the pease pudding reminded me of occasions when I have accidentally inhaled while emptying the Dyson. The pork was grey and grizzled. The gravy was Oxo-ish. It tasted like airline food. I'll take that kind of grub if I can swallow a couple of Temazzies afterwards and wake up in Sydney. But not to spaff £96.

Jay Rayner
The Observer

The Corinthian, Glasgow, 2001
The old Sheriff's Court is now a place where the crimes are actually committed. Granted, bad cooking probably does not warrant a long stretch inside. But the offence of grievous bodily harm upon a lovely little sea bream really ought to carry with it some form of judicial penalty. There was no cutlery on our table. I looked for waiting staff, but the room is so big they were probably obscured by the curvature of the earth. Eventually we got up and nicked knives and forks off a table half a kilometre away. It was a bit of a pity we did, because it meant we could eat.


Elijah's Garden, Shepherds Bush, London (run by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam)1999
After the starter, everything went downhill, to such a degree that attempting a formal review of the food would not only be pointless but unfair. Ali's starter was described as a Pizza Petite. This was one side of a piece of wholemeal pitta bread, layered with waxy cheddar cheese and a few slices of raw tomato and onion, all of which had then been flashed under the grill. In other words, the kind of food students make when there's nothing else left in the fridge. A pretty sad affair, but grist to my mill; after all, it is far better to attack anti-Semites for their lack of culinary skill than to bother discussing their politics.

The Philip Owens Dining Room at Corney & Barrow, Leicester Square, London, 2002
Pat's main course was a disaster: a chicken breast stuffed with mint, a flavour combination which should go in the file marked Very Very Bad Ideas. It didn't help that the chicken was served with a dense red-wine reduction which she said 'tasted of Marmite'. This was bad cooking of the first order. Finally, we shared a bread-and-butter pudding, which had a caramelised surface but was cold in the middle. It gave the impression of having been plated up way in advance and then heated by the application of a blow torch. Risible.

Matthew Fort
The Guardian

Opium, Soho, London, 2001
Occasionally, you come across a restaurant that causes you to question the very nature of human existence. Now, I can't be sure of this, but I got the impression from the menu that the food has a Vietnamese slant to it. [What] looked like a sea mine in miniature was the most disgusting thing I've put in my mouth since I ate earthworms at school. The contents appeared to have been scraped off the inside of an S-bend. On second thoughts, I preferred the worms.

(The Observer, November 10 2002)

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Interview: Caroline Feraday, LBC (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

IT has been quite a week for Caroline Feraday. First she turned down a £500,000 offer to move from Five Live to Capital, after a long courtship that would have seen her co-presenting Chris Tarrant's breakfast show. Then she sealed a deal with LBC to give her the key drivetime show when the station relaunches on FM in January.

And in the gaps between her GMTV showbiz slots, her Five Live star interviews, her nightclub DJ sets and her lucrative voiceovers, she also found time over the weekend to move home, ponder her next piece for Cosmo and treat herself to a new Peugeot 206 Cabriolet. "I think I deserve it," the bubbly 25-year-old says in those relentlessly enthusiastic tones that have made her one of radio's hottest new stars.

Capital's former Flying Eye traffic reporter could make an M25 tailback sound like a not-to-miss party. The voice that advertises Branston Pickle and Asda as well as countless TV shows on BBC1 and Channel 4 ranges refreshingly widely over Feraday's views on her employers past and present - so much so that she occasionally has to stop herself to ask if she is talking too much.

She implies that Capital Radio, for instance, the station that launched her, may now require the sort of cull that befell Radio 1 in the early Eighties. "Capital has an image problem similar to Radio 1 when Matthew Bannister took over there," she says.

"Its DJs have grown older - and though they've started to nurture new talent, there will always be a difficulty when a 55-year-old man is talking about Ja Rule. Chris Tarrant [recently turned 56] is brilliant, but it's very difficult to pull that off." Her insouciance will surprise those Capital executives who bet the station's future on the pair's on-air chemistry.

So much for Capital. But she is equally outspoken about her current employers, for whom she presents a weekend news-and-entertainment show with Matthew Bannister. "The BBC is not an easy place - I thought Capital was a corporate station till I worked at Five Live," she says, in terms that may not be entirely welcomed within the hierarchy. "It's a slow process to get decisions made, and I never really understood what all the job titles meant. For someone like me, I want it now. I'd get very frustrated at the delays."

She texts later to clarify that she hoped she did not sound too negative about the BBC, adding that it "has unique qualities".

On Radio 1, though she is a fan of Chris Moyles and Mark and Lard, she "cannot bear" the ageing hipster Tim Westwood. "He's the only person on the radio I have to switch off," she says. "His biggest problem is Ali G - because he is Ali G." As for her Five Live colleagues, she enthuses about Nicky Campbell ("the most gifted natural broadcaster I've worked with") and Victoria Derbyshire ("I get on very well with Victoria"), but when asked about working alongside Bannister will only say: "It's fine."

Less guarded are her views towards her former lover Frank Skinner, 20 years her senior, with whom she shared a lively public row after they separated last year. Soon after they split she took offence at remarks he made denouncing single women in their thirties. At the time, he was promoting his autobiography; believing he was capitalising on their separationshe condemned his views as "truly horrible", adding: "Frank's problem is that he just can't handle intelligent women." Even today she does not appear to have forgiven him.

"That spat wasn't my fault," she reflects. "I was put into a situation I found embarrassing, and incredibly disloyal. I don't see the need to make money from these things, but I'm sure he's got a lovely new house out of it. It's just boring, knowing how hard I've worked, to have something like that put me in the public eye."

Her current boyfriend, Andy Hipkiss, is a record plugger for Warner Music. In an ironic reference to the growing media interest in her life, she says they are about to "live in sin" in her Clapham house. "And with the new job, I'll be looking forward to having my weekends back," she says.

"Andy's been very understanding about my hours, but they don't help." The hours were only one factor in Feraday choosing the offer from LBC, now owned by Chrysalis Radio. A bright, well-connected networker - she has, she points out, worked with every breakfast DJ in London - she had kept in touch with Pete Simmons, Chrysalis's head of programming, since he gave her her first break at Capital.

"It just sounded like an interesting prospect," she says. "I liked the idea of working on a London station that's targeting me - a cosmopolitan station with quite a sassy, smart feel to it." Focusing on news and entertainment, the station must, she believes, avoid the Americanisms such as "travel on the ones" - formatted reports repeated every 10 minutes - that "don't cut any ice with the listeners".

"I could have taken the easy route and gone to Capital," she says. "Foxy [Neil Fox] and I piloted a breakfast show in the summer. But the easy route isn't really me. And three years was too long to commit myself."

Feraday certainly appears to be in a hurry. While studying for Communications Studies and English A-levels at a college in Maidstone, she was making herself useful at BBC Radio Kent and earning cash DJing at local parties. By the time the A-level results were out, she had found a research job at Capital and was soon surveying the jams on the Flying Eye. But that eventually proved too "lonely", so when Five Live approached in late 2000 she negotiated her own entertainment show. This in turn put her on the party lists that ensure she's a regular in the 3AM Girls' columns.

BUT what is it about Feraday that has generated such a buzz? "She's just so different from the typical male presenter," a colleague says. "There are a lot of middle-aged blokes in radio broadcasting, and she brings a sense of youth, of being a girl who goes to parties rather than home to Newsnight and a cup of cocoa. She's quick on her feet, she knows who So Solid Crew are and she's very unstuffy. And she's got a very good voice."

Others point to her nose for useful self-publicity. "The Skinner publicity didn't harm her, and she kept it going to her advantage," says one. Feraday admits that she is careful to control her media presence, pointing out that she rejected an offer to appear in I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here ... - although it would not take a PR genius to warn of the career risks that a "Yes" might have brought.

And her next move? Currently filling in for Jakki Brambles as an LA correspondent for GMTV, Feraday has decided that Brambles "has got the best job in British TV". "In about five years," she says, "it will be good to spend two years there."

Somehow you can imagine the television executives already drawing up the contracts.

(Evening Standard, November 6 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - John Perry Barlow/Picture-messaging

By David Rowan

Few Grateful Dead lyricists enjoy the status of "digital guru" among the internet community - but, then, John Perry Barlow is not your typical geek. A 55-year old former Wyoming cattle rancher who went on to teach at Harvard Law School, it was Barlow who first used the term "cyberspace" to describe the net and whose free-speech body, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has for 12 years defended its freedoms. Lately, the EFF has been busier than ever, fending off threats ranging from new copyright laws to censorship in the name of anti-terrorism. Neither governments nor corporations want the information flow that the the net allows, Barlow argues, which is why only civil disobedience will guarantee our right to be informed.

The big threat is copyright, as he will explain in an ICA lecture in London tomorrow. Politicians are pushing copy-protection technologies at Hollywood's behest; corporations are using copyright law to suppress any criticism. "I worry that my grandchildren won't be able to get the information they want when they want it," Barlow says, even though the net was supposed to create universal access to knowledge. As the "fair use" protection in law is whittled away, he worries that dissent will be silenced. "If you so much as have a company logo in a video on your website, you can be sued," he says. "There's a body of laws and lawyers working to an algorithm that stems the information flow."

With content-producers demanding even the right to hack into your computer if they feel you are breaching their rights, Barlow is urging rebellion. "We need to put anything and everything online and flood the net with material that could be prosecutable," he says. "Then no one will have the capacity to prosecute, and by doing a Google search you'll be able to find everything that exists about a subject -not just what copyright owners want you to know."

He is also worried that the post-9/11 mood allows governments to curtail the information flow and to mine public databases (such as supermarket shopping records) to profile potential dissidents. But, I ask, isn't the growth of personal web publishing a new opportunity to channel dissent? "I used to be a poet, and noticed that there were way more people writing poetry than reading it. Weblogs are a similar phenomenon," says Barlow. The only ray of light he sees is the growth of low-range wireless devices that allow anonymous surfing. These may yet allow human beings to challenge the corporate state.

++++

ALL THE TELECOMS firms want for Christmas, other than a refund of those 3G auction fees, is to get us to upgrade our mobile phones. Certainly there are some decent toys hitting the market: Microsoft's new Windows-powered Smartphones are turning heads, and the Nokia 7650 is making the geeks' mouths watering. But the networks' desperate optimism still looks misplaced. With 3G still some way off in Britain, multimedia messaging (MMS) and polyphonic ring tones are not yet good enough reasons to spend £200 or more on a handset.

Listening last week to 14-year-olds in West London - a key barometer for this market - I learnt that picture-messaging was deemed "cool", but not a vital day-to-day tool. Partly it's the cost of using it: at around 40p a message, it would never replace a 10p text message. But they are all too aware that pictures cannot yet be sent easily between rival networks and, until they can, that "must-have" factor is lacking.

But games are a different matter; what kept them interested in Vodafone's new mobile portal, Vodafone Live, were free downloadable games such as Space Invaders and Puzzle Bobble. Free, that is, until January, when they will cost up to £5 - which, as one girl pointed out, could pay for 50 texts.

(The Times, November 5 2002)

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